Bruno Fonseca was an artist who worked in painting and sculpture. He was best known for four large paintings he called The War Murals. Individually they were called Tank, War, Bucharest and Timisoara. Bruno began the murals in 1989 and completed them in 1993. They were described as "the most powerful statement of their kind since Picasso's great Guernica." He died of AIDS complications shortly after marrying German painter Anke Blaue.
Excerpt from "Dear Brother" by Isabel Fonseca from The Guardian, Nov. 3, 2000.
"The last night, when Bruno was clearly dying - his skin color and skin smell changed as his organs began to fail; his breathing had begun to climb in slow crescendos - we were all hovering in his room. Everyone except Papa. And that is when Bruno died.
Days later the funeral parlour returned his ashes, or 'cremains,' as they insisted on calling them. They arrived in a shiny little shopping bag, as if from a smart shoe store. Inside was a small parcel, about the size of a five-pound bag of flour and just as densely packed, wrapped in newspaper (the funnies, no less). For the hell of it we put it, or him, on the kitchen scales: six pounds four ounces, his birth weight exactly.
In the pink twilight we scattered his ashes from the jetty of what we call the Pink Beach. It was the same beach where, as children, we had laboured passionately under our father's expert command; ferrying buckets of water and wet sand, carefully cutting crusty sand slabs, we built with him the most fantastic, sepulchral sandcastles, in the mood and (we imagined) on the scale of the Egyptians. It was the last time for us as that family in that house. The Big House is now the regional headquarters of the Nature Conservancy in the South Fork."
Excerpt from "Dear Brother" by Isabel Fonseca from The Guardian, Nov. 3, 2000.
"The last night, when Bruno was clearly dying - his skin color and skin smell changed as his organs began to fail; his breathing had begun to climb in slow crescendos - we were all hovering in his room. Everyone except Papa. And that is when Bruno died.
Days later the funeral parlour returned his ashes, or 'cremains,' as they insisted on calling them. They arrived in a shiny little shopping bag, as if from a smart shoe store. Inside was a small parcel, about the size of a five-pound bag of flour and just as densely packed, wrapped in newspaper (the funnies, no less). For the hell of it we put it, or him, on the kitchen scales: six pounds four ounces, his birth weight exactly.
In the pink twilight we scattered his ashes from the jetty of what we call the Pink Beach. It was the same beach where, as children, we had laboured passionately under our father's expert command; ferrying buckets of water and wet sand, carefully cutting crusty sand slabs, we built with him the most fantastic, sepulchral sandcastles, in the mood and (we imagined) on the scale of the Egyptians. It was the last time for us as that family in that house. The Big House is now the regional headquarters of the Nature Conservancy in the South Fork."
Bruno Fonseca was an artist who worked in painting and sculpture. He was best known for four large paintings he called The War Murals. Individually they were called Tank, War, Bucharest and Timisoara. Bruno began the murals in 1989 and completed them in 1993. They were described as "the most powerful statement of their kind since Picasso's great Guernica." He died of AIDS complications shortly after marrying German painter Anke Blaue.
Excerpt from "Dear Brother" by Isabel Fonseca from The Guardian, Nov. 3, 2000.
"The last night, when Bruno was clearly dying - his skin color and skin smell changed as his organs began to fail; his breathing had begun to climb in slow crescendos - we were all hovering in his room. Everyone except Papa. And that is when Bruno died.
Days later the funeral parlour returned his ashes, or 'cremains,' as they insisted on calling them. They arrived in a shiny little shopping bag, as if from a smart shoe store. Inside was a small parcel, about the size of a five-pound bag of flour and just as densely packed, wrapped in newspaper (the funnies, no less). For the hell of it we put it, or him, on the kitchen scales: six pounds four ounces, his birth weight exactly.
In the pink twilight we scattered his ashes from the jetty of what we call the Pink Beach. It was the same beach where, as children, we had laboured passionately under our father's expert command; ferrying buckets of water and wet sand, carefully cutting crusty sand slabs, we built with him the most fantastic, sepulchral sandcastles, in the mood and (we imagined) on the scale of the Egyptians. It was the last time for us as that family in that house. The Big House is now the regional headquarters of the Nature Conservancy in the South Fork."
Excerpt from "Dear Brother" by Isabel Fonseca from The Guardian, Nov. 3, 2000.
"The last night, when Bruno was clearly dying - his skin color and skin smell changed as his organs began to fail; his breathing had begun to climb in slow crescendos - we were all hovering in his room. Everyone except Papa. And that is when Bruno died.
Days later the funeral parlour returned his ashes, or 'cremains,' as they insisted on calling them. They arrived in a shiny little shopping bag, as if from a smart shoe store. Inside was a small parcel, about the size of a five-pound bag of flour and just as densely packed, wrapped in newspaper (the funnies, no less). For the hell of it we put it, or him, on the kitchen scales: six pounds four ounces, his birth weight exactly.
In the pink twilight we scattered his ashes from the jetty of what we call the Pink Beach. It was the same beach where, as children, we had laboured passionately under our father's expert command; ferrying buckets of water and wet sand, carefully cutting crusty sand slabs, we built with him the most fantastic, sepulchral sandcastles, in the mood and (we imagined) on the scale of the Egyptians. It was the last time for us as that family in that house. The Big House is now the regional headquarters of the Nature Conservancy in the South Fork."
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