ALBERTO KORDA Cuban, 1928-2001 Guerrillero He

Provenance
From the artist
To an officer in Castro's militia
By descent to the present owner

Literature


"His image has been appropriated for political, economic, and even spiritual purposes. He is the symbol of communist destiny, and yet also beloved of anticommunist rebels; his face is used to sell beer and skis, yet an English church group recently issued posters of Jesus Christ himself recast as Che. The affluent youth of Europe and North America have resurrected Che as an easy emblem of meaningless and unthreatening rebellion, a queer blending of educated violence and disheveled nobility, like Gandhi with a gun or John Lennon singing 'Give Peace a Chance.'"
Patrick Symes, Chasing Che: A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevara Legend, 2000

Photography's role in the creation of cultural icons in the 20th century is perhaps its most significant contribution to visual history. The lexicon is punctuated with unforgettable, indelible images, defining a century. Summing up entire eras or just historical moments reduced to pictorial shorthand, these pictures are as familiar as clichés but remain as pointed as sermons. Lange's Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California, 1936, Eisenstadt's Sailor Kissing a Nurse, Times Square, VJ Day, 1947 (see lot 154) and perhaps Jeff Widener's The Unknown Rebel, 1989 in Tiananmen Square all have exceeded their original reportage function and now reside in the realm of collective awareness of human experience. The product of timing and good fortune, these photographs thankfully exist due to the photographers' good sense.

With almost universal appeal to anyone seeking to identify with the power of revolutionary ideals, Alberto Korda's Guerrillero Heroico has probably been the single most appropriated image in this category. A recent exhibition at the University of California at Riverside/California Museum of Photography, Revolution and Commerce: The Legacy Of Korda's Portrait of Che Guevara, curated by Trish Ziff examined the extensive use and abuse of the image internationally, from workers' murals to fashion tee shirts. (See the website: http://138.23.124.165/exhibitions/che/default.html). Bastardizations of the image abound: Che as a haloed angel; Che as a Middle Eastern Revolutionary; Che as fashionista.

Alberto Diaz Guttièrez took the name Korda after the Hungarian filmmakers Alexander and Zoltan Korda, and after the Cuban revolution became Fidel Castro's personal photographer. He had been a fashion and commercial photographer in Havana in the pre-Revolutionary years of Batista's regime but sided with his friend Castro and his revolution. Guerrillero Heroico has its origins in an international incident that altered history, pushing Castro to seek alliance with the Soviet Union to guard the new island nation from perceived threats from the north. On the morning of March 4, 1960 a French freighter, La Coubre, ignited and exploded in Havana Harbor. It was assumed to be the work of CIA sponsored sabotage and Castro's response was to hold a mass funeral that drew huge crowds the following day. It was at this demonstration that Korda managed to shoot two negatives of Guevara as he appeared for only a brief moment behind Castro as he spoke. The crowd was filled with dignitaries and sympathizers. Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir were in attendance.

There is some dispute as to how and when the image was disseminated. According to Ms. Ziff, it was reproduced in April 1961 in the Cuban daily, Revoluciòn and may have been brought to Europe by Sartre after a trip to the Cuban interior with de Beauvoir, Korda and Castro (c.f. website, Introduction: Korda's Che Moves Out into the World). Undoubtedly, however, an Italian publisher, Giangiacomo Feltrenelli, used the image without Korda's permission for a poster advertising the publication of Che's Bolivian diary in 1967, shortly before Che's assassination in Bolivia. Ms. Ziff writes: "Feltrenelli personally knew who actually was the author of the image. Few of these posters remain in existence but their dissemination in Europe at the critical juncture of the Prague Spring, the [Student] Uprisings in Paris, and the Civil Rights Movement in Ireland of the late 60s, assisted in the process whereby this image traversed the visual terrain from merely a portrait of a hero to a key symbol of radical thought" (ibid.).

The print offered here was a gift from Korda to a long time friend and former officer in Castro"s militia, upon their reunion in Europe in 1986. This former revolutionary, a Spaniard, became involved in the Cuban revolution unexpectedly. On his way to Argentina from Brooklyn, he stopped in Havana for a brief visit but instead stayed for 37 years, where his involvement with the rebellion was more than just a flirtation with danger. A January 1959 photograph in ZIG ZAG, a Havana daily, showed the Spaniard being commended by Che Guevara for his own heroism in battling Batista"s regime. The inscription in the margin refers to the full frame of the negative indicating that it was only the second print Korda made uncropped.