José Lerma Spain, b. 1971

This painting by José Lerma is based on a portrait of Spanish military officer and scientist Antonio de Ulloa de la Torre-Guiral. Unattributed to a specific artist, the original is in the collection of the Thoma Foundation. Lerma painted this work as part of his series of “re-paintings,” for which he paints stylized, whimsical versions of paintings featuring Hispanic subjects that are in the collections of the European and American galleries of art collecting institutions. He applies the paints with broad strokes, creating oversized brush marks and out of proportion figures in order to make the viewer feel small in the presence of the painting. There are different reasons Lerma does this: one is simply to evoke a childlike state of mind in the viewer with the odd scaling and whimsical colors and forms; another is to allude to the non-proportional representation of Spanish diaspora artists in major international museum collections. Lerma is giving us a caricature of an actual painting, which serves to satirize the entire museum experience. It is an oversimplification of an existing work, which echoes the oversimplification of non-majoritarian identities and histories that so often happens within institutional settings.