This massive, profusely illustrated catalogue with extensive documentation is a reprint of Leon Ferrari retrospective catalogue of 2004 with additions to bring it up to 2006. The catalogue has been translated from Spanish into Portuguese and was edited by Andrea Giunta. It presents a sample of works of different periods with the purpose of unfolding the creative process of the artist. The exhibition does not include the totality of its works, but a selection of each series or creative moment. If in the retrospective exhibition of an artist a period of its work were eliminated, it would be being been clipping or censuring his production. Leon Ferrari is expressed in a poetic and controversial sense. His creations explore the possibilities of the plane, the space and the meaning with drawings, sculptures, collages, brailles and objects. In them, he uses metals, inks, pencils, engravings, heliografi­as, dummies, bottles, birds, fish, excrements, images, reliefs in brailles, videos. As much their more poetic and formal series like which they disturb with the materials and the meaning to us affirm the value of the artistic creativity and aim at a plural, tolerant world and just; a world without wars, violence and discrimination. Ferrari writes a polemic on tortures for the exhibition that was responsible for the premature termination of the exhibition by the Argentine authorities. He wanted to explain that the works that the Church questions more, exposed in center Recoleta, are only one forms to express an opinion on the torture. 1) From the Gospel to the official Catechism of the Church the Christianity announces that the souls of deads in mortal sin - and more ahead their revived bodies are tortured in hell. That idea, the punishment to the different one, crosses our history and has originated diverse exterminations: natives, Jews, witches, herejes, Vietnameses, iraki­es. 2) The existence of that place where there would be million souls suffering, has been illustrated and raised by great artists of the West: Miguel Angel, the Giotto, Angelical Fra. 3) In order aesthetically to express an opinion on the meaning of those beautiful pictures, that is to say, on the promised suplicios, I exposed in 1985 in the Museum of Modern Art of San Pablo, Brazil, a cage with doves defecating on a reproduction of the Final Judgment of Miguel Angel. A similar installation is exposed in Recoleta and it was exposed in several museums of the outside. 4) Since infier to us painted by the artists of the Christianity they do not originate any reaction that condemns the suplicios to our resemblances, I thought that a form to emphasize its cruelty, to obtain that the spectator understands the reality of that characteristic of the West, was to copy those to infier to us but to replace to the human beings by the saints and virgins who created them or spread. 5) That idea produces a singular reaction of the Church: after centuries to spread and to support painted infier to us in his churches, where suplicios are people like us, one takes offense and it rejects infier to us when those who suffer are pieces of plastic plaster and. I hope that with time the Church extends its rejection to the torments painted by the Bosco. 6) I must clarify that the figures that are sold in santeri­as are not, to my criterion, the ones of true the Jesus and the Virgin and that only represent the personages who describe the creators of the Christianity. Of he himself Gospel it is deduced that a person with socialist ideas, worried about the poor men and that advises to us to love our fellow, as she claims were Jesus, cannot threaten to that fellow the torture. 7) During two thousand years hell stayed inalterable, but not long ago the Pope modified it saying that there there is no fire, but that the absence of God originates a comparable suffering to the terrenales anguishes. The physical suffering is replaced by the spiritual one. 8) This power that has the Pope to modify the forms or systems of the evangelical punishment, takes to suppose to me that it could solve the contradiction to support the Earth human rights and to violate them in beyond, declaring that the Church has committed a new error that the hell does not exist and that nobody is nor will be punished. 9) My intention has not been to bother the believers who do not create in territories of the devils. My works are destined to the Church and to those who accompanies it in the threat by the punishment to "the pecadores" assumptions. 10) I clarify that these opinions are not a newness. Seemed or equal on Church and religion they have given them before I, among other Bertrand Russell, Arnold J. Toynbee, Sigmund Freud, Noam Chomsky, Aldous Huxley, Saramago, Almodovar. 11) In the sample it has, in addition to inoffensive drawings and pictures, works that talk about other subjects: the anti-semitism, the homosexualidad, the entailment of the victims of AIDS with the campaign against the contraceptives, the call Process, the wars against Vietnam and Iraq, Conquista of America, the sexual obsessions of the West, etc. 12) The Church has sent an amazing campaign against the sample and it has not condemned the violence untied by some of his feligreses, attitude that encourages them to repeat its feats. It has not either answered the arguments and explanations that I have given in several programs of radio. I hope does it now." Because of part of this exhibition dealt with the preceding religous theme, the Argentine authorities closed the exhibition prematurely. Ferrari responds with a letter to the Director of the museum: " Buenos Aires, Sunday 23 of January of 2005 - Letter of Leon Ferrari - On the closing of the exhibition - Lawyer Nora Hochbaum - Director of the Cultural Center Recoleta - Dear Nora: - I talk about to the retrospective one of my work exposed in rooms Cronopios and C. In the 31 days that were open - from the 30 of November to the day of the date, the exhibition was visited by more than 50,000 people; it originated near 400 journalistic notes in the country and outside and thousands of e-mails on the exposed thing and the debates that caused. If the number of visitors is considered and the repercussion in the press, I believe that it is one of the more discussed exhibitions and of greater public impact than has ever been made in our country. The diverse failures to favor and against, result of the three opened causes, next to the commentaries that are published in specialized magazines, enrich the jurisprudence on the freedom of expression, the art and justice, the art and the religion. Part of exposed works talks about the anti-semitism, the contraceptives and the fight against the AIDS, the punishment to the different one in beyond, the crimes of the dictatorship, the discrimination to the homosexuals, the western attitude front to sex, misoginia, Conquista, the Inquisicion, the activities of the U.S.A. in Vietnam and Iraq. Those works originated an intense and necessary debate that it promises to continue and to extend themselves. The society has demonstrated that it is arranged to discuss these subjects and to cross the implicit limits and questions in exposed works and, in general terms, in the art. All this allows me to assure that the expectations of the retrospective one have been fulfilled fully. Very I am been thankful by solidarity of my colleagues, the public, most of means and by the institutional endorsement that made possible and that it maintained the exhibition. On the other hand, the attacks, the closing of the exhibition during ten days, along with the threats of hostilityhave caused evacuation several times of the Cultural Center Recoleta and the building of the O.A.S., to create a tension climate that disturbs the normal operation of the institution. By these two reasons, the profits reached with the exhibition and the difficulties that daily the exhibition originates, that implies a effort and a personal and collective wearing down, seems prudent and opportune to shorten the times to me and to advance the closing to Friday 4 of February, extending the schedule of visit to facilitate the access of the public. - With my more warm greetings, - A hug - Leon Ferrari -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.