To Die in Spain

107 X 74 cm     mmp

• Francis Bacon: “Three Studies for a Crucifixion,” 1962
• Pablo Picasso: “Crying Woman,” 1937; Penrose Collection, London
• Paris-Match: Soldier dying in the desert in Six Days’ War (photo)

This acrylic painting is based upon Chen’s own watercolor “War of Yom Kippur (No. 74),” done three years earlier and shows how he reuses and adapts elements. There are significant differences in the two treatments of the Crying Woman. In Kippur, the woman’s hair is heavy and black and helps suggest a woman who is beaten, morose, and quietly dissolving inside. In Spain, her hair is yellow and the figure lighter and more expansive, as if the woman will reveal her sorrow through anguished screams.The two Bacon figures represent indifference. They too, are part of society, a bureaucratic society that goes about its business and ignores suffering.The compositional block of stripes on the lower left – yellow, green, red, and black – represent the elements of the desert: sun, grass, earth, water.

– Lawrance Jeppson