Doubt

Doubt, 2010

Oil on wood

180 x 120 cm

Comment

Even today, in many societies and cultures, an obvious social and financial disadvantage persists for women versus men. Unfortunately, it reaches its highest expression in gender violence. This work is especially dedicated to these victims.

The production of this painting was inspired by the “Bride” character in the theatrical play, Bodas de Sangre (Blood Weddings) by Federico García Lorca, who was murdered at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1936.

Project

Facing the imminent and definitive commitment of a wedding celebration, there occur shameful thoughts and emotions within the most hidden depths of a woman on the verge of marriage that, even though not a heritage of the feminine world, do indeed reach in her their greatest and most heart rendering expression. Their social and economic disadvantages compared to men in different cultures and societies throughout history have deprived her and, even today, starve her of that first and most essential of all liberties: internal freedom, placing added value upon the sequence of these intimate moments which I have sought to capture in this portrait. The vision of some events that have followed one another over the course of my life, along with the impact stirred within me even being rather young, by reading the works of Granada’s world renowned poet and dramatist, Federico Garcia Lorca, who died tragically during the early days of the Spanish Civil War, drove me to the conception of this work.  

In Lorca’s southern characters one perceives a Spain brought down to its ultimate consequences. I extracted the details from the Bride character in his play Bodas de Sangre (Blooded Weddings) to recreate the intimacy of these moments.

However the figure in the painting does not appear nailed in Lorca’ scene of a Granada cave as describes by the poet, but rather in the bedroom of an Andalusian mansion located on Calle Santa Ana, in Seville’ San Lorenzo district where I grew up. This building, like so many others distributed throughout not only my city, but all of Andalusia, represents the modus vivendi of certain families on a higher social and economic plateau, which led me to think that this was the right place to develop my idea, in addition to the ties of close friendship that linked me to the inhabitants of this house and laid out my life of captivating memories, memories which still imbue me with a tremendous and profound nostalgia.

Those walls, now long gone, bore mute witness to the history of several generations, even down unto my own. Now a mysterious lot full of ruins emerges from between the cracks in the raised mud walls which once were magnificent stately windows and balconies that exuded essences which still survive in my memory, essences of a time that is now gone.

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