Carlos Fentanes

Have you ever felt the need to censor your artwork in order to make it palatable to your audience and/or to make a profit?

Back in the 90’s my gallery gave me some freedoms but they had some restrictions with paintings: No religion, no politics, no national symbols. I couldn’t help to make a painting using all of those restrictions, so I made this painting almost 25 years ago. San Juan entre la Gloria y la Lupe (a free translation should be: St. John between Glory and Lupe), I use religion as a center theme and put some untouchable Mexican national icons on it such as Our Lady of Guadalupe and a sentence from the National Anthem: “Un recuerdo para ellos de Gloria” (… for them, a souvenir of Glory).

Actually it was censored and the gallery never show it in its walls, that was my first conflict wit my gallery in Mexico: They put me some restrictions and then, I tried to break the rules, I think that should be the job of an artist: break the rules. About the question, I regret to say Yes, I had censored my artwork in order to make it more palatable but every time I tried to fit and do some kind of self censorship the result is poor, bad and unsatisfactory.

Sorry about the picture but it’s the only one a have of this work.