Salustiano - Semana Santa Sevilla 2024 - 2020s

Semana Santa Sevilla 2024

The value of this 2024 poster lies not only in its originality but also in the controversy it sparked at national and even international levels, due to the very explicit and sensual image of Christ. A couple of examples in newspapers:

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 aroused across Spain in 2024 by this poster, which presents and announces the Semana Santa de Sevilla, Año 2024, its author Salustiano said that for the poster he was inspired by the death of his brother at the age of 12, by the serenity his face conveyed when he went to say goodbye to him. His son Horacio has served as a model. In keeping with his artistic line, Salustiano shows us his particular reminiscence of the Sublime Renaissance, in which the flat monochrome background, in a bold red, known as “Salustiano red,” dazzles. His son Horacio acted as the model to execute this work. In the artist’s own words, “My Christ looks young and beautiful. Young, as a metaphor for purity: thus he has shown himself to the Virgin Mary in the history of art, almost as a teenager. And beautiful because, to reference Plato, beauty and goodness are the same thing.

Inside the poster there are two elements very representative of Sevilla’s Semana Santa: the cloth of the Cristo de la Expiración of the Hermandad del Cachorro and the insignias (potencias) of the Cristo del Amor. “I would have loved to include in the poster a tribute to all the Hermandades of the city, but I could only evoke two of them,” the painter notes.

About the artist:
Among the numerous acknowledgments 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 in 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 how American journalist Sandra Lodos defines the work of this Spaniard, circulating in galleries and fairs around the world, turning portrait tradition on its head with red imagery where Renaissance rigor meets mathematical perfection.”