About Geometric Redux Study after Goya’s The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

For this series of studies, I revisited some of my favorite masterpieces by painters I deeply admire in a “geometric redux” reinterpretation and homage. I began by spending a significant amount of time analyzing each original painting, paying close attention to every detail: the color palette, the interplay of light and shadow, the nuances, and the shapes.

Next, I created numerous sketches, deconstructing the original composition into basic forms. I looked for alignments, patterns, stylizations, and reductions of both color and shape—pushing these simplifications to the brink of unrecognizability. Finally, I assembled the “puzzle” on the computer, fitting shapes together and layering transparent gradients in a vector-based “vellatura,” thus recreating the original artwork in my own style.

Fine art print, limited edition 2/20
Sold and shipped by Zeichenfabrik.

About Andre Brik

Andre Brik was born in Curitiba, Brazil in 1972. Architect, illustrator, and art director, he also studied typography and graphic design at the School of Visual Arts and at Parsons School of Design in New York.

In his works, you can find some of the 1920’s Plakatstil graphic style and polish posters with their clean lines and flat contrasting background colors, their visual puns and wit, and subtle irony. There is also nonsense, humor, counterculture, dada, surrealism, and punk rock. The ideas are born from the observation of the elements of everyday objects. Then the artist begins a long process of sketching to deconstruct and recombine shapes, colors, and meanings. Finally, a careful selection of outcoming ideas is chosen to be digitally developed, painted, and finished as a graphic art illustration.