Cadaver ("Punta Seca")

 

Mauricio Lasansky

  1914 - 2012 (biography)

1935  

"Punta Seca", (drypoint) printed in black ink 

13 7/16 x 11 15/16" platemark 

signed in black ink, lower right "M. Lasansky" 

unnumbered proof; Thein/Lasansky does record an edition size. RARE 

dated 35 in ink after signature; inscribed: "Punta Seca" (Dry Point) in lower margin. 

Thein/Lasansky 18; Zigrosser 17 

buff wove 

proof, only state 

artist 

18624 

$6,000.00 

This work is extremely rare. The Thein/Lasansky raisonné lists this work as a lithograph and had no impression to illustrate. This plate was done in Argentina before the Lasansky family left for the U.S. in 1943 wishing to escape the tyranny of Peron. This image would have been dangerous for Lasansky to edition and sell. "Cadaver" is annotated as "Punta Seca", which translates to English as "Dry Point". Is this a reference to the media it is done in or as a veiled political reference? Artists rarely include the media where the title is usually located. Since this was probably printed in Argentina it would behove Lasansky to mask the title. The image itself is as powerful today as it was in 1935. A woman stares at the bare feet of a line of covered cadavers, 4 adults and one child. Behind her a man is bent in grief, as he hold a hammer in his left hand, a representation of the working class. Beyond the open drapery 3 figures wait on a bench. The decade of the 30s in Argentina was called the 'Década Infame' for its military coups, corruption, persecutions and the collapse of the economy into a full Depression, like in North America and Europe. This decade included three presidents and gave rise to an exodus from the farms to the cities and, in 1943, to Juan Peron.