Marcelo Brodsky
The Class

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Artist Marcelo Brodsky(Argentinean, born 1954)Argentinean, born 1954

CultureArgentinean

Titles

The Class
from the series Buena Memoria, 1997

Date1996, printed 2011

MediumInkjet print

DimensionsImage: 46 1/16 × 68 3/4 in. (117 × 174.6 cm)
Sheet: 47 1/2 × 71 1/4 in. (120.7 × 181 cm)

Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by Joan Morgenstern, Richard S. Jackson, Nina and Michael Zilkha, the S. I. Morris Photography Endowment, Anne Wilkes Tucker, and Clinton T. Willour

Object number2014.670

Not on view

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Department

Photography

Special Collections

Photographs by Latin American Artists

Object Type

PHOTOGRAPHS

DescriptionNine years after Marcelo Brodsky’s class photo was taken at the Colegio
Nacional de Buenos Aires, a military junta assumed control of Argentina’s
government, beginning the campaign against suspected dissidents known as the “Dirty
War.” Between 1976 and 1983, almost 30,000 people “disappeared” into government
detention centers. Brodsky escaped to Spain, dedicating his artistic practice
to confronting the traumas of the war. The Class denotes the fate of
each of Brodsky’s class members. Representing word and image, past optimisms
and current despairs, and personal memory and collective history, Brodsky’s
work is a powerful representation of war’s human toll.
ProvenanceThe artist, Buenos Aires, 2011; purchased by MFAH, 2014.
Exhibition History"WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, November 11, 2012–February 3, 2013.

"School Photos and Their Afterlives," Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 8–April 12, 2020.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks

Edition inscribed on sheet recto: 3/5

Inscribed on verso backboard: EX.2012.WP.161 / M / 34

See Notes/Text Entry for inscriptions in the image

Signed on sheet recto

Printed label on verso backboard:
WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and / Its Aftermath / The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston / EX.2012.WP.161 / Marcelo Brodsky, Argentinian, born 1954 // Class Photo / 1996 / Inkjet print / Marcelo Brodsky / 34. Remembrance / The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston / The Annenberg Space for Photography / Brooklyn Museum of Art / Corcoran Gallery of Art

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