Ramona and the Old Man

"Ramona y el viejo" is part of the first group of works on the character of Ramona Montiel created by Antonio Berni between 1962 and 1963. From those years on, the artist developed a vast corpus of collage-paintings, installations and prints featuring this character, in different stages of her life and with her various relationships. Berni represented Ramona as a baby, a child, a seamstress, a worker and as a prostitute linked to certain "friends" belonging to different power groups. In "Ramona and the Old Man", the slender woman undresses in front of a small man who reaches out to touch her breast; bald, with piercing eyes, short stature and a massive body covered only by white underwear, the image of synthetic resolution recalls the Picasso silhouette recorded in the intimacy of his atelier in numerous photographs of the time.