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Vivir: a los saltos [To Live: By Leaps and Bounds]
Vivir: a los saltos [To Live: By Leaps and Bounds]

Vivir: a los saltos [To Live: By Leaps and Bounds]

Primary (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1931–2016)
NationalityArgentinean, South America
Date1964
MediumAcrylic, tempera and/or poster paint, and graphite on particle board
DimensionsFramed: 72 1/8 × 72 1/16 in. (183.2 × 183 cm)
Sight: 72 1/8 × 72 1/16 in. (183.2 × 183 cm)
Credit LineBlanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Archer M. Huntington Museum Fund, P1973.11.2
Collection AreaLatin American Art
Object numberP1973.11.2
On View
On view
Locations
  • exhibition  BMA, Gallery, C8 - Susman Galleries
Label Text
Rómulo Macció’s title for this painting implies both a positive call to action and an ironic critique of mass media and consumer society. The central rectangle recalls a television screen, and the influence of popular media was indeed one of the hotly debated political issues of the 1960s. He interrupts the composition—as commercials interrupt a seamless television show—to suggest a sinister presence lurking behind our everyday lives. Macció’s incorporation of masks and deformed faces adds to the painting’s sense of horror and may reflect the currency of Jean-Paul Sartre’s philosophical ideas of existentialism in Buenos Aires.
Exhibitions