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Lot Essay
"Since I was a little boy I was obsessed with Velazquez's Christ in the Prado Museum; with his face hidden behind the flamenco dancer's black hair, his bullfighters feet, and his frozen marionette's flesh transformed into Adonis. [In my Crucifixions] I have tried to take this image and to shake it, and fill it with a gust of protest." (Antonio Saura in, Ed. Fundació Joan Miró, Antonio Saura, Barcelona 1980, p. 49).
Saura's Crucifixion paintings are among the most important and enduring works in the artists oeuvre. Since 1957 he returned time and again to this subject, the earliest Crucifixions are distinguished by the energy and violence of their expression, Crucifixión of 1961 is one of the first of these remarkable works.
Taking the image of the crucifixion, Saura fills it with a new meaning and transforms the subject into a social statement and a cry of protest. Saura's Crucifixions do not represent the death and resurrection of a god but the physical torture of a man and the pshycological tragedy of what he called a "man in solitude", an outcast of society, or the artist working alone.
Executed in 1961 Cruxifixión presents in stark black and white contrast an extraordinarily convulsed image of pain and torture, where the enormous victim of torture dominates the canvas against the flat and what the artist calls almost "absolute black of Velazquez's background".
In a time of the suppression of freedom of thought and expression in Spain, Saura adopted the Crucifixion because he strongly believed that it was "an image like Goya's fusilado with his hands up and his white shirt (from Los fusilamientos del 2 de Mayo), or the mother from Picasso's Guernica, [which] could still be a tragic symbol of our time." (Antonio Saura in, Ed. Fundació Joan Miró, Antonio Saura, Barcelona 1980, p. 50).
Saura's Crucifixion paintings are among the most important and enduring works in the artists oeuvre. Since 1957 he returned time and again to this subject, the earliest Crucifixions are distinguished by the energy and violence of their expression, Crucifixión of 1961 is one of the first of these remarkable works.
Taking the image of the crucifixion, Saura fills it with a new meaning and transforms the subject into a social statement and a cry of protest. Saura's Crucifixions do not represent the death and resurrection of a god but the physical torture of a man and the pshycological tragedy of what he called a "man in solitude", an outcast of society, or the artist working alone.
Executed in 1961 Cruxifixión presents in stark black and white contrast an extraordinarily convulsed image of pain and torture, where the enormous victim of torture dominates the canvas against the flat and what the artist calls almost "absolute black of Velazquez's background".
In a time of the suppression of freedom of thought and expression in Spain, Saura adopted the Crucifixion because he strongly believed that it was "an image like Goya's fusilado with his hands up and his white shirt (from Los fusilamientos del 2 de Mayo), or the mother from Picasso's Guernica, [which] could still be a tragic symbol of our time." (Antonio Saura in, Ed. Fundació Joan Miró, Antonio Saura, Barcelona 1980, p. 50).