Bildnis (für Francisco Goya)

Painting in the 1960s was dominated by a gestural abstract style, but German artist Horst Antes turned to figurative themes. He became known for paintings he called “head-footers,” presenting his own idiosyncratic view of the human body. The oil painting “Picture (for Francisco Goya)” is dedicated to the Spanish painter and graphic artist Goya, whose socially critical work during the Enlightenment period in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is generally seen as a precursor of modernism. As in many of Horst Antes’s other works, the human body is at the center of this large and richly colorful painting. It is not clear whether “Picture (for Francesco Goya)” depicts a closely intertwined couple or just one body divided into two halves. We can see two eyes, upper bodies, and arms, but cannot tell if they are one or two bodies, or if the painting suggests penetration. In this equivocal form of figuration, situated somewhere between a depiction of the body and abstract form, the dominating feature is the two enormous eyes that stare out at us from the center of the picture. In 1962, this painting was purchased by Werner Hofmann for his exhibition in the 20er Haus on “Idols and Demons”. Hofmann said that in this picture Antes touched on the moment when embrace turns into violence. The themes of shredding and dismembering are in evidence in other works by Antes, and may be connected to seeing painting as a way of dealing with the experience of World War II. This might also explain the reference to Francisco de Goya. According to Werner Hofmann, Goya shows the world as a perverted puzzle, a frightful and wild masquerade, in which reason and madness compete to gain control of the dark sides of human nature.