Su Sana Memoria (Healthy Memory) by Ricardo Celma

This is the portrait of my aunt Julia, just a few days before writing these words she turned 90 years old. She is an exemplary woman, who, having suffered during the Argentine military dictatorship, one of the greatest horrors and injustices that a mother can suffer, she always sought to keep her light alive.

In this painting I resort to mystical and symbolic elements, the landscape was inspired by the words of the Florentine poet Dante Alighieri, who in his “Divine Comedy” begins by saying: "In the middle of life's journey, I found myself in a dark forest, because the straight path was lost ", and is a prelude to an Orphic journey. In the portrait, I also used metaphysical elements. I put on her clothes a sacred heart, which in Christian mythology is used in the suffering mother Mary, feeding on her veins. The “mystical rose” also appears, already mentioned in the "Song of Songs” from King Solomon, from which the term rosa cruz (cross intertwined by a rose) derives, "from which sacred life emanates "(Goethe, 1784-1786). According to R. Fludd in 1629, it affirms that it is also a form of wisdom through pain, ascending the thorns to the ever-living flame. The title in Spanish is a game of sounds and words, Su sana, is synonymous with "healthy", but all together it sounds like Sussane or Susana, a very important name in our family life.