“La Duquesa de Tenniel”

La Duquesa de Tenniel (“Tenniel’s Duchess”), oil on canvas, 1976, by the Argentine artist Alicia Carletti

The Argentine painter and engraver Alicia Carletti is one of the leading representatives of Magical Realism, an artistic and literary movement characterised by the introduction of a fantastical element.

The artist structures her work into series, grouping her artistic ideas into themes that she represents almost obsessively. Thus we see from the beginning of her career how her representation of lonely and empty houses, enormous mushrooms with a frightening appearance, and small girls dressed in women’s clothing and accessories, come over time to share the limelight with landscapes based on flowers and toys.

The influence of Lewis Carroll’s magical realism on her work is clear. It had such an impact on her that she dedicated a whole series of paintings to him in which she reinterpreted illustrations from the novel “Alice in Wonderland”, incorporating elements of her iconographic language.

In her work Tenniel’s Duchess, we see how Carletti has recreated an illustration from Carroll’s novel, including some of her signature elements, such as the girl dressed in women’s clothing, and her enormous flowers.

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  La Duquesa de Tenniel, 1976

  Tenniel’s Duchess
  Alicia Carletti
  Oil on canvas
  200x160cm

  Ralli Collection

Silvia Sánchez
Curator