Author: Rigoberto A. Gonzalez
Title: Perseus with the head of Medusa
Support: Oil on linen
Dimensions: 7 feet tall by 5 1/2 feet wide
Rigoberto Gonzalez’s Baroque-inspired paintings explore contemporary issues affecting the Texas-Mexico border region. The figures in his paintings, drawn from both historic and contemporary corridos (or Mexican folk ballads), portray and inform life along the border—the brutality associated with drug cartels, tales from folklore, and moments of domestic tranquility. B
y merging centuries-old European vernacular with contemporary narratives, a historical allusion is drawn between the propensity of harsh violence in religious and secular paintings from the 16th and 17th centuries with the intense brutality in some border regions today.
Depicting past and present, current events and historic folklore, Gonzalez’s canvases serve as portals to a people who struggle to balance the beauty and violence of daily living.
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