Carlos Alfonzo
Born Havana, Cuba, 1950. Died Miami, FL, 1991
En Carne (In Flesh), 1987
Oil on linen
84 x 168 inches
En Espíritu (In Spirit), 1987
Oil on linen
84 x 168 inches
Collection Miami Art Museum, promised gift of Lucrecia and Juan P. Loumiet in honor of Peter Menéndez
Photo credit: Peter Harholdt
During his short life, Carlos Alfonzo developed an emotionally-charged painting style that merges Modernist and Afro-Cuban influences, striking a balance between abstraction and figuration. His paintings frequently address themes of life and death with autobiographical undertones, including subtle references to his traumatic experience of emigration from Cuba as well as to the AIDS epidemic, from which he eventually succumbed.
En Carne and En Espíritu were created after a trip to Italy in 1986, during which Alonzo was struck by the art that he found in Christian churches and monasteries. The diptych alludes to the split, human and divine nature of Jesus Christ. Besides Christianity and Rosicrucianism (an esoteric system of religious belief that arose in Europe in the 17th century), Alfonzo's work frequently references the deities, myths, songs, histories and cultural concepts associated with Afro-Cuban Yoruba religion and society. The numerous phalluses and nails in these paintings refer to the Yoruba orisha (deity) Eshu, or Eleggua, who is frequently represented with phallic symbols or a nail on the head. In Yoruba myth, Eleggua is the lord of crossroads, the gatekeeper between the realm of man and that of the gods; he is the protector of travelers, the deity with power over fortune and misfortune, and the personification of death. Every magical ceremony or ritual in the Yoruba tradition must begin with an offering to Eleggua. The arrows represented in these paintings also refer to Saint Sebastian, a Christian saint and martyr commonly depicted in art and literature as a handsome, semi-nude youth tied to a post and shot through with arrows. He is among the most frequently depicted of all saints in Late Gothic and Renaissance art, embodying the ideal of beauty and grace in suffering. Given his struggle with AIDS, Alfonzo perhaps saw in the traditional motif of Saint Sebastian the ideal of poise amidst agonizing torment, and the acceptance of his fate
