The MNBA is currently presenting the temporary exhibition about erotism curated by Laura Malosetti Costa, an expert on 19th Century art in our country. The 65 works on display are divided in four sections: Erotism and violence: abduction; Prisioners and captives; Nudes, voyeurism and transgression and Fatal Seductress and Modern muses.

General View - "La Seducción Fatal, Imaginarios Eróticos del Siglo XIX"

MNBA - January 2015

90 per cent of the works belong to the collection of the museum, but, in this opportunity, the curator has decided to overlook their condition as "works of a museum" to see them under a new light: that of male desire on a woman's body. 

A couple of oil paintings refer to the abduction of white women in the hands of the indians of the Argentine Pampas. Malosetti Costa explains that, since antiquity, this type of kidnapping has been a repetitive subject in art and these lands are no exception. Johann Moritz Rugendas (Germany, 1802-1858), Raymond Quinsac Monvisin (France, 1790-1870) and other travelling artists have depicted women taken by indian warriors on horses. The whiteness of her skin is enhanced with white clothing to bring out the difference with their captors. Till the end of the 18th century, Juan Manuel Blanes (Uruguay, 1830-1901) and Angel Della Valle (Argentina, 1855-1903) painted these abductions in large dimensions, but in those cases, the woman's despair also arose the desire in the upper and middle classes of the city.

La cautiva, by Angel de la Valle and his atelier

Technique: oil on canvas / Measures: 76 x 63cm

Private Collector

La Cautiva, by Juan Manuel Blanes (circa 1880)

echnique: oil on canvas / Measures: 46 x 71 cm

Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat's Art Collection

Keep Reading... “El rapto de cautivas blancas. Un aspecto erótico de la barbarie en el arte rioplatense del siglo XIX”, by Laura Malosetti Costa. Arte, Historia e Identidad en América. Visiones comparativas. XVII Coloquio Internacional de Historia del Arte, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, Universidad Autónoma de México, 1994