Rómulo Macció
Vivir: a los saltos [To Live: By Leaps and Bounds]
1964
Acrylic, tempera and/or poster paint, and pencil on particle board
183.2 cm x 183 cm (72 1/8 in. x 72 1/16 in.)
Archer M. Huntington Museum Fund, 1973

Rómulo Macció's work typically takes a grim and sarcastic view of life. In this mid-1960s painting, the physical interruption of the composition seems to suggest that a more sinister and disturbing presence lurks behind everyday life. The central rectangle also might allude to a television screen, and certainly the influence of the popular media was one of the hotly debated political issues of the day. The work's incorporation of masks and deformed faces, which adds to the painting's urgent sense of horror, reflects the currency in Buenos Aires at the time of Jean-Paul Sartre's philosophical ideas of Existentialism. Macció was a co-founder of the Nueva Figuración [New Figuration] movement in Buenos Aires, and the titles of Nueva Figuración paintings are often nondescriptive and poetic to encourage a more indirect reading of the work. In this case the title Vivir: A los saltos implies simultaneously a positive call to action and an ironic critique of mass media and consumer society.