Blindness
In November 1917, while he was finishing his monument to Juan Bautista Alberdi, a chip of marble (which was being worked by his assistant) broke Blotta's glasses, and glass splinters wounded both his eyes. He spent several months completely deprived of sight, until he was operated by surgeon Dr. Pedro Lagleyze. He only recovered the sight of his left eye. Blotta would later thank the physician with a sculpture.
Dr. Lagleyze sent him to recover at a friend's house in Villeta, 30 km south of Asunción, Paraguay. Blotta did not find the person he was looking for, but instead met the father of Paraguayan artist Modesto Delgado Rodas, who took him in as a guest. In Villeta, Blotta also met Carmen de Jesús Prieto Ruiz, a young schoolteacher and a few months later, on September 4, 1918, he married her.
During his stay, he collected aboriginal Tupi-Guarani art, and created some works that can be found still in several cities of Paraguay. Years later he was declared Honorary Citizen of Paraguay. In 1970, six years before his death, Blotta confessed in a newspaper that his most fervent wish would be to die a Paraguayan.
Read more about this topic: Erminio Blotta
Famous quotes containing the word blindness:
“They say love is blindness of heart; I say not to love is blindness.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“the heart,
this child of myself that resides in the flesh,
this ultimate signature of the me, the start
of my blindness and sleep, builds a death crèche.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“It amazes me when I hear any person prefer blindness to deafness. Such a person must have a terrible dread of being alone. Blindness makes one totally dependent on others, and deprives us of every satisfaction that results from light.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)