Juanito Laguna

Juanito Laguna and Ramona are recurrent characters in the world reflected in the paintings of Antonio Berni. Both characters are products of their social and economic circumstances. They reflect the harsh realities of the life of the underprivileged. Like the "villa miseria" or shanty towns, the paintings are "put together" with scraps of tin, pieces of burlap and debris. The characters and their biting social message are timeless. "Each human and animal creature has been rescued in its own essence, its time and place. I say rescued because although the actors are symbols of an unfair life struggle, in which the die is cast forever against them, they belong not to the circumstances which generated them, but to another dimension, that of the archetypical symbol which defies the passing of time." (1)

(1) R. Squirru, Berni, Ediciones Dead Weight, Buenos Aires, 1975, p. 27.