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Feliks Topolski: artist notes on 'Memoir of the Century' - 32 South America
Then in 1980-1981, having flown over the gap of the Atlantic ocean, South America. Being chopped up into discordant states, it composed itself in the painting as a 'political' map; so, within the general sweep from the darker world of the Andes (with the son's hand helping upwards the father) to the greenness of the low jungles: my son Daniel's imprisonment in Paraguay; and other marks of the South American eschatological bent - the Chilean girl, now in exile, painted re-enacting her torture; the skeleton-decorated kite flown by schoolgirls; the mummies (Inca in Chile and Christian in Bolivia); Che Guevara as petrol-station emblem in Peru; Ecuador's President and his wife crashing to death in a plane; the revengeful killers swooping down from favelas (slums) above Rio de Janeiro onto the beaches of the rich. And ever-present, guns-at-the-ready, soldiery. And the juntas.


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