Uncrowned Queens
Regina Jean
Margherita
Petacci
The Iron Butterfly
Artist’s statement: These images are from the collection “Uncrowned Queens”, ten portraits in acrylics featuring the women behind the most influential political leaders in history. The men were despots, cruel, sociopathic, macho with delusions of grandeur. These women were their shadows.
Some were married by force, others married for love of power and wealth. All had a tragic story.
Featured here are Margherita Sarfatti (“Margherita”), biographer and mistress of Benito Mussolini; Clara Petacci (“Petacci”), also a mistress of Mussolini, and Imelda Marcos (“The Iron Butterfly”), the widow of Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
What was it about these women that seduced the powerful men in their lives, yet left many of them unnoticed by history?
This series combines scenes of devastation and nature, reflecting the impact of these uncrowned queens on the societies they dominated.
Regina Jean, known as “Spika”, is a Mexican artist who studied at the Universidad de las Américas Puebla and the School of Art Institute of Chicago, specializing in painting, photography and drawing. She has conducted deep studies on religion and society (Celebrities), and her work is characterized by languages pictorial art of pop art and surrealism, through which she performs a deep reflection on the human being and on society from a personal perspective. Spika has participated in more than 40 exhibitions around the Mexican Republic, the United States and Italy.