Kirollos Kilada

The Imperfect Trinity

Painting
2020
Inspired by Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel "The Brothers Karamazov" which is set in Russia and deals with a family of three brothers and father that through greed, lust and selfishness descend together into utter hell and chaos. The composition is based on the icon of the Trinity by Andrei Rublev. It does stray from the details of the narrative (as it's a more personal interpretation) but there's an interesting idea I noticed here. In Orthodox Christianity, the Trinity is a perfect union of love between it's three "persons" (the term is used loosely) who is God. An imperfect version of that (the opposite of God) would essentially translate to Hell, supporting the idea proposed by Jean Paul Sartre that "Hell is other people" (L'enfer c'est les autres). These were fascinating parallels to me between seemingly competing philosophies.

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The Imperfect Trinity
The Imperfect Trinity

Work by

Kirollos Kilada aka. Kiro

Illustration