Paintings with a patina from the past

The paintings of the German Neo Rauch and the Dutch Diederik Gerlach make me think of a past Europe that I only read on books or saw in movies but I never lived. The nearest to that experience is my visit to east Berlin in 1986 where for my Mexican standards even the most simple detail gave me a feeling of living in a movie. I had never forgotten that at the shops they packed and tied the sold products in a very elegant but extremely old fashioned way. They made me think of my mother's stories from the late '40s when every body will dress up for going to the center of Mexico City and there were street photographers taking snap shots of the passers by, and I never knew how, later on they will be sold those photographs. The men wore hats and the ladies had A dresses inspired by Dior, even the most simple people.

Here a photo I took of Diederik's world.
Rauch's and Gerlach's paintings have a strange view to the past, nostalgia to their children's stories. The colors have a glazed patina. But the ultimate impression is that of a world that never existed, only in the artists minds.

Another artist that is able to give that patina from the past is the Mexican Daniel Lezama. Their paintings take you to a Mexico that we saw on stamps, paintings or films. He is certainly a one of a kind artist.
Photo's: Neo Rauch, Diederik Gerlach en Daniel Lezama.
Regards to Diederik.