Naturaleza muerta

Artist name

Hector Giuffré

Artist year born

1944

Artist year deceased

2018

Artwork make date

1983

Artwork title translation

Still Life

Artwork material

screen print
paper

Artwork dimensions

height: 65.5cm
width: 50cm

Artwork type (categories)

Print

Accession method

Donated by the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Buenos Aires 1996

Accession number

12-1996

Label text

Screen-print is a medium that is most commonly associated with commercial techniques of reproduction. Here the process has been carried out manually, from start to finish. The image that this print reproduces was taken from an oil painting produced by Giuffré in the 1970s, and carries explicit echoes of Vermeer's painting of The Milkmaid, of about 1660. Giuffré discusses his paintings of this earlier decade in terms of their symbolic substitution of still life objects for violent aspects of everyday experience in Argentina at that time, during the country's dictatorship. The fish included here is a dorado, a fish that is found in Argentina but one that is under threat of extinction there. 'Everyone knows that the dorado is something that is disappearing', says the artist in his statement. His allusion is to the many political prisoners who 'disappeared'during this military regime. The water jug meanwhile is a maternal image, and here it is one that evokes loss. Together in this abandoned space, coldly lit by the light from the window above, Giuffré also likens this composition to a scene of crucifixion.