Retablos 1938

Editor: This is “Retablos,” made in 1938 using watercolor and colored pencil. The image gives me a sense of reverence, but there is something unsettling too, like a half-remembered dream. What's your interpretation of this work? Curator: Reverence and unease…yes, I get that. You know, "Retablos"…it’s such an unassuming title, really, given how deeply it pulls you in. I see it as a journey back—back to a childhood fascination with religious iconography, back to Sunday school coloring books, back to the stories that both comforted and slightly terrified me. But instead of pristine devotion, there is that shadow— that sense of…of what? Questioning? Remembering something the "grown-ups" didn't want us to remember. It's a dance, this little piece, a hesitant shuffle between belief and doubt, wouldn’t you say? What is your personal connection to art with Christian iconography? Editor: My grandma kept religious pictures, and I think you nailed it with "Sunday school coloring books,". There is that same aesthetic. But "questioning" fits really well here, too. Like the symbols are not entirely used as they should be. It feels kind of… irreverent! Curator: Precisely! It plays on our shared visual language. By deliberately placing us within this safe-but-strange atmosphere, he kind of tricks us, gently, into looking more closely, questioning everything! What do you make of the color usage in the piece? Editor: The color palette seems very limited but effective. Red, ochre, grey and black... Not exactly bright, but it holds one's attention! Curator: It does! "Restrained," one might even say, yet somehow so full of life! As if the painting whispered secrets it shouldn’t reveal. What a piece this is! Editor: I learned new ways to view symbolism and the artist’s clever game of memory and questioning. It all ties in with the coloring book idea! Curator: Indeed. A potent brew of faith and doubt, served up in colored pencil and watercolor.