The work of Cuban painter Antonia Eiríz abounds with horror and existential panic. Her meltin
The work of Cuban painter Antonia Eiríz abounds with horror and existential panic. Her melting, gaping-mouthed figures derive their disturbing effect from the fact that we cannot imagine them as part of some fantastical, hellish netherworld—rather, they walk among us in familiar settings and scenarios. Attempting to make sense of the anguish and torturedness of her work, much has been made of Eiríz’s biography, from her polio-stricken childhood to the government criticism that allegedly led her to abandon painting midway through her life and flee to Florida. But, in my view, these psychological postulations miss the bigger point. Eiríz’s great achievement was her synthesis of the abstract expressionist ethos that dominated her era with a belief that art can and should reflect critically on its time. The ambiguity she achieved was probably by design, working as she was under the censorious eye of the government. Though it’s hardly explicit, could we not imagine the wall of demonic press photographers in this painting as a commentary on the newly central role of obsequious, revolutionary propaganda? Eiríz received a bit more recognition later in life, even returning to painting in her final years of exile in Miami, but her reputation is not in step with her extraordinary influence in Cuba and beyond. The Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana is full of incredible canvases by Eiríz, whose crusty surfaces and torrid sweeps of paint I had the great pleasure of experiencing in person this January.Antonia Eiríz, La Cámara Fotográfica, 1959 -- source link