Prussia
in the imagination of the outsider

The work of Esteban Velazquez von Wilhelm invites interpretation from multiple perspectives: that of the artist, the historian, the foreigner, the migrant, the chronicler, and the court painter.

Through this multifaceted lens, his artistic practice offers a renewed vision of German history and cultural heritage—reviving vanished codes and rekindling interest in fragments of a not-so-distant past. His work constructs an extraordinary discourse that opens a dialogue between cultural legacy, identity, and the collective imagination.

For Velazquez von Wilhelm, Prussia serves as both a point of reference and a conceptual framework through which he explores and interprets the spirit of contemporary German society—its ideals, aspirations, and enduring convictions.

The Emperor's advisor has nothing more to advise.
Series: Prussia
2024
Oil on canvas
210 x 170

Max von Baden interrupts Empress Augusta Victoria's last tea with Wilhelm
Series: Prussia
2024
Oil on canvas
210 x 170

Last hours of the empire
Series: Prussia
2024
Oil on canvas
210 x 170

Disagreements with Count von Borcke
Series: Prussia
2024
Oil on canvas
210 x 170

Princes, courtiers, and flatterers.
The nobility surrounding the king.

The Prussian, Bavarian, and Saxon court portraits presented by Esteban Velazquez von Wilhelm represent a completely new approach, breaking with the structure of traditional portraiture while maintaining its stylistic codes, bringing the etiquette, rigor, and formality of the past into the contemporary context of a new paradigm sustained by the new social and communication codes of the present.

The free, abrupt, pasty brushstroke. The oil paint that overflows and overlaps previously demarcated lines. The destroyed or absent eye, the wigs, and the orders not only evoke the characters von Wilhelm portrays but, at the same time, he portrays himself again and again in each one. His painting is an apologia for identity, his own and that of others.

The Prussian court feast: Crown Princess Cecilia looks on from the terrace
Serie: Prussia
2025
Oil on canvas
300 x 210

Geben Sie hier den Text...

In the darkroom.

It was not merely the irrational fear of losing his sight entirely that led the artist to seclude himself in a darkroom and paint in blindness. Equally significant are the memories rooted in his past—the recollection of his uncle’s abstract paintings and their rejection in 1970s Maracaibo, a tropical South American city where figuration has long defined artistic expression.

Yet, traces of figuration persist within von Wilhelm’s abstract compositions: the faint outline of a chair, the geometry of a chessboard, the spectral silhouettes of princes and emperors. These elements emerge as residual images, fragments of memory that resist disappearance. In these works, abstraction becomes an act of decomposition—where the thematic substance of his practice is dismantled and reconfigured in darkness, through the very act of painting blindly.

From Darkness, Color Emerges
The Superposition of Color in the Emerging Composition