Antonio Obá
Esboço para uma personagem dantesca, 2023
watercolor, pen and ink
32 x 24 cm
12 5/8 x 9 1/2 in
12 5/8 x 9 1/2 in
There is a high resemblance to the very archetypical idea conveyed in the “Lover”. When I adopt the Dantesque character, I establish a connection, for example, with Dante’s Divine Comedy,...
There is a high resemblance to the very archetypical idea conveyed in the “Lover”. When I adopt the Dantesque character, I establish a connection, for example, with Dante’s Divine Comedy, in which he reinterprets the historical literary characters therein by experiencing and investigating the Cristian religion background, looking into the matter of the seven deadly sins.
Accordingly, to some extent, he reifies this tradition by rising context from his own experience as well as from the experience lived and perceived by others. I think of all these characters in a rather Dantesque personification, imagining this: an opulent figure, much prone to palliative pleasure, but that also has something to do with the amorous opulence, this exaggeration, this pathos, pathology, passion… yet highlighting the heart out of the body, as in the “Lover”. Though, at the same time, bearing this token of pain for it is a pierced heart, it is upward and kept suspended on a spike. In general lines, there is the recurrence of the archetype.
Accordingly, to some extent, he reifies this tradition by rising context from his own experience as well as from the experience lived and perceived by others. I think of all these characters in a rather Dantesque personification, imagining this: an opulent figure, much prone to palliative pleasure, but that also has something to do with the amorous opulence, this exaggeration, this pathos, pathology, passion… yet highlighting the heart out of the body, as in the “Lover”. Though, at the same time, bearing this token of pain for it is a pierced heart, it is upward and kept suspended on a spike. In general lines, there is the recurrence of the archetype.