JOE TILSON (b. 1928)

In the late 1960’s, Joe Tilson made politically engaged pop art featuring the heroes of the counter-culture: Ho Chi Minh, Malcolm X and Che Guevara. Che Guevara – Transparency was published two years after Guevara’s capture and execution by CIA-assisted Bolivian forces on 9 October 1967. Tilson appropriated a newsreel still of the South American revolutionary which relates closely to Alberto Korda’s famous photograph of Guevara from 1960, the Guerrillero heroico, an image which has become synonymous with political idealism and a youthful fervour for social justice. Tilson’s Transparency, made shortly after Che’s death, refers back to an older, religious visual tradition by framing Guevara as a contemporary martyr – a ready-made icon for the pop generation.