No. 19 / 20 · Movements, by Gastón Solís
Die Schwere Stunde
the heavy hour
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Sala de Reserva · Buenos Aires · 1986

There is an hour in every twenty-four that belongs to no clock. The hour in which the body discovers it has been carrying something all day without noticing, and must now at last put it down. A muscular young man sits in near-total darkness, his back curved forward under the weight of whatever the day has accumulated in him. A shaft of pale silver light falls from the upper right onto his shoulder, illuminating the crescent of his back the way a notary’s lamp illuminates a document about to be signed. It is the kind of light used by those whose business is to record what has been released, to register the transaction, to make the silent thing official.
The heavy hour is heaviest where it is heaviest. Afterward, lightened, the body rises.
Provenance
The artist’s studio, Vienna; private collection, Vienna, by 1903; confiscated, 1938; appeared on the Argentine art market, c. 1982; private collection, Buenos Aires, by 1985; lent to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, for Simbolismo y el Cuerpo: fin de siglo en Europa, 1986, as Anónimo, círculo vienés; identified by Argentine authorities, 1998; restituted to the heirs of the original owner, 2001 (Austrian Restitution Commission, file no. 2000/214); sale, im Kinsky, Vienna, 23 April 2002, lot 41; the present collection.



















