todkammer- CHE GUEVARA and Stephen Hawking (Natural History)

Todkammer XIV - Che Guevara and Stephen Hawking (Natural History 1)
Oil on canvas, cm 160x160 - 2008

On October 8, 1967, Ernesto "CHE" GUEVARA was wounded and captured by a Bolivian army unit counter-insurgency assisted by U.S. special forces consisting of special agents of the CIA - at La Higuera in the province of Vallegrande (Department of Santa Cruz). The next day he was killed and mutilated at the wrists and ankles in the village school. His body - after being exposed to the public Vallegrande - was buried in a secret place and found by a team of forensic anthropologists from Argentina and Cuba, as authorized by the Bolivian government of Sanchez de Lozada in 1997. Since then, his remains are found in the Mausoleum of Santa Clara in Cuba
Che Guevara looks like a dead Christ, a tragic beauty, a terrible warning to all humanity. The image recalls clearly the extraordinary painting by Andrea Mantegna. I painted Che Guevara in a room of a museum of Natural History with baboons and the famous British scientist Stephen Hawking.