Barrio Escalante, San José

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El Grito de Goool, by Francisco Munguía. An unrelenting diagonal cuts across the plane, subverting one of the most recognizable icons of modern art to transpose it into the secular fervor of a soccer stadium.
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Francisco Munguía

El Grito de GooolInquire about availability

Year
2014
Technique
Acrylic/Canvas
Dimensions
121 × 90 cm
Status
Inquire about availability
Palette
scarlet red, amber orange, chrome yellow, forest green, night blue, pure white
Brushwork
Smooth acrylic planes defined by continuous black outlines, enriched with repetitive patterns and dense dot screens.

Curatorial analysis

An unrelenting diagonal cuts across the plane, subverting one of the most recognizable icons of modern art to transpose it into the secular fervor of a soccer stadium. In place of the Norwegian bridge railing, the sharp white boundary lines chart a vertiginous vanishing point toward the left goalpost, where the ball already rests in the back of the net. In the foreground, the player wearing the number seven jersey clutches his contorted face in his hands, suspended in total ambiguity: it is impossible to decipher whether his gesture stems from the irrepressible catharsis of victory or the paralyzing shock of sudden defeat.

The pictorial surface overflows with a meticulous graphic impulse. Rather than settling for flat planes, the turf is articulated through a dense mosaic of rectangular units stippled with dots that evoke banknotes, tickets, or synthetic plots, endowing the playing field with an almost hypnotic materiality. Above, undulating bands of red, orange, and yellow replace the expressionist sunset with a burning grandstand. These bleachers do not display individuals, but rather an undifferentiated swarm of hundreds of tiny spheres with dilated pupils and gaping mouths, chanting or suffering the play's climax with identical bewilderment.

The draftsmanship borrows the clarity of comic panels and pop art, outlining volumes in solid black lines that seal in the intensity of the acrylic pigments. The thermal clash between the deep, cool green of the pitch and the incandescent bleachers generates an immediate optical vibration, devoid of intermediate shading. Existential drama is dismantled by the filter of caricature, yet never fully neutralized; athletic hysteria steps into the void of cosmic dread, celebrating the excess of a society that consumes spectacle with the exact same devotion it fears defeat.

El Grito de Goool

More works by Francisco Munguía

42 works

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