So-called “history painting”, fashionable during the 19th century, was a genre in which artists reflected all the cultural baggage accumulated during their training. While many painters sought to gain prestige by producing complex and grandiloquent compositions, others assumed a more austere posture, focusing instead on other types of relationships, more associated with everyday life. Carlos Baca-Flor was a member of this latter group.
It is in this context that it might be said of Baca-Flor that he did not see the exercise of painting as merely the development of technique, but also as an intellectual reflection.
In ¡Dios mío, qué solos se quedan los muertos!, the artist evokes Rhyme LXXIII, by the Spanish poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer.