Luis Seoane’s Heroes and Warriors and Twelve Heads

/

The warrior is a recurring theme in Luis Seoane’s work, and a pillar for his intellectual and artistic stances, more or less deliberately depending on the pieces. What might look like a mere depiction of Galician medieval or Ancient battles is in fact a reference to the need to be based on the past in order to reach the just resolution of the present. As a 20th-century Galician thinker who was committed to the ideals of justice and freedom, Seoane used his position as a cultural organiser in exile to raise awareness on social justice topics.

Through his prints, tempera and oil paintings, Seoane makes us witnesses of the fights of men, of their bellicose spirit, of the mythological references and the values of the warrior; that is, of one’s disposition to achieve victory in a context of physical violence, and to assert that victory after making it go through the filter of peace, in order to claim the victory for those exiled, those isolated, and those harmed by poverty, injustice and oblivion. As he wrote in his poem Desterrados: “A man cannot walk alone without dying”. The triumph of the warrior depicted by Seoane is the collective triumph of Men.

The exhibition includes Doce cabezas (Twelve Heads), a book of woodcut prints, which was published by Galería Bonino in 1958 as a limited edition of 70 copies. Engraving was one of Seoane’s preferred techniques. The popular nature of this procedure connected Seoane to the people. The artist wrote about that nature in the prologue to the book; he described the origins of a technique that has been part of human history for thousands of years, not only as artistic expression, but as a means for basic communication, even older than writing. Seoane recounted the history of engraving, from the Roman headstones to the medieval stonemasons, touching on the creation of the printing press and praising the artists, like Goya or Gauguin, who elevated this technique to new heights. But above all, Seoane highlights its status as a form of popular expression, accessible to anyone who has a burin, a nail or, simply, a hand covered in pigment.

current Exhibitions