A detail of the Holy Week poster by Salustiano Garcia
Easter is coming up at the end of March. The Christian holiday is a particularly big thing in Spain and many regions hold their own special festivals. This includes Seville.
The city’s General Council of Brotherhoods and Guilds announced last September it had chosen local, respected artist Salustiano Garcia (b.1965) to design a poster for Holy Week 2024.
That poster was unveiled this week… and it’s divided opinion online. Check it out below.
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Some have expressed love for the image. The city’s Council of Brotherhoods praised the work. It says it depicts “the radiant side of Holy Week.”
That’s not what others are seeing. IPSE, an ultra-conservative Catholic group said, “It’s absolutely shameful and an aberration.” It went on to say the depiction of Christ is “camp” and “effeminate.”
Javier Navarro, of the far-right Vox political party, claimed the poster was designed purposefully “to provoke.”
No se trata de gustos artísticos, se trata de que el cartel cumpla con el fin para el que está destinado y no es otro que animar a la participación devota de los fieles a la Semana Santa de Sevilla.
The artist disagrees. He told Spanish newspaper ABC the image was based on his own son, Horacio. Garcia described it as “gentle, elegant and beautiful”. He said he created it with “deep respect” even if, “the representation of the sacred image is very far from my style.”
“To see sexuality in my image of Christ, you must be mad,” he said. He added that painters and sculptors have depicted Christ in a similar fashion over hundreds of years.
Others agreed with him and pointed to similar depictions. Many condemned the implicit homophobia behind some of the criticism.
Nuestro Señor Jesucristo Resucitado de la Ciudad de San Roque ¿Este si y el cartel no? Ay las masculinidades fragiles, la homofobia interiorizada y la caspa cuanto daño hacen… Viva la Semana Santa de Sevilla Felicidades al @ElConsejoSev y a Salustiano Garcia por esta maravilla pic.twitter.com/BFRo11AyYs— Nacha La Macha (@NachaLaMacha) January 27, 2024
On using his own son as a model, Garcia said, “I needed a model, a real and living body that would help me gather all the emotion, beauty and containment that I wanted to convey.”
“I was twelve years old when my brother died. My mother asked me to go into the room where his body rested to say goodbye to him. I was terrified, but when I saw his face and the serene gesture of his hands crossed over his chest, I was shaken. How could a recumbent body contain so much beauty!”
He said his depiction of Christ, “would serve to confirm the resurrection of my brother’s memory.”
Siempre me ha gustado más la imagen del Cristo resucitado, luminosa y vital, que la del Crucificado, sombría y algo necrófila. Así que celebro este cartel, con cierto aire pop. La reacción de los integristas católicos que se han sentido ofendidos es antievangélica, pues nace del… pic.twitter.com/zNwEyuZCQi— Rafael_Narbona (@Rafael_Narbona) January 28, 2024
Not everyone has blasted the images from a sexual angle. Some online commentators have questioned the paleness of Jesus’s skin.
Proper culture row here in #Sevilla over the new poster for the Easter week. ‘Effeminate’, ‘shameful’ say the right-wingers but some Catholic Sevillanos think it cool and different. The artist Salustiano Garcia says it is about purity. Meanwhile – how very white is @Jesus? pic.twitter.com/ofF2aAzn3j— Alex Renton (@axrenton) January 30, 2024
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