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    The Young Communist

    Uploaded by

    Johana Barrios
    This painting from 1944 called "The Young Communist" depicts a poor woman sitting and looking at the viewer. It was painted by Colombian artist Enrique Grau, who is known for his portraits of women. While the painting uses oil paint on canvas in a modern/contemporary style that emerged after the French Revolution, it was seen as a criticism of communism at the time due to the woman's sickly appearance. One critic described her as looking like a "tubercular famine dog." While a controversial political statement, the painting is considered one of Grau's best due to its realistic portrayal of the subject's expression and position.

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    The Young Communist

    Uploaded by

    Johana Barrios
    19 views2 pages
    This painting from 1944 called "The Young Communist" depicts a poor woman sitting and looking at the viewer. It was painted by Colombian artist Enrique Grau, who is known for his portraits of women. While the painting uses oil paint on canvas in a modern/contemporary style that emerged after the French Revolution, it was seen as a criticism of communism at the time due to the woman's sickly appearance. One critic described her as looking like a "tubercular famine dog." While a controversial political statement, the painting is considered one of Grau's best due to its realistic portrayal of the subject's expression and position.

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    The young communist

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    This painting from 1944 called "The Young Communist" depicts a poor woman sitting and looking at the viewer. It was painted by Colombian artist Enrique Grau, who is known for his portraits of women. While the painting uses oil paint on canvas in a modern/contemporary style that emerged after the French Revolution, it was seen as a criticism of communism at the time due to the woman's sickly appearance. One critic described her as looking like a "tubercular famine dog." While a controversial political statement, the painting is considered one of Grau's best due to its realistic portrayal of the subject's expression and position.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    19 views2 pages

    The Young Communist

    Uploaded by

    Johana Barrios
    This painting from 1944 called "The Young Communist" depicts a poor woman sitting and looking at the viewer. It was painted by Colombian artist Enrique Grau, who is known for his portraits of women. While the painting uses oil paint on canvas in a modern/contemporary style that emerged after the French Revolution, it was seen as a criticism of communism at the time due to the woman's sickly appearance. One critic described her as looking like a "tubercular famine dog." While a controversial political statement, the painting is considered one of Grau's best due to its realistic portrayal of the subject's expression and position.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 2

    The young communist-Enrique Grau

    In the following art review, I will talk about the piece of art “the young Communist” by
    Enrique Grau, this piece is a painting of a woman (apparently poor) that has as ​outfit a blue
    shirt, red pants and red shoes (in opaque and dark tones), she´s sitting in the middle of the
    picture looking towards the viewer, and ​to stuff the picture it has a blue background with a
    woody floor.

    This piece of art was created by Enrique Grau, a Colombian artist born in 1920 in the city of
    Bogotá, this author has some ​artistic merit ​mainly for his portraits of women in Oil. His most
    famous works were: "La mulata" (which made him win a scholarship in the Art Students
    League in New York where he learned about graphic arts), "the sofa" and the sculpture "Rita
    5:30" that is currently located in the national park in Bogotá.

    The main technique of this painting is Oil on canvas, and it is part of one of the most ​catching
    eras, which is contemporary or modern. This era began in the year 1789 and so far endured,
    for this reason, this artwork is part of this moment, since it was first exhibited in 1944. The
    contemporary era began after the French revolution, where both political thoughts were
    changed (giving way to the capitalist system) and also in Philosophical currents, giving a new
    form of thought, making the art a bit more liberal, so ​if the French revolution had not existed,
    we would possibly not have the same thinking​. Additionally, there has been the opening
    technological era, which is the key to development, in every aspect, including artistic,
    generating ​fabulous ​and significant changes in society.
    This piece of Grau, was considered by the ​audience as criticism of the communism of the
    time, and one of the greatest criticisms that this work received was in the book “Art, Politics
    and Criticism”, which says: “It is a girl with an aspect of physics, skinny as a famine dog in
    the sinister slums of speech, covered in rags, disheveled, sitting on the ground in a position of
    tragic renunciation, of human abandonment (…) ”José Morillo, V artist hall 1944. With this
    citation, we can see how Morillo wants ​to pepper some of the ideology of the opponents
    towards the communists, that would be: ​“if you are a communist, you will not worth
    anything” ​, all of this expressed by describing them with an ​obnoxious and sick appearance
    when the woman in the painting is compared with a tuberculous person. We can also
    appreciate how he speaks of the position in which he is sitting, this emphasizing the way in
    which the communists lived and dressed in a slightly exaggerated way.

    The ​plot of the piece was centered in the cultural context, thanks to the fact that the work was
    exhibited in 1944, time in which Colombia wasn´t in it´s best moment especially politically,
    since the country was divided by the various parties, mainly liberals and conservatives, that
    mean that ​if the artwork had been exhibited at another time, it wouldn´t have the same
    cultural impact,​ because it had very controversial opinions.

    As a personal opinion, I have to say that this piece was everything but a ​compliment to
    communist society, and also has an extremely ​feisty ​opinion about them. But as a paint in
    terms of facture and quality, I think that is one of the best paintings because you can really
    fell, what the woman in the paint fells and, see it in her expression, also Grau gives us a
    tridimensional effect by putting the woman in that specific position making the painting more
    realistic.

    - Vocabulary
    - Conditionals

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