Autorretrato (Self-portrait)

ERNESTO VILA (1936). Painter and draftsman. He was trained at the Torres García Studio. Later, he left for Europe and the United States, as a co-founding member of the Montevideo Studio (Armando Bergallo, Héctor Vilche, Clara Scremini, Gorki Bollar), and conducting vanguard experiences in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France and the United States. He participated in the biennials of Venice (1969, 2007) and La Habana (1997, 1999), among other solo and group exhibits, and obtained the Figari Award (2002). Motivated by the city and its memory, his work is dominated by urban landscapes, everyday scenes and small objects which inhabit them and denote human presence. Anonymous or known faces, whether of neighbors, relatives, poets or personalities of the local culture and sports are recurrent. Many of his works are made of paper, cardboard or plastic (materials that the city discards) and move and sway with the viewer. Autorretrato (Self-portrait IADB#0970) belongs to a stage in which he starts to use fragile paper to cut out figures, portraits of artists and football players, leaving openings between pastel colors. Without altering the expressive subtlety, the artist depicts himself blindfolded, achieving an almost violent force which evokes the vulnerability of human beings and, possibly, alluding to his reclusion as a political prisoner during the military dictatorship.