Il popolo è forte, armato vincerà [The people is strong, armed it will prevail]
1971
Drawing, 29.4 x 21 cm.
Materials: paper
Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. S0464_03).
In this work Sarenco chooses a masterpiece – Seated Bather painted by Pierre Auguste Renoir in 1914 and now in the Art Institute Chicago's collection – and overwrites a communist and anarchical sentence (“Il popolo è forte, armato vincerà!”, “The people is strong, armed it will prevail!”) in a cartoon bubble. With this stratagem the artist obtains a dadaist effect: an icon of bourgeois painting – the classic theme of the bather and the female nude – becomes protagonist of a communist fight.