Guide

The portrait of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, Heroic Guerrilla, is the most reproduced image in the history of photography. Taken in 1960, at the highpoint of the Cuban revolution, it can be seen on posters and T-shirts and souvenirs all over the world.

Guevara was born in Argentina in 1928. Turning to radical Marxist politics when he saw the widespread inequality in Latin America, he joined Fidel Castro’s movement to overthrow the Cuban government. He then continued his own campaign in the Congo and later Bolivia, where he was captured and killed in 1967 as a result of a covert CIA operation.

Although there is debate about the true nature of Che’s activities, he remains the most charismatic revolutionary leader of modern times. Korda’s famous photograph first deified Che and then turned him into an icon of radical chic. Its story – a complex mesh of conflicting narratives – has given Heroic Guerrilla a life of its own, an enduring fascination independent from Che himself.

The portrait of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, Guerrillero Heroico, photographed by Alberto Díaz Korda on March 5, 1960, is considered to be the most reproduced image in the history of photography. Whether this claim can be substantiated or not, Korda’s Che is nonetheless a unique image. It has come to symbolise anti-establishment, radical thought and action.

That Che Guevara himself was young and charismatic and brutally murdered with the support of the CIA at only thirty-nine years of age inevitably contributes to the mystique. Guerrillero Heroico is a statuesque image taken from below. It derives from a visual language of mythologised heroes harking back to an era of socialist realism, yet it also references a classical, even Christ-like demeanour.

This exhibition brings together photography, posters, film, fine art, clothing and artefacts from more than thirty countries. The image moves from heroic guerrilla and pop celebrity to radical chic, spoof and kitsch. The vast majority of the aesthetic treatments of Korda’s image derive from the Pop idiom of the 60s. While traditional art relishes ambiguity, introspection and chance, the aesthetic of Pop art was by definition a rejection of traditional art and figuration. Pop’s egalitarian, “in your face” presentations are a perfect
corollary for Che’s anti-establishment values.

This portrait of Che is an ideal abstraction transformed into a symbol that both resists subtle interpretation and is infinitely malleable. It has moved into the realm of caricature and parody at the same time it is used as political commentary on issues as diverse as the world debt, anti-Americanism, Latin-American identity, and the rights of gays and indigenous peoples.

Rashomonesque in its multiple appearances, Guerrillero Heroico has remained fluid yet buoyant. Its meaning is always clear even to those who know little about the man himself.