Autorretrato (Self-Portrait)

This work, Alfonso Ponce de León’s best known, has always been regarded as a prophetic self-portrait in view of his murder just a few months after painting it. Inspired by a real-life event, a car accident the artist was involved in the previous year, Ponce de León employed different techniques that were characteristic of the new realisms that appeared in Europe in the interwar period, in particular those linked to the trend of Magic Realism. Among such approaches is the precise, realist brushstroke, artificial lighting and an atmosphere of oddness also linking it to Surrealism. Added to this feeling of unreality is the forced foreshortening of the protagonist, the lack of depth in the image, the foliage that suggests Henri Rousseau’s “Customs officer” or the finger that points to the bleeding wound.

Raúl Martínez Arranz