EE.UU. Days after the work “Juanito dormido” by Rosario artist Antonio Berni (1905-1981) set a record $ 441,000 at auction, a piece entitled “La apotheosis de Ramona”, signed and dated by the author in 1966, is offered in New York as part of a private Christie’s sale.
“This work by Berni is part of our private sales offers in the Latin American Art category, and is not part of our live sale of Latin American Art that took place yesterday, May 19,” they explained to Télam from Christie’s auctioneer.
This piece of the famous character Ramona Montiel – a provincial girl who is corrupted by the big city, in the words of its author from Rosario – is an assemblage, that is, a work with assembly elements, papier-mâché, fabric and wall paper in a painted wooden box, almost a meter and a half by two, where Ramona is seen reclining on a kind of chaise longue.
The work originally came from collectors Robert B. Mayer and his wife, Christie’s pointed out, who acquired it directly from the artist in Buenos Aires on June 2, 1967. Then, in 1976, they sold it to the house. New York Parke-Bernet, later acquired by Sothebys.
“We thank José Antonio Berni for confirming the authenticity of this work,” said the source of the New York auctioneer on “The Apotheosis of Ramona”, exhibited these days at Rockefeller Center in New York.
Although this work had never been exhibited before, the Rosario of Social Realism created a similar piece in 1971, with the same name, which is part of a Belgian collection, which was first seen at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, in 2013 , and then at the Malba in Buenos Aires, in 2014, as part of a collaboration agreement between both institutions.
The son of Italian immigrants, Berni was a painter, muralist, printmaker and upholsterer, and became famous for his immense oil paintings of immigrants and the homeless, which evidenced his deep commitment to social and political problems, a position that characterized all his work. .
Juanito and Ramona, the two most famous creatures born from the imagery of Rosario, are inescapable archetypes of his narrative universe: the boy from Bajo Flores who always borders on marginality, and the girl who comes from the interior ready to insert herself into a hostile society and he prostitutes himself. (Télam)
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