Salustiano - Semana Santa Sevilla 2024 - 2020s

Holy Week Seville 2024

The value of this 2024 poster lies not only in its originality, but also in the controversy that occurred nationwide and even internationally, due to the very explicit and sensual image of Christ. A couple of newspaper examples:

https://www.ilmessaggero.it/vaticano/cristo_gay_settimana_santa_siviglia_poster_polemiche_vaticano_papa_francesco_omosessualita_chiesa-7901727.html

https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/2024/02/01/polemica-en-espana-el-cartel-de-semana-santa-en-sevilla-incendia-las-redes-orix

Following the controversy raised across Spain in 2024 by this poster, which presents and announces the Seville Holy Week, Year 2024, its author Salustiano said that for the poster he was inspired by the death of his brother at age 12, by the serenity that his face conveyed when he went to say goodbye to him. His son Horacio has served as the model.

Continuing his artistic line, Salustiano shows us his personal reminiscence of the sublime Renaissance, in which the flat monochrome background shines through in a bright red, the so-called “Salustiano red.” His son Horacio has acted as the model to execute this work. In the author’s own words, “My Christ looks young and beautiful. Young, as a metaphor for purity: so he has appeared to the Virgin Mary in the history of art, almost as a teenager. And beautiful because, to quote Plato, beauty and goodness are the same thing.”

Inside the poster there are two very representative elements of Seville’s Holy Week: the cloth of the Expiration Christ of the Brotherhood of the Puppy (Hermandad del Cachorro) and the reliquary prongs (potencias) of the Christ of Love. “I would have loved to include in the poster a tribute to all the Brotherhoods of the city, but I could only evoke two of them,” notes the painter.

About the artist:
Among the numerous recognitions he has received, the Focus-Abengoa Painting Prize and the National Prize for Plastic Arts of the Rafael Botí Foundation stand out.
Salustiano currently works with galleries in New York, Miami, Munich, Paris, Florence, Düsseldorf, Palm Beach, the Netherlands, Mexico City, Santiago de Chile, Maryland, Seoul, Sun Valley (Idaho), Berlin, Hamburg, Tel Aviv, or Nuremberg.

Since 1994, Salustiano has shown his works in various cities of Spain, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, China, South Korea, Denmark, the United States, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Peru, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Romania, Russia, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan and Turkey.

“Beautiful, disturbing and deep. That is the painting of this Spaniard circulating in galleries and fairs around the world, turning portraiture with red images into something that fuses Renaissance rigor with mathematical perfection,” American journalist Sandra Lodos defines Salustiano’s work.