A che Guevara (To Che Guevara)

The Bolivian Army — aided by the CIA — killed Che Guevara three years before Antoni Miró painted this picture. The United States managed to eliminate who was trying to spark revolution throughout Latin America. Che’s death ushered in a decade of US support for various dictatorships on the continent to stop the spread of Communism.

The artist tells the story. The Che of the guerrilla war is located slightly above the centre of the image, seen through a peephole. The Yankee Empire is about to symbolically crush Che underfoot with the shot that will end his life, coming from the gun barrel depicted at the bottom. The many hands ringed around him represent all those who would have tried to stop the killing.

The literalness of the image unfolds on three different levels of depth and definition. The main focus of attention is the portrait of Che and is the only element that is painted in detail and in colour — in contrast with the grey elements in the rest of the picture. The gun barrel locates the viewer relatively, directing its gaze towards the central point. The open hands, the foot facing towards us and the gun barrel are set in the intervening spaces, shown in less detail.

Beyond the reconstruction of this episode, the painter tries to pay a personal tribute, as an elegy, to the character based on the circumstances of his death. Miró attempts, as Cerdán Tato stated, to make a documented event enter into “the realms of pictorial permanence”, thus going beyond mere documentation to denounce the killing.

Santiago Pastor Vila