Don Suggs

DON SUGGS (USA, 1945- 2019).
"Cardinal Inquisitor," 2009.
Oil on canvas adhered to wood.
Signed, titled and dated on verso.
Features label on verso.
Attached label of the Californian gallery Louver, and explanatory document.
Acquired at ARCO 2010 by the current owner.
Measurements: 152,4 cm (diameter).

"Cardinal Inquisitor" belongs to the series of concentric circular compositions that Don Suggs developed as a form of "pictorial analysis", translating recognizable images into abstract structures based on color, rhythm and perception. The work stands out for its effective integration of visual strength, conceptual ingenuity and critical charge.

The piece is a deconstruction of the famous "Portrait of Cardinal Fernando Niño de Guevara" by El Greco, preserved at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In the original canvas, the cardinal - appointed Inquisitor General of Spain in 1599 - appears with an exceptional psychological intensity, reinforced by the frontal gaze, the tension of the hand and the restrained energy of the cardinal's habit.

Suggs translates this image of religious and political power into a sequence of chromatic rings. In the diagram explaining the process of chromatic deconstruction that accompanies the work, the artist details how each color comes from specific areas of El Greco's portrait: the reds of the capelet and muceta, the whites of the dawn, the blacks, flesh tones, grays, ochers and earths of the background and furniture. Thus, the portrait disappears as a figure, but remains encoded in the form of an optical pulsation: the character becomes a pattern, a frequency and a chromatic memory.

The circular format reinforces this conceptual operation. The authoritarian figure of the inquisitor is absorbed by a visual target, almost hypnotic, where historical painting is transformed into contemporary abstraction. The work does not copy El Greco, but analyzes, decomposes and reconstitutes it from the perception of color, establishing a dialogue between portrait, power, visual memory and geometric language.

Don Suggs was an American artist based in Los Angeles, trained at UCLA, where he studied psychology, film and art, and where he also obtained a master's degree and a master's degree in Fine Arts. In addition to his artistic activity, he also worked intensely as a teacher at institutions such as Florida State University, University of Southern California, Otis Art Institute and, between 1983 and 2014, UCLA itself.

His production, very diverse, encompasses painting, drawing, photography and sculpture, with a constant interest in color, perception and the transformation of the image. He worked in multi-year series, including Portraits, Old Genres, Heuristic Paintings, Tondototems and Paint Ons, moving between geometric abstraction, conceptualism, abstract expressionism, photorealism and pop art. He received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1973 and 1991, and his work was represented by L.A. Louver Gallery in Venice, California.