Nosotros Afuera

What on earth is that huge white egg doing in front of the San Martín Square? It’s actually a tribute to the avant-garde Argentinian artist, Peralta Ramos. Ramos created a giant egg sculpture back in 1965, called “Nosotros Fuera”, aka “We the Outsiders”. Once he had won the competition, the artist symbolically destroyed the sculpture with an axe in a gesture of rebellion. As for his prize, Ramos won a substantial grant from the Guggenheim Foundation, which had organized the contest. He claimed that he’d put the money toward living life as if it were a work of art. He thus threw a massive dinner party at the luxurious Alvear Hotel and then took his 25 guests out dancing at an exclusive nightclub. When the foundation asked for the money back, he wrote them a letter, now framed at their headquarters in New York. It reads: “You gave me this money to create a work of art, and that dinner was my masterpiece. Leonardo painted The Last Supper, I organized it.”