Now in the twentieth-first century, the complex threads of Arab Nationalists, Socialists, Islamists, and their supporting allies have weaved a bloody tapestry in the Syrian civil war, where realities of death, torture, rape, cruelty, and inhumanity are beyond the Abrahamic code and human comprehension. The series of Five Variations on the Disasters of War is inspired by Franciso Jose de Goya y Lucientes. The series are a non-representational depiction of war; the abstractions make use of visual language such as the thickness of lines, shapes, color intensity to capture the spirit of the violence, and concepts central to the Syrian civil war, as the brutality of the past is no stranger to the future. The images are a combination of mixed-media of graphite, chalk, pastels, and appropriated cut-outs, on unexposed photographic paper. The 20×24 originals destroyed by fire, however, the 35mm slides were digitized with the alteration of the image curve applied. Five Variations of the Disaster of War are printed with high-quality archival inks and presented on Hahnemuhle William Turner 310 GSM – Textured 100% Cotton substrate.
Variations on the Disasters of War: All Rights Reserved © 2019, Richard Anthony Peña
