Chema Rodríguez

Updated Thursday, February 8, 2024-15:20

Her name, her name is, Marina. In the look, sadness with a touch of hope. On the red background, a word written

in Tibetan

: reincarnation.

It was not conceived as a poster, but it was and, like the one for Holy Week in Seville, it caused a stir and placed its author, Salustiano García, on the covers. With the difference that, instead of insults and homophobic comments like those he received for his Jesus Christ, the applause was unanimous and the painting was sold even before the exhibition for which it was conceived began to travel around the world. . Actress

Sharon Stone

was captivated by Marina's look, but she already had the sold sign up.

A week of controversy later, the Sevillian painter who signs the official image of the Sevillian Holy Week of 2024 declares himself fed up and even hurt by a controversy that he does not understand — "there is a lot of culture missing," he says — and remembers that other time in which made headlines. It was because of Reincarnation, because of Marina's sad and at the same time hopeful look, with which he participated, and triumphed, in

The Missing Peace exhibition. Artists consider the Dalai Lama

, a collective organized in 2006 by the Dalai Lama Foundation and the C100 One Hundred for Tibet Committee and which spent three years around the world.

The idea was, says Salustiano from his studio in Bormujos (Seville), to represent an idea of

​​Buddhism

, of the Dalai Lama and, after "studying a lot and talking with Buddhist monks", he opted for a groundbreaking and meaningful proposal based on the concept of reincarnation.

A reincarnation, he explains, in

a Chinese girl

, of the invading country that pursues the end of Buddhism and is the Dalai Lama's number one enemy. She thus invited reconciliation but, at the same time, Salustiano denounced the cruelty of the Chinese regime towards girls, condemned by virtue of a birth policy that sought out men and restricted the freedom to have children to the maximum.

Marina was, remember, the perfect model and, on top of that, she was right there at your side. She was the adopted daughter of neighbors who had taken her from an orphanage in the Asian giant and who still bore traces of the

mistreatment

she suffered there. The red in the background, the famous Salustian red, further amplified the message by evoking the blood spilled in the repression carried out in occupied Tibet.

The painter Salustiano García, with the actress Sharon Stone.

In that exhibition there were such prominent names as Richard Avedon, Christo, Anish Kapoor, Marina Abramovic, Sebastiao Salgado, Sakamoto and Bill Viola, but of the 88 pieces - from different artistic disciplines - the one chosen to be the

image of the exhibition

was Marina, It was the 'Reincarnation' of Salustiano.

The Missing Peace opened at the UCLA Fowler Museum in Los Angeles on June 9, 2006 and, although the idea was to

auction the works

after the exhibition's three-year tour, the Salustian was sold before the auctions opened. doors.

The

godmother

of that inauguration was the actress Sharon Stone, who declared herself in love with the Sevillian's painting. So much so that she did not hesitate to throw the stole that she was wearing for the party on the floor and sit down to meditate before Marina's gaze—and that of all the guests and journalists—for 15 minutes. She wanted to take the painting to her house, but a Californian family, patrons of the museum, had already bought it for 16,000 euros. Today it would be worth no less than 200,000 according to the artist's calculations.

There was then no

stoning

in the public square on social networks or complaints, like the one announced by the Association of Catholic Lawyers for the Holy Week poster in Seville. He responds directly to the criticism of those who have attacked him for painting a child reading Apollinaire's

The Eleven Thousand Cocks

by replying that cocks are rods, not penises and that if he has decided not to take legal measures it is because what they are pursuing is, precisely, the advertising.

All of this, says Salustiano after seven days of controversy that does not subside, worries him because "Spanish society is becoming

Americanized

, we have always had more culture, another way of seeing things."