The light of the suzerain and the shadow of the colony -- another kind of harmony of light and shadow

Abstract

Julio Visquerra, a national treasure artist from Honduras, uses a unique and diverse painting language to construct a Baroque magical realism that combines lyricism, irony and criticism. Many of his works “inlay” the magnificent portraits of European aristocrats into the rich resources and landforms of Latin America, creating harmonious and integrated visual pleasure with bright and rich colors. In fact, he is presenting an ambiguous directionality and a vague symbolism in an implicit and obscure way. His works represent a certain aspect of the development of Latin American art, which is to enrich Latin America’s colonial history, collective memory, and its complex political situation and ideology in an attractive yet confusing way of expression, while at the same time quietly dissolving them in a carnivalesq ue way.