The Garden of Earthy Delights
EUGENIO MONTORO AYBAR
2025
Mixed media on board
Framed
Dimensions without frame 44 x 36 cm
Dimensions with frame cm
Concept of the painting
In the work «El Jardín de las Delicias», Eugenio Montoro Aybar transports the viewer from the decorative space of traditional portraits into the brutal reality of nocturnal Tokyo. The canvas captures a narrow back alley of the Hanazono Ichibangai district—a labyrinth of tangled electrical wires, air conditioning units, and neon signs that has become the backdrop for a crime scene.
The idyllic title ("The Garden of Delights") sounds deliberately paradoxical: the kanji plaque atop the frame (喜びの庭 — "Garden of Joy") contrasts sharply with the contents of the canvas. Concrete walls, storefronts, and pavement are spattered and streaked with carmine blood, while a stenciled arrow on the asphalt inscribed with "Scene of the Crime Tokyo" transforms the urban landscape into an official crime report.
The painterly language is built upon the collision of realistic rendering of urban textures, the graphic nature of the Japanese cityscape, and cinematic noir. The piece embodies the second act of the artist's conceptual narrative—the demystification of Eastern refinement and the revelation of the metropolis's dark side, where silks and masks are replaced by the naked violence of urban slums.
The haiku accompanying El Jardín de las Delicias summarizes the tragic fate of these figures:
Red on the flower,
delight is silence,
the garden dies.

