Antonio Paez

Whether it be the Crucifixion scenes of Francisco de Zurbaran, The Disasters of War prints of Franciso de Goya or the bullfighting imagery of Pablo Picasso, a preoccupation with death has long been a defining motif of Spanish art. Cadiz-based Draftsman Antonio Paez certainly shares his compatriots' fascination with momento mori. He gives us an unusual variation on the theme in this pastel on paper drawing, Resurrection. In the post-Auschwitz era, we had become all too familiar with horrifying images of anonymous corpses bulldozed into common graves or stacked into piles like firewood. There are no clues about geographical setting or historical era in Paez's provocative piece, but the heads in the heap do belong to recognizable individuals. His symbolic scene might well be situated somewhere between the End of Time and the Last Judgment. The faces have the pallor of death about them; yet, you could almost believe these people have fallen into a deep and dreamless sleep from which one man (a self-portrait of the artist) has awakened. Paez often plays with horror vacui--the fear of empty space--in crowded compositions, and there is something unsettling about the vacant expanse in the upper third of the image. The figure thrusts his head above the terrifying tangle of bodies, but you wonder into what? Perhaps, it is a measure of our own faith in the traditional Christian doctrine of bodily Resurrection, whether we interpret the open-mouthed expression of this man, alive among the dead, as a shriek of despair in the silent void of eternity or a shout of unrestrained joy at the dawning of a new day. (John Kohan)