Acrylic on canvas, stretched and ready to hang.

Signed on the back.

In ‘I4NI’, Stiles Be offers a powerful, abstract homage to the iconic horse from Picasso's Guernica. The painting wrestles with themes of violence, destruction, and retribution, encapsulated in the title "I4NI" (Eye for an Eye). This monochromatic work is executed in a combination of acrylic, oil, and spray paint, employing a range of textures that convey both raw emotion and symbolic weight.

The piece draws from Picasso’s motif of the suffering horse—a central figure of anguish and devastation in Guernica. Stiles Be abstracts this image to its essence, distilling it into overlapping forms, jagged lines, and layered textures. The equine figure is fragmented, barely discernible yet haunting in its obscurity. Its strained presence emerges through bold brushstrokes and smeared lines, with patches of white and gray that suggest the ghostly remnants of its form.

There is a distinct tension between the contrasting elements of the composition. The rough, almost violent application of paint echoes the chaotic energy of war and its aftermath, with the black lines and splatters evoking wounds or fractures. The use of spray paint adds a street art quality, lending the piece a gritty, urban edge that modernizes Picasso's historical commentary on warfare and the cyclical nature of violence.

Despite the abstraction, the emotive power of the work is palpable. It channels the same anguish Picasso captured, yet Stiles Be's approach reinterprets it through a contemporary lens. The title, I4NI, hints at the perpetuation of conflict—a reflection on the endless cycle of revenge that consumes and erases, much like the disintegration of the horse's form within the painting.

Ultimately, I4NI stands as both a tribute and a statement in its own right, merging past and present in a stark visual commentary on the human condition, expressed through the ever-relevant symbol of the horse in agony.