Winston Churchill 1970

Eduardo Arroyo painted "Winston Churchill," with flat colors and distinct shapes like puzzle pieces fitting together to form a cohesive image. It gives me a feeling of a memory, distilled into its essential forms. The paint is applied in solid, opaque blocks, which makes me think of the hard edges in Pop Art. There's an area on the easel, where the artist has rendered what looks like random spots or marks of paint; it looks like the real thing: a palette of random spots. It's like Arroyo is having a dialogue with the act of painting itself. The flatness of the colours and shapes, and how they create a graphic impression, reminds me of Alex Katz. But ultimately, it's the subject that sets this painting apart. By painting Winston Churchill in this stylized way, Arroyo prompts a reevaluation of historical figures through a contemporary lens. It makes you think about how history is not fixed but always open to reinterpretation.