Self portait

Siron Franco

1947

2001

mixed media
canvas

height: 200cm
width: 145cm

Mixed Media

Donated by Siron Franco 2001

4-2001

This unconventional self-portrait includes no traditional physical likeness. Siron Franco represents himself as a pair of white, paint-spattered overalls glued to the canvas. His head is an oval of thick paint; pockets, sleeves and foot holes are stuffed with cards advertising the services of call girls, collected from telephone boxes by the artist during a visit to London. The use of real clothing to create an evocative portrait echoes the 1996 installation Radiografia Brasileira where it suggests the lives, and deaths, of members of Brazil's Movimento Sem Terra: the empty clothes of three people arranged on rough felt blankets. At the edges of his self-portrait canvas are patches of jaguar fur. Siron first used images of forest cat fur in his figurative paintings of the 1970s. His 1990 series Peles (Skins or Furs) portrayed the 'real' furs commonly seen on the backs of high society women. This London work takes animal fur to a further remove from its origins. Included in the form of pieces of synthetic fabric or fake fur, its glamour is of the type associated with London call girls, rather than wealthy Brazilian society ladies.
Joanne Harwood

2008