This work draws inspiration from the mythical figure of Astarte, an ancient goddess of Phoenician and Mesopotamian origins, associated with fertility, nature, love and sensual pleasures, and later with war. The artist revisits this ancestral myth through a contemporary lens, employing a restrained Expressionism in which symbol and flesh merge in a dramatic, ritual gesture.
The female figure, powerful and monumental, kneels in an attitude of offering or supplication, extending her arm towards a luminous moon or celestial presence that dominates the upper part of the composition. The child, small and vulnerable, is held securely against her back: both an extension of her own being and a living offering to the divinity she embodies.
The electric-blue, almost cosmic background heightens the scene’s mystical aura, while the woman’s reddish, naked body evokes sensuality and absolute surrender. At her feet, a stylised plant or animal form may be read as a symbol of fertility or regenerative power. This painting not only revives the worship of the primordial feminine but transforms it into an archetypal vision of sacrifice, the cycle of life and the sacred bond between mother and child.
V. de Espona