Homenaje a Buñuel
Alberto Gironella
Homage to Buñuel
This is one of several tributes made by Alberto Gironella to the Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel, his friend and one of the directors he most admired. The piece also exemplifies the intersections between painting and sculpture that distinguish Gironella’s work, as well as his strategy of incorporating objects and images by chance. In this assemblage—which evokes both a surrealist attitude toward objects and Gironella’s penchant for baroque retables—we find a clear criticism to the church in the piece’s context of production.
The depth of his paintings reflects his fascination with the “España Negra” school of the writer and painter José Gutiérrez Solana.
The assemblage was originally part of a complex set design he co-created with his colleagues Manuel Felguérez, Lilia Carrillo, and Vicente Rojo for the play La ópera del orden [The Opera of Order] by Alejandro Jodorowsky. This collaborative exercise was consistent with these artists’ spirit of renovation; the group was drawn to abstraction, neo-avant-garde currents, and different kinds of formal experimentation that showed an affinity with Jodorowsky’s bold theater projects. In fact, Gironella appeared as an actor in one scene—dressed as a Franciscan, chalice in hand—before his section of the set design. La ópera del orden, with an original script by Jodorowsky and starring himself and Beatriz Sheridan, turned out to be so scandalous in its portrayal of traditional institutions, such as the family and the church, that it was censored before its official premiere in 1962 by Mexico City’s Departamento de Espectáculos.
ALBERTO GIRONELLA (1929–1999)
Homenaje a Buñuel, 1962
Homage to Buñuel
Assemblage. Wooden box, oil on canvas, metal trumpet, wooden sculpture, oil, and chrome
Acquisition with funds from the Presupuesto Egresos de la Federación, 2014
