LA GUERRA
195x130cm
Óleo Sobre lienzo

WAR

This is the second in a series of paintings that will be introduced in the Metaverse, as well as being exhibited in Hong Kong.

WAR

What is war?

«War is the cowardly escape from the problems of peace.» Montesquieu
War is an inherent act of the human being, a concept that has accompanied humanity since time
immemorial.

The painting is a scenario where a scene unfolds.

In the painting, there is an image of a theatrical nature; it is a kind of stage where several acts with different scenes are represented in the same work.

It shows the abuse of the powerful over the weak, their suffering, some of the symbols, emblems, or standards that have caused the most victims in the history of humanity, the business of war and its hypocritical beneficiaries, and the absurdity of it, among other things.

In the painting, two well-differentiated parts can be seen, the upper and the lower. In the upper part, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse appear.
In the final chapters of the Bible, it is stated that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will come to destroy vast swaths of the planet. In the biblical image, these horsemen are War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. They are the four knights described in the first part of the sixth chapter of the Apocalypse. The chapter speaks of a scroll in the right hand of God sealed with seven seals. In this scenario, Jesus opens the first four of the seven seals, releasing these horsemen who ride on four horses. According to exegesis, they represent and are allegories of conquest or Glory, war, famine, and death.

These four horses, like infernal beasts, loom gigantic over us in the painting, their bulging eyes showing the madness of war, standing over a city in flames.

Behind them, a giant hand appears, reminding us of the mushroom cloud formed by an atomic explosion, which will inevitably trap us.

In the end, regardless of mythologies and superstitions, behind human misfortune is always the hand of man, pulling the trigger, signing the document, or executing the sentence, and without it, there is no conflict.

The two screaming faces that appear in the central part, to the right and left, show the heartbreaking reaction of men and women when subjected to the brutal and dramatic act of war and its consequences.

In the lower part, a stage appears where the victims are displayed in different states of suffering, from the first moment where surprise and panic are reflected to the last moment where only hollow, anonymous, dehumanized, silent, and forgotten remains of a conflict are left. (The piled-up skulls)

In the lower left, we can see:

• The girl from the Vietnam War who appears in a famous photograph taken by Nick Ut that went around the world and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

On June 8, 1972, during the Vietnam War, an American plane dropped a napalm bomb on the area of Trang Bang, burning this girl who runs terrified and broken by pain.

(To get an idea of the girl’s pain at that moment, napalm is a fuel more potent than gasoline and never stops burning unless it runs out of oxygen or is submerged under water.)

• The boy Kong Nyong, lying on the ground, dying due to malnutrition and famine, with a vulture beside him waiting for his death. The photograph was taken by photojournalist Kevin Carter in Sudan in 1993. Carter visited the Sudanese village of Ayod by plane to report on the famine and war the country was suffering. Before leaving, he saw a malnourished baby lying in the sand, right in the same plane as a vulture—two powerful symbols that represented the best metaphor for what was happening in that place, one of the most important humanitarian catastrophes of the 20th century.

The photograph also won a Pulitzer Prize (The author of the photo committed suicide years later, unable to bear the media pressure after being accused of not helping the child and being more focused on the photo.)

• The body of the three-year-old Syrian boy Alan Kurdi, lying face down, who was found drowned on the shore of a beach in Turkey on September 2, 2015.

Syrian refugees are civilians who have fled due to the escalating violence in the civil war that has affected Syria since 2011 and has increased excessively in cruelty and brutality. To escape the war, thousands have sought refuge in neighboring countries such as Jordan, Lebanon, or Turkey. In this desperate escape, our little innocent victim died.

There are also several children with the typical marks on their bodies from malnutrition in underdeveloped countries, images we are so accustomed to seeing in the media and that many NGOs use for profit.

One of them has fallen into the ground and will soon become part of those remains of those who once had a life, a story, but due to an always unjust war, ended up being murdered.

The media nature of the images shows us the morbid curiosity that human suffering arouses in society, but at the same time, the lack of involvement in such sufferings.

In the lower right, we have «The Poisoned Bouquet,» which represents to me the most unjust and stupid war that has ever existed.

«The Opium War»

The Opium War was the conflict between China and Britain between 1839 and 1842. The trigger was the deliberate introduction of opium cultivated in India and traded by the British East India Company, which administered India.

This substance (a narcotic drug) was an important source of income for the British and served to balance their trade deficit with China by offsetting the cost of the huge quantities of Chinese tea that Britain imported.

The opium trade was rejected and banned by the Chinese government due to the disastrous effects it had on its consumers.

The implementation of the abolition fell on the imperial commissioner Lin Zexu.

Lin Zexu, tasked with overseeing the ban on the opium trade in China, even sent complaints to Queen Victoria of England about this trade, which, incidentally, was completely banned in Britain and parts of Europe.

Finally, the straw that broke the camel’s back was China’s sinking of an opium-laden ship, which was the perfect excuse for the British Crown to send a war fleet that eventually defeated China.

As a result of this disaster, the Chinese emperor was forced to sign the Treaty of Nanking, which obliged China to free trade—including opium—with England through five ports (the most important of which was Canton), as well as the cession of the island of Hong Kong for 150 years.

This conflict and its resolution in favor of the British imperial power facilitated the entry of other powers, such as the United States, France, and Russia, which forced China to sign various agreements that have been called «Unequal Treaties.» As a consequence of these, in 1860, China was forced to open eleven more ports to foreign trade, with the corresponding erosion of its sovereignty.

China’s inability to maintain its independence in the face of imperialist powers was further accentuated after its defeat against Japan (1894-1895), which cost it significant territorial losses, and following the Boxer Rebellion in 1900.

On the other hand, and without straying from China, I will also highlight the bloodiest war with the highest number of victims in human history.

The «An Lushan Rebellion,» whose leader is depicted in the center-right, with his name in Chinese calligraphy.

The worst conflict in human history took place in China between 755 and 763. The general who gave his name to the rebellion took up arms against the ruling Tang dynasty, which had entered a period of decline after a period of splendor. In just eight years, 36 million people perished out of the
60 million who lived in China, including the leader himself, who was assassinated by his son. It is estimated that there were between 200 and 250 million inhabitants in the world, meaning that around 15% of the global population died, compared to the 2% death toll caused by World War II.

• In the painting, gigantic vultures appear, as scavengers they are, waiting for weakness or death to act.

The animals display through their elegant ties the countries that occupy the top four positions in the arms manufacturing business and therefore have an interest in the development of conflicts to do the so-called business of war.

The larger the tie, the greater the sale of weapons.

In the lower right, we have the largest vulture of all, whose tie bears the flag of the United States.

Then, on the left side, there are two more, one representing Russia and another sharing two ties that would be those of France and China.

Above them are those that are circling, which are other countries with smaller budgets but with the same intention.

The military-economic cycle corresponds to the economic point of view of defense economics, also known as the «arms cycle.» In any case, both names refer to the cycle that describes the route of arms production, from the decision to invest military public budget to cover the supposed need for weapons to their final use.

In short, the business of war is explained by the military-economic cycle, which is based—like many sectors of the economy—on neoliberal logic, the free market, privatization, and the reduction of regulations. This leads to attitudes strictly related to personal enrichment and the maximization
of economic profit from the defense industry, forming the so-called neoliberal militarism. Moreover, the business of war goes beyond weapons and the defense sector. War needs many resources, not
just weapons and armies, but also logistics, transportation, food, cleaning, interpretation services, and private security.

There are also wars of greed, which are not only based on power but also on resources: oil, coltan, diamonds, rubber, etc., and any material that can be bought and sold on the market. Economic benefits are part of war, and wars are fought to extract benefits.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the United States remains the world’s largest arms exporter. This country is responsible for nearly 39% of international arms sales between 2017 and 2021, compared to 32% between 2012 and 2016. This proportion represents more than double that of the second-largest exporter, Russia.

The country led by Vladimir Putin remains in second position, but its share has been declining. Between 2017 and 2021, this country was the origin of about 19% of the total volume of arms exported globally. In the previous five years, its share was around 24%. According to SIPRI, the decline in recent years is due to a drop in deliveries to two of its main buyers, India and Vietnam.

France continued to increase its arms exports, while the relative importance of Germany in the global arms market decreased. This country was overtaken as the fourth-largest exporter by China, which revived its international sales.

• Continuing with the animals, the work represents Mother Nature in its most repulsive expression adapted to the hostility of war, the scavenger vultures we have already mentioned, and three of the most irritating animals that appear everywhere in all the literature whose settings are poverty, famine, filth, and destruction, that is, war settings.

These animals are the rat, one of the most disliked animals. Accused, for example, of spreading the pandemic that occurred in the 14th century due to the Black Death, one of the most devastating diseases in human history, which, by the way, is false, but without a doubt thrives wonderfully in warlike environments.

The ever-annoying fly, which roams freely among corpses and waste, transmitting more than a hundred different diseases, many of them deadly. Dysentery, cholera, malaria, yellow fever, or dengue are just some of the ills associated with flies and mosquitoes that have decimated our population since the beginning of time.

And finally, the cockroach, an unpleasant insect and the nightmare of many people. It is capable of moving through sewers and other nauseating environments, able to adapt to the most extreme conditions, surviving even possible bacteriological or nuclear wars, proliferating at dizzying speeds.

No one wins in a war; everyone loses, even nature shows us its most atrocious face.

• The all-seeing eye.

This eye in other works always appears as neutral and above the discourse. Here it is a victim of its own action. The hand executes and ends up drowning itself, as well as biting itself, entering a tragic loop, showing that in war, we all lose, and we can awaken hatred towards our fellow humans, acquaintances, or even our own brothers.

• In the center of the painting appear the symbols and standards under which the greatest massacres in human history have been and are committed.

• Religions and political ideologies

The religions would be the cross, the symbol of Christianity, and the crescent and star, the symbol of Islam.

At the top of the cross appears a chi-rho.

In its early days, Christianity was represented by a fish with the letters inside, ichthys, whose acronym in Greek means Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.

It was not until almost 300 years later that Constantine I adopted the cross for Christianity after his vision of a chi-rho in the sky just before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge against Maxentius on October 12, 312.

Constantine was marching with his army when he looked up at the sun and saw a cross of light with the words «In hoc signo vinces» (With this sign, you will conquer) above it.

It is curious that the symbol revered by the largest religion, with over 2.4 billion followers worldwide, was initially granted by God to kill.

And so it continued for many centuries, subjugating, dominating, and killing in its holy wars, its conquests, inquisitions, etc., becoming one of the deadliest movements in human history.

Islam, with 1.6 billion followers, appeared at the beginning of the 7th century, also committing its errors and crimes, but not in as notable and lasting a way as Christianity.

It is in these recent times and as a reaction to the West that much more militarized movements have emerged under the umbrella of Islamist ideology.

The murders committed by the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS) and affiliated groups are associated by many with fanaticism and madness, or with the Quran.

But the link between violence and Islam is much more complex. And to understand it, one must take into account a series of historical circumstances, theological debates, and the relationships between the Arab world and the colonial system, especially from the 19th century to today.

Moreover, as with other sacred texts, in the case of the Quran, what matters is interpretation, as well as the use of religion and history as justification.

And a widespread misconception is that being Muslim and part of the culture of Islam is the same as being a practicing religious Islamist, fundamentalist, and even having a violent jihadist political program.

• Then we have political ideologies.

• The swastika and the hammer and sickle in the center of the work.

The swastika, due to World War II and the Holocaust, in the West is a symbol strongly associated with Nazism and anti-Semitism. However, in countries like India, Nepal, Mongolia, China, and Japan, the swastika lacks this connotation. It is common to see swastikas at the entrance of temples, shops, and homes, as well as on vehicles and clothing, retaining its meaning as a spiritual symbol associated with good luck.

But it is inevitable to remember the massacres committed under this political symbol during World
War II, which was the largest and most destructive conflict in all of history.

Under the Nazi symbol, the Holocaust began in 1933 when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in Germany.

Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, and thus it all began. In response, Britain and France declared war on Germany. German forces invaded Western Europe in the spring of 1940. As a result, an estimated 55 million people died worldwide.

The hammer and sickle.

A symbol used by communist parties.

Under which there has been political repression by communist states, including genocides, extrajudicial executions, deportations, deaths in labor camps, and artificially created famines.

It is estimated that around 84 million people have died.

60 million in the People’s Republic of China

20 million in the Soviet Union

2 million in North Korea

2 million in Cambodia

100,000 in the communist regimes of Eastern Europe

100,000 in Latin America

100,000 in Spain during the repression in the republican zone during the Spanish Civil War.

30,000 in Africa

Soviet Union: execution of hostages or people confined in prison without trial and murder of rebellious workers and peasants between 1918 and 1922; the famine of 1921-1922; the liquidation and deportation of the Don Cossacks in 1920; the use of the Gulag concentration camp system between 1918 and 1930; the Great Purge of 1937-1938; the deportation of the kulaks from 1930 to
1932; the death of six million Ukrainians (Holodomor) during the famine of 1932-1933; the

deportation of people from Poland, Ukraine, the Baltic States, Moldova, and Bessarabia between
1939 and 1941 and then between 1944 and 1945; the deportation of the Volga Germans in 1941; the deportation and abandonment of the Crimean Tatars in 1943; of the Chechens in 1944 and of the Ingush in 1944.

Cambodia: deportation and extermination of the urban population of Cambodia. China: destruction of the Tibetans.
In the lower central part of the work, there are Latin letters that read… «Si vis pacem, para bellum» «If you want peace, prepare for war.»

This paradox indicates the need to show strength to adversaries so that they do not detect weaknesses or see opportunities for victory if they want to declare war.

A phrase from the Roman Flavius Vegetius Renatus (383-450) contained in his work De re militari.

• But for military advice, we have in the central left part the face with its name in Chinese calligraphy of the military strategist Sun Tzu, whose book «The Art of War» from the 5th century BC remains the most influential strategy text in war and has influenced Eastern and Western military thought, as well as business tactics and legal strategy, among other fields.

• The recurring puzzle in my works shows the pieces or pages of a story or book that can be changed or should be changed.

• And finally, «Foucault’s Pendulum»

The pendulum consists of a mass supported by a cable, which is kept in motion.The experiment that the French physicist Foucault first publicly performed in Paris in 1851 was used to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth.

Foucault set a 28-kilogram pendulum in motion that was 67 meters long and recorded that the level of oscillation of the pendulum slowly but continuously rotated in the direction of the clock. This movement results from the Earth’s rotation.

• The common motive for all wars
Why do they occur?

IT IS THE IMMEDIATE NEED TO OBTAIN THINGS AND THE TOTAL LACK OF PATIENCE OR EFFORT TO ACHIEVE GOALS THAT LEADS MAN TO SEIZE THEM BY FORCE, CHANGING THE WORD DESIRE TO NECESSITY.

THAT IS, THE INABILITY TO WAIT (TIME).

Therefore, the pendulum represents time, oblivious to humans, beyond the earth. It represents the tempo of the universe, not the one humans want to dominate or modify for their own interests.

In the steel sphere, the environment of the painting is reflected. The girl transforms into a scream, Munch’s scream, which reflects the anxiety and anguish of the human being, who desperately merges into chaos beyond time.

«Man must put an end to war, or war will put an end to humanity.»

—John Fitzgerald Kennedy.