CARMEN PAGÉS. LAS DOS ESPAÑAS. EL DICTADOR

These two paintings by the artist Carmen Pagés (Madrid, 1941), both made in 1977, show two scenes which critically allude to the Franco dictatorship. In Las dos Españas, the image framed in a circus tent shows different personalities next to two flags—those of Spain and the United States—along with circus animals. This work, which is meticulously painted, harbours symbolic details about this country’s history which are masterfully rendered using references that seem drawn from popular culture and resemble a somewhat surreal figuration. The colour and medium size of the painting show the artist’s customary contradiction between a uniquely beautiful scene that is nonetheless powerfully ironic.

Just as in the first painting, in El dictador she once again uses the same visual resources to depict a field of mannequins arranged next to the cypress trees in a cemetery, whom the effigy in the centre of the image, the dictator, seems to be addressing. Part of a group of figurative women painters like Esther Boix and Isabel Villar, Carmen Pagés’s work reflects openly on social injustices and how power is wielded over the least fortunate in today’s societies.