---
title: "Fantastic Fish (1973), Maria Augusta, painting"
description: "Fantastic Fish (1973), Maria Augusta. Gouache on canvas, 40 x 60 cm. Painting in the João Cunha Collection."
canonical: https://chicodasilva.org/en/paintings/fantastic-fish-1973-084/
lang: en
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
translations:
  en: https://chicodasilva.org/en/paintings/fantastic-fish-1973-084/
  es: https://chicodasilva.org/es/pinturas/pez-fantastico-1973-084/
  fr: https://chicodasilva.org/fr/peintures/poisson-fantastique-1973-084/
  pt: https://chicodasilva.org/pt/pinturas/peixe-fantastico-1973-084/
  ar: https://chicodasilva.org/ar/%D9%84%D9%88%D8%AD%D8%A7%D8%AA/%D8%B3%D9%85%D9%83%D8%A9-%D8%AE%D9%8A%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%A9-1973-084/
  zh-Hans: https://chicodasilva.cn/%E4%BD%9C%E5%93%81/%E5%A5%87%E5%B9%BB%E9%B1%BC-1973-084/
---

# Fantastic Fish

![A large fantastic fish in profile, its dark body stippled with spirals and marked by three eye-like discs. Fantastic Fish, Maria Augusta, 1973, gouache on canvas.](https://img.chicodasilva.org/jcc-084/maria-augusta-fantastic-fish-1973-gouache-on-canvas-40x60cm-joao-cunha-collection-jcc-084-chicodasilva.org-640.jpg)

[Download image](https://img.chicodasilva.org/jcc-084/maria-augusta-fantastic-fish-1973-gouache-on-canvas-40x60cm-joao-cunha-collection-jcc-084-chicodasilva.org-3200.jpg)

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.

- **Artist:** [Maria Augusta](https://chicodasilva.org/en/biography/)
- **Year:** 1973
- **Technique:** Gouache on canvas
- **Support:** Canvas
- **Dimensions:** 40 x 60 cm
- **Motif:** [Fish](https://chicodasilva.org/en/motifs/fish/)
- **Collection:** [João Cunha Collection](https://chicodasilva.org/en/about/)
- **Signature:** 25-11-73, lower left
- **Photo:** Eric Keki
- **Inventory no.:** [JCC-084](https://chicodasilva.org/id/jcc-084)
- **Article:** [Maria Augusta, the Girl Who Signed](https://chicodasilva.org/en/articles/maria-augusta-the-girl-who-signed/)

## The signature

![Detail of the painted signature: «25-11-73»](https://img.chicodasilva.org/signatures/maria-augusta-signature-1973-jcc-084-chicodasilva.org-640.jpg)

*The canvas is signed “25-11-73”, in the lower left corner.*

## How to credit

[Photographs free to reuse, with credit (CC BY 4.0)](https://chicodasilva.org/en/about/#license)

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

The license covers the photograph, not the painting.

## For IIIF viewers

-   [IIIF manifest](https://chicodasilva.org/iiif/jcc-084/manifest.json)