#basque artists

Erlea Maneros Zabala - November 1st, 2001, New York Times (Study 11), 2005

Another of my favorite artists I found at the Guggenheim Bilbao: Erlea Maneros Zabala, in this series of watercolors, recreates photographs from the New York Times depicting explosions from the beginning of the Iraq war.  I viewed these merely as watercolors when I first saw them, and was so intrigued as to how they fit into the rest of her oeuvre--which was based on war, media and often the Middle East--that I had to borrow an audio guide to double check I was looking at them correctly. Indeed, I wasn't, but perhaps in a way I was.  Here, Zabala questions the aesthetic nature of the war photography, which show no victims, no blood and no real aftermath catastrophe.