Eugenio Dittborn began his series of ‘Airmail Paintings’ in 1983. Executed initially on brown Kraft paper and later on Loneta Duck cotton, each work is folded and sent in individual,...
Eugenio Dittborn began his series of ‘Airmail Paintings’ in 1983. Executed initially on brown Kraft paper and later on Loneta Duck cotton, each work is folded and sent in individual, specially designed envelopes to their destinations. During the period of the military dictatorship (1973-1990) Dittborn used the postal service to send his works out of Chile to exhibitions in Europe, Australia and the United States. In the artist’s words, ‘I invented these folded paintings to get out from this place [Santiago] to travel and be in the world’.
The images in his paintings are drawn from old magazines, historical, anthropological and criminal records as well as cartoons and ‘how-to’ books. Many of the images are repeated over time and combined differently in each work.
In Desierta, 2003. Two sections of sateen are stitched onto the cotton duck support and images of skeletons, a cactus and bones all bring to mind the Atacama desert in Northern Chile, known as the driest desert in the world. The words of an Inca poem are inscribed on the envelope.