Nuclear Splinters: The Christ of Orozco

Few paintings keep a strong print on this eye through the years, as the ‘Cristo destruye su cruz’ by José Clemente Orozco, one of the most controversial Mexican artists from the 20^th century. Visualize an angry Christ freeing himself from the nails, taking an axe of wrath, and splintering the wood that symbolizes his pain and Via Crucis; it’s by itself a radical manifesto, capable of rolling the gaze and mind of any person who is exposed to such a thrilling masterpiece.

Cristo destruye su cruz, 1943

The defiant gesture to antagonize the dogma and history of Jesus confronts the principles and the very foundations of Christianity, the demolition of a two-thousand-year-old tradition, is a blast that brings down one of the pillars of the Western belief system. The paradox of a bible burning hell that the Son of God unleashes with every stroke to the cross becomes a declaration, as brutal as fantastic, inexorably compelling to fix the gaze on the image. Whether you like it or not, you’re aware or not, you agree or not, the gargantuan Orozco’s painting is an unprecedented and one of the most semiotic-nuclear warheads of the last hundred years, yet a silent one.

Nuclear Splinters: The Christ of Orozco