Postscript: Ciro Roberto Bustos, 1932–2017

This article originally appeared on this site.

After Ernesto Che Guevara was murdered by the Bolivian Army, on October 9, 1967, his body was exhibited in the laundry house of a hospital run by nuns. Photographs were taken of his corpse in classical repose, his torso bare; in some, his eyes were slightly open. The inestimable art critic John Berger, who died last week, at ninety, wrote that the photographs of Che dead reminded him of Andrea Mantegna’s “Lamentation of Christ”: “If I see the Mantegna again in Milan I shall see in it the body of Guevara. But this is only because in certain rare cases the tragedy of a man’s death completes and exemplifies the meaning of his whole life. I am acutely aware of that about Guevara, and certain painters were once aware of it about Christ.” Berger was also one of the first to note this:

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Postscript: John Berger, 1926-2017

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