Corzas’ paintings depict calm troupes of brigands with a softened debt owed to Goya’s late period House of the Deaf Man murals. Built by glazed blushes of low key earth colors, silhouetted before a broad expanse of sienna rear lighting, his figures possess a faintly melancholy but imposing presence by establishing direct contact with the viewer. With their generalized bodies and caricature faces of broad lips and wandering, walleyed stares, they seem harmless enough. But by their very structural vaporousness, materialized as if from the dusky glow of a regional, romantic twilight of past glory, they represent messengers from a spirit world of memories or hallucinations. Corzas establishes his visions before a low horizon, and embeds them in a plane of mystery to produce a mood of slow solemnity.

The effect of My Mother’s Visitors, Carnival No. 1, or Magicians No. 2 may be likened to having thrown wide the front door to a silent band of premature All Soul’s Eve specters who will momentarily demand a gift more substantial than sweets, and if denied, commit a deed more gross than a mere trick.

The accompanying paintings of the artist and nude model and a series of tender, remarkable mixed media drawings, reveal a painter of interest who has much to offer. He must avoid the obvious pitfalls of excess historic derivation through adoration, or he may come to rely on facility to mass-produce the chic. He walks a thin line between his sources and skills and emerges, in his first U. S. showing, as a young artist I of whom to take note.

—Fidel A. Danieli