Centaurs

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Elatus from Pandaemonium I (Centaurs) (2010) by David Trullo.

One of a series of centaur portraits by Spanish artist David Trullo. Placing characters from Classical mythology in contemporary settings makes a change. The title Pandaemonium I implies further series so I’m curious to see how Trullo follows these.

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Battling Centaurs (1873) by Arnold Böcklin.

Centaurs had a flush of popularity in Germanic art of the 19th century; Franz Stuck painted them a number of times and Jugend magazine is littered with many often grotesque representations. I’ve never seen an explanation for this resurgence of interest. Is it because a man/horse hybrid is a potent symbol of masculine power? Arnold Böcklin’s painting is one of the better examples and suits its title more than Michelangelo’s famous sculpture in which the hybrids are lost in a tangle of writhing bodies.

Previously on { feuilleton }
Mermaids
The Masks of Medusa