Saturday, February 2, 2008

Music

Spain and flamenco were returning subjects in Tony's work. This is a detail from a larger painting which you can view in full at the third floor in the Altiero Spinelli building of the European Parliament. Note the crying guitar player. He is just as god crying about the state of the world. Note the figure leaning in to the guitar, caressing, cradling it with body and soul. That is was music can do. In 1995 he got a very delicate guitar in Montellano, near Seville. When we heard some gypsies play near the church of the Crying Madonna the evening we brought her back, he decided to call the guitar just that. I believe he honored the delicate crying Madonna guitar in this flamenco player. The canvas was one to which he would return often, changing it sometimes drastically. He started it in 1995, worked on it in 1998 and May 1999. The last paint Tony spread was red on a tiny brush on this canvas.

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