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Self-Portrait #2
Antonio Frasconi, 1919-2013
This work reflects the politically themed woodcuts that Antonio Frasconi made while living in his native Montevideo, Uruguay. After he immigrated to the United States, in 1945, Frasconi remained committed both to the woodcut and to political causes. In 1948 and 1949, for example, he used a freely distorted cubist and expressionistic style in a series of paintings and woodcuts representing, he said, the "people of Spain [suffering under the Franco regime]… through the heroic presence of Don Quixote." In this print's original form, the idealistic knight on his steed appeared at the left, but Frasconi later cut away the section of the block picturing Quixote, thus simplifying a complex and specific image and making it a more flexible representation. Nevertheless, the work continues to evoke the agony of the Spanish struggle through the artist's face -- with its distracted, hooded eyes -- and his constrictive pose.
The Ruth Bowman and Harry Kahn Twentieth-Century American Self-Portrait Collection
Woodcut, 1949 |