Christian National-popular Humanism in the Sculpture Program of the Monumento al Descamisado (1952-1955)

Abstract

In the following paper I analyze a corpus of sculptures commissioned, approved and financed by the Argentine National State and then made by the Italian artist Leone Tomassi between 1952 and 1955 for the Monumento al Descamisado/Monumento a Eva Perón with the general objective of studying its inscription in the official visual aesthetic program and, from there, discuss its co-operation in the construction and expansion of Peronist hegemony. For this purpose, I subscribe to a general semiotics of culture from the postulates of the First and Second Semiotic Programs and use the methodological tools of Visual Textual Semiotics to analyze the modes of sign production used, the convened encyclopedias and the configured topics. From this, I evidence an interaction of convergent nuclear contents on a particular Christian-inspired humanism that would have been summoned with the intention of affirming and expanding the Peronist political project in culture. With the analysis and interpretation of these findings, I seek to contribute to the cultural studies of early Peronism and update the art-politics-religion dialogue, valuing the semiotic function of aesthetic-artistic texts in the persistence of political projects.