Yet, despite the change of clothes and scenery, Alvarez is also painting the present. Armageddon is close at hand - sometimes, as manifested by falling missiles or mushroom clouds - it has already begun.Īlvarez’s bleak perspective is so “medieval,” so deeply impacted by artists such as Bruegel and Bosch, that its transposition to a medieval plague scene requires only a change of wardrobe. The barrio is always being transformed into a living hell, and Alvarez depicts the eves of countless destructions.
Test of the plague doctor windows#
In this world, windows are always broken, the environment is degraded, the strong prey on the weak, weapons menace even casual passersby, people sell themselves for a drink or a fix, life is a parade of follies, and danger, disease, and degradation await the weary at every turn. Theirs is a desperate existence, hemmed in by poverty, violence, and redlined urban structures designed to contain them.
Thus, Alvarez obsessed on a plague painting during an actual plague.Īlvarez habitually depicts marginalized communities that subsist in the shadows of American affluence.
Fittingly, one of them, titled Thus, Death Came Through the Windows, depicts the Bubonic plague. Due to the gallery closures and general lockdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Alvarez - most uncharacteristically - obsessively reworked some completed paintings that remained hanging on his studio walls. His paintings, which are generally larger and more complex, sometimes take months to complete. He produces a doom-laden drawing every couple of days, and he sells them almost as fast as he makes them. 1983), a San Antonio-based artist, is an obsessive depicter of everyday apocalypses.
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