• León Ferrari, La civilización occidental y cristiana / Western Christian Civilization, 1965, plastic, oil and plaster, 200 x 120 x 60 cm. Collection Alicia and León Ferrari, Buenos Aires.
  Photograph: Ramiro Larrain.
  

León Ferrari has created an intensely politicised art since the 1960s. He has made ink drawings, collages, sculptures, photographs, books, objects and installations. His works are poetic, combative and caustic; through them, he has questioned all authority, especially religious and military institutions that claim to reveal the truth or to exist in the name of justice. In 1965, at the time of the first US bombings in Vietnam, Ferrari made A civilização occidental e cristã, (Western Christian Civilisation) (1965) in which he combined two elements – a sculpted figure of Christ mounted on a scale-model replica of an American FH 107 fighter aircraft. Suspended in a vertical position, the plane suggests imminent descent and bombing. The work, which was censored in Argentina at the time, refers also to local history and events in Latin America, including the alliance of the United Sates with the Argentinian government, which Ferrari felt was being hypocritically justified as a defence of Christian and western values.

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