The "Inferno" is an installation that was made for the Lázaro Galdiano Museum for the exhibition Eternity. Pictures forever? which brings together a fortnight of pieces where the abstract and the figurative, classical and contemporary art come together, offering the viewer an aesthetic experience that transcends the materiality of the works.
Lucía Vallejo's work is linked to the movement of the decomposition of painting, in which she expands and releases the materiality of the canvas, thus recovering the expressive potential of its nature as a fabric. The painting leaves its two-dimensional condition to become a three-dimensional object. She began tearing the fabrics and in a short time went on to fold and twist them, sculpting the void to later create installations such as the one offered by the Lázaro Galdiano Museum, which could be seen in the “La Fragua” space in Tabacalera or in the Pilar Serra Gallery. Lucía Vallejo's inspiration is in classical art, from Greek sculpture to seventeenth-century artists such as Zurbarán or Caravaggio, passing through Van der Weyden, Jan van Eyck or Fra Angélico; she analyzes the color, the textures, the compositions to abstract and decompose details of the paintings, generating, from them, her creations. She is interested in life, death, pain, fear, loneliness ... and tries, through her works, to provoke reflection. That's what Eternity is about. Pictures forever?
The installation Inferno created by the artist for this exhibition and installed in room 12, the former ballroom of the palace, is inspired by Dante Alighieri's poem from the Divine Comedy, specifically in the canticle of Hell where the human being is presented in front of to their sins - lust, greed or pride - and their consequences. Dante went down to Hell and met numerous characters from the ancient world and from her time. Lucía Vallejo brings, to this magnificent piece, to her Inferno, the characters portraits in the paintings of the Lázaro Collection.
"Art is what remains", this could be the moral, the lesson, the story that Lucía Vallejo proposes. The human being is transitory but Art, which is one of her most sublime creations, remains throughout time. The classic and the contemporary go hand in hand, share the space, the Lázaro and Lucía Vallejo Collection come together in this interesting and thoughtful exhibition.