“I LOOK Better Than Him in White”, the title of this 48” x 96” semi-abstract piece, definitely directs the painting toward a political signification. There is on the canvas’ right (left of the viewer) what looks like a rendition of Barack Obama, quoting a famous Obama portrait, and, in the background, a quick painting of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye. There are two other quick renditions, one of the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, that structure that Benito Mussolini built for his regime, the other of Mussolini himself on the canvas’ bottom far left (bottom far right, to the viewer).

    The acrylic colors in the background vaguely reference the colors of the Italian flag and previous Italian flags. De Veyra wanted to have those Italian flag colors coming out from beneath, but vaguely, we said, because the artist wanted the colors to also come out as possibly more African than Italian. Well, there may actually be context extractable from that ambiguity, given the fact that Mussolini actually wanted to conquer more of Africa. Remember Italy’s Ministry of the Colonies?

    These colors are here to of course provide a living dark background for the whites in the foreground, the splotches of white that are actually figures: Obama’s sitting black shape wearing a white suit and pants (de Veyra changed the black suit and pants in the source painting), the Le Corbusier and Mussolini buildings, and Mussolini. In its totality, it’s a commentary on the elitist utopia behind white, the color white, as advanced by James Abbott McNeill Whistler and later on by the Fascist utopia around it as advanced by Le Corbusier and Mussolini.

    This piece is rougher and more abstract compared to de Veyra’s other works because the artist felt at the time that it would demean its expression if he put more details into the shapes. That is, the artist wanted the politics on the painting’s symbology to be stronger than the skill factor, which skill factor could indeed interfere with the political emotion behind the symbols if he allowed the composition to show itself a little further.

    Incidentally, the night-blue painted on the right side of the painting alludes to the Mediterranean Sea’s figuring highly in the 2015 European migrant crisis and the entire African-immigration-to-Europe reality.