Waltercio Caldas (b.1946)

Much of Waltercio Caldas work is directly related to the "ready-mades" of Marcel Duchamp. Like Duchamp, Caldas' work challenges perception and illustrates the precariousness of the act itself. Caldas is intent on displaying the inconcreteness of perception and the ability to alter the states through subtle manipulation. For him, the surface is the starting point of a dialogue of clarity, reality, truth, and the loss of what is known to be true. He treats the surface of these pieces as an abstract environment, one in which conventional relationships are suspended and the authenticity of sight has eroded.

This piece is the most important of a series that formed a published work, Velázquez, in which images of Velázquez's work are distorted. The piece, which is partly recognizable as Las Meninas is the only one executed as an object, the other fifty or so images were created on the computer for publication.