Othello Killing Desdemona

A. González Pineda is an artist who has received little attention from historians of Mexican art due to the lack of sources corroborating his development. A very fine painter, if the present work is anything to go by, he apparently studied in Seville and Rome at his own expense, and succeeded in being shown at exhibitions in various parts of Europe. He himself asserted that Othello Killing Desdemona had been exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1879. The painting depicts Act Five, Scene Two of Shakespeare´s Othello. A nobleman of Moorish origin in the service of the Republic of Venice who is married to Desdemona, Othello is led, by the intrigues of his second lieutenant, lago, to falsely believe that his wife is unfaithful. One day, convinced that he has found proof of Desdemonas treachery and mad with jealousy, he enters her bedroom and strangles her. In this work, which shows us the moment when Desdemona dies at the hands of her husband, the painter has used chiaroscuro and an intense mixture of highlighting and reddish shades to lend intensity to the drama. One of the main contributions of this work to the art of the late XIXth century is its totally modern quality, since it eschews many of the tenets of Academic art, abandoning meticulous drawing and smooth, impeccable finishing and substituting them with intense, deft, sometimes thick and voluminous, brushwork, which undoubtedly endows the characters with more expressiveness and intensity. This work was shown at the XXth Exhibition of the San Carlos Academy, being donated to the National Fine Arts School by its author in 1881, while he was still in México. It has been part of the MUNAL's collection since the latter was founded in 1982.