A primal iconography: A dialogue with prehistoric art in the work of Víctor Mira

Abstract

Between 1979 and 1984, the Spanish artist Víctor Mira (1949-2003) made a series of works characterized by a personal recreation of a primal iconography. Part of that imaginary will be later revisited by the artist in the large group of prints entitled Cien imágenes de África (1990). In these prints, Mira establishes a dialogue with prehistoric art, manifested both through the extreme clearness and formal simplification of the images, and the deepening of their symbolic connotations. They constitute a sort of cosmogony, which bring together the distant past and the present, something that directly links them to authors of the German artistic scene of the period, such as Joseph Beuys and A. R. Penck.