A prime example of Condo’s dramatic intensity, Dismas reveals the artist’s sustained interest in the psychology and symbolic weight of the portrait. Here, Condo revisits one of Western art’s enduring archetypes — Dismas, the repentant thief crucified alongside Jesus — transforming the familiar religious figure into a character of profound emotional tension. His gaunt face, contorted into a grimace of suffering, conveys the anguish of his fate, while a theatrical beam of light isolates his form against a dense, shadowed backdrop. Removed from narrative context, the biblical outlaw is recast as a fantastical being within Condo’s singular painterly universe.

Emerging as though from darkness, the figure evokes the luminosity and spatial tension of quattrocento frescoes, while the charged contrasts and atmosphere recall the dramatic sensibility of Francisco Goya. His hovering, weightless presence brings to mind Marc Chagall’s floating figures, as well as the raw, elusive bodies from Francis Bacon’s early canvases. Through this constellation of references, Condo forges a compelling synthesis of sacred iconography and contemporary imagination, offering a renewed vision in which the spiritual and the surreal coexist with unsettling harmony.