Luis Royo - Grey over a Greyer Grey "Text" (1990)
9.75" x 13.25" / 25 x 34 cm
Mixed media on Bristol board
Partially published in the book ‘III Millennium’ (1998), p44
With Certificate of Authenticity
This unique work by Luis Royo features an original art piece ("Guernica") at the top, and stat paste-up text (the poem titled "Grey Over A Greyer Grey") below.
Guernica:
With Royo's homage to Pablo Picasso's painting "Guernica”, one of Picasso's most famous works that he made in 1937 in response to the bombing of the Basque city of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. The painting is named after the town and shows the horrors of war and the ferocity of the attack.
Both Royo's and Picasso's version of Guernica are identical to each other, except that Royo has made his version look damaged. Guernica shows a series of images of wounded and dying people and animals, including a horse lying on the ground and a woman holding her dead child. The painting is considered one of the most powerful anti-war artworks and has an important place in the history of modern art.
Grey Over A Greyer Grey:
The poem "Grey Over A Greyer Grey" by Eavan Boland served as inspiration for this piece of text. It's interesting to see how the themes of loss and memory, which are central in Boland's poem, are also present in this piece of text.
This prose text gives a vision of a possible future in which memories of an apocalyptic past continue to exist. The reader is taken to the future, specifically to December 22, 2058, and reflects on the apocalyptic stories written in the twentieth century. The speaker laments that, despite the passage of so much time, the truth about what really happened is still unknown. And seems to suggest that even in a future time when society has been transformed by new technologies and changing social norms, the memory of the past continues to live on.
The last line of the poem, "I have seen the horror or grey cold serve as heat", suggests that there is still fear and pain in this future world, but that there is also a kind of hope or enlightenment in technological progress.
Overall, the text seems to offer a vision of a future time when the memory of a past of fear and uncertainty continues to live on in the collective consciousness of humanity, even amid change and transformation.
III Millennium - Memory
GREY OVER A GREYER GREY
22nd December 2058
I remember thousands of apocalyptic stories that were written in the last half of that twentieth century of my youth. There was also a variety of versions; the Third World War, a nuclear was, radioactive leaks, and I don’t know what else.
The saddest thing is that such a long time has elapsed and I still don’t know what happened. It is true that this century is bewildering, it is true that part of the XXth century civilization has disappeared, but as usually happens, nobody knows why.
We are always caressed or wounded by the horizon, whatever year it may be.
I have seen the sweetness once again. A sweetness made of circuits and optic fibre.
I have seen the horror or grey cold serve as heat.
