Artists - Part 36

 Alessio Slonimsky

Alessio Slonimsky is a Spanish artist living in Barcelona who specializes in gay illustrations, some quite explicit.  Above, Saint François, 2013, in which St. Francis, preaching to the birds, with one of them perched on his erect penis, is modeled after porn star François Sagat.

This is Workers of the World, dated May 1, 2014.  In many countries, May 1 is International Workers Day.

Another holiday-themed work, Happy Halloween, 2015.  It reminds me of a joke I heard recently, about that awkward moment when a zombie looking for brains walks right past you.

In this untitled painting, the wallpaper is the same as the wallpaper in Happy Halloween.

The wallpaper was designed by Slonimsky, and it's actually available for purchase.  It shows a naked guy with a butterfly net, a naked guy by a stream, and a naked guy rowing a boat.  You can buy wallpaper or fabric with this design and other designs by Slonimsky featuring naked and semi-naked men at www.spoonflower.com.

Here's another Slonimsky design that's available as wallpaper or fabric, a takeoff on the classical Greek caryatid columns.

In Drawing Class, 2019, Slonimsky himself is the naked model that the art students are drawing.  The student on the left is drawing his head.  The other student is drawing another body part.

Flower Power, 2019, looks like a self-portrait as the top hat- and monocle-wearing mascot of the New Yorker magazine.  Would an artist in Barcelona be familiar with the New Yorker?  It turns out that Slonimsky studied art in the U.K. and U.S., getting his Master of Fine Arts degree in New York.

On January 1, 2020, Slonimsky produced this optimistic view of the new year as a rising sun.

Little did any of us know what 2020 would bring.  This 2021 work is called Quarantined.

This recent work is called Morning Glory.  It depicts a domestic scene with Slonimsky lying down and a man recognizable from other paintings as Armando Santos, who I'm guessing is Slonimsky's lover.  Oh, and the family cat.

We end with the first page of an 8-page comic called Fetuccini Carbonara (apparently he can't spell fettuccine).  The main character is called Alessio, who is clearly the artist.  After his helper spills sauce on his pants, the pants have to come off, and you can guess what happens next.  The comic was a hit with his fans and has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese and Russian.  You can see the rest of it on Slonimsky's website here: Fetuccini Carbonara.

And you can see lots more of his work on his website here: alessioinwonderland.blogspot.com.