- Ricardo Carpani
Ricardo Carpani (
1930-02-11 –1997-09-09 ) was an artist born inTigre, Buenos Aires . His family moved to Buenos Aires City in 1936, and there Carpani finished his highschool. He then started to study law, but soon abandoned it, and at the age of 20 he travelled toParis ,France , where he became first a model for artists and then an artist himself.He returned to Buenos Aires in 1952 and studied a year with master Emilio Pettorutti. His first art exhibition took place in 1957. Together with other artists, he founded the "Espartaco" movement. Carpani was sympathetic with social causes, and his paintings are focused on topics like the unemployed, the working people and the poor, as well as nationalistic themes. They are strong, solid and clear-cut, often portraiting determined men; this line of work is reflected in his illustrations of Argentina's national epic gauchesque poem, "
Martín Fierro ".In the 1970s Carpani, like many other Argentine artists, writers and intellectuals during the
Proceso de Reorganización Nacional , exiled himself and settled inMadrid ,Spain , and then touredEurope , theUnited States ,Cuba ,Mexico andEcuador . Along with others in the Argentine Commission in Defense of Human Rights, he denounced the crimes of the dictatorship for the outside world to know.A year after the restoration of democracy in Argentina, in 1984, Carpani returned to his home country, and he produced a series of portraits (such as those of
Julio Cortázar andRoberto Arlt ). He also started a series of works focused on classic Buenos Aires urban topics (such as tango,café s and thebarrio s), with tropical backgrounds.Not long before his death, Carpani drew a large portrait of
Che Guevara which is now shown at the Plaza de la Cooperación inRosario , a few blocks away from Guevara's birthplace.Carpani died in Buenos Aires in 1997.
References
* [http://www.buenosairestango.com/carpani/carpanicur.html Buenos Aires Tango]
* [http://www.clarin.com/diario/1997/09/10/e-04701d.htm Clarín.com]
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