For avant-garde art the athlete was the modern Hercules; a figure combining strength, beauty, and courage who was able to overcome all of the challenges presented by industrial civilization. We must remember that one of the works by Spanish avant-garde writer Ernesto Giménez Caballero, Hércules jugando a los dados [Hercules Playing Dice] (1928), includes a reproduction of an oil painting by Ismael González de la Serna.

In 1938 the artist presented his work in Paris at the Billiet and Berri galleries. In parallel, he produced three abstract gouaches shaded in fountain pen ink, granting the figures volume without separating them from the background.

One can distinguish the blonde head, the gymnast’s chest under his shirt, the muscles in one of his arms, and a leg. Hercules seems to be lost in a world of shadows, perhaps as a premonition of Europe’s future; one that had already become present in Spain with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July of 1936.