From the late-1960s till the mid-1980s, Swiss artist Hans Schärer painted around a hundred pictures, all entitled Madonna. He became obsessed upon viewing the representation of the Virgin Mary in the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta on the island of Torcello, while on a trip to Venice. However, his are not like any Catholic iconography; they incorporate an air of wild paganism, fierce, potentially threatening, with chakras and third eyes and art brut style teeth. I saw a show of his at the Swiss Institute in New York City with twenty-four of these beauties in a row on one wall. At this moment, there are six in this series.