Fantastic FishMaria Augusta · 1973 · Gouache on canvas
Fantastic Fish, Maria Augusta, 1973

High-resolution viewer. Use the arrow keys to pan, plus and minus to zoom.

Fantastic Fish

Artist
Maria Augusta
Year
1973
Technique
Gouache on canvas
Support
Canvas
Dimensions
40 x 60 cm
Motif
Fish
Collection
João Cunha Collection
Signature
FDSILVA, lower left
Photo
Eric Keki
Inventory no.
JCC-084
Article
Maria Augusta, the Girl Who Signed

Description for blind and low-vision visitors

A horizontal painting on a plain off-white ground. A single large fish fills the center, seen in profile and facing left, its jaws open on a magenta mouth lined with white triangular teeth; a brick-red fin trails forward across the opening, fraying into thin red filaments. The head is pale blue-green, covered in fine short strokes, with one round white eye holding a dark spiral pupil. Behind it the body turns almost black and is worked over in dense stippled spirals in blue, lilac, orange, yellow and green, the pattern laid in dots rather than lines. Three discs interrupt it, each a black center inside rings of yellow and red, surrounded by radiating white and yellow lashes like small suns. Fins fan out above and below in fine striations of green, blue and red, and the forked tail sweeps to the upper and lower right, black and stippled with red and orange. Five clumps of green seaweed stand around the figure, four slender ones at the corners and a broad one at the right edge. A red cursive signature sits at the lower left with a date beneath it.

How to credit

Free to reuse with credit (CC BY 4.0)

Maria Augusta, “Fantastic Fish” (1973). Photo: Eric Keki, João Cunha Collection. CC BY 4.0. https://chicodasilva.org/id/jcc-084