In 21 paintings recently acquired by the Church History Museum, Argentine artist Jorge Cocco Santángelo captures the majesty of Jesus of Nazareth using straight lines, blocks of color, rounded forms, and angled and dramatic shafts of light.
Cocco calls his style sacrocubism because of his sacred subject matter and the clear influence of cubism, an early 20th-century art movement that abstracted objects to simple, geometric shapes. As a style, sacrocubism moves the viewer’s attention away from superfluous details—textures of fabric, the accuracy of historical backgrounds, or the impossibility of capturing an exact likeness of Christ—by depicting simple shapes that allow the viewer to focus on the essential and most holy aspects of the sacred events themselves.
Jorge Cocco Santángelo: Sacred Events from the Life of Christ will be open May 17, 2018, through October 1, 2018.