Ernesto de la Cárcova

Ernesto de la Cárcova y Arrotea (March 3, 1866 – December 28, 1927) was an Argentine painter of the Realist school.

Life and work Ernesto de la Cárcova was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1866. Taking an early interest in the canvas, he studied at the local Society for the Stimulus of Fine Arts under painter Francisco Romero. He attended the prestigious Accademia Albertina in Turin, where he was trained by painter Giacomo Grosso.

At the 31st Turin Fine Arts Exposition in 1890, he presented The Head of An Old Man, a pastel drawing he sold to the King of Italy, Umberto I, for display at the Palazzo Quirinale in Rome. Returning to Argentina, he completed his best-known work, Without Bread and Without Work, in 1893. Set in Buenos Aires' industrial southside during the severe recession that followed the Panic of 1890, the work is today displayed in the National Museum of Fine Art.

He accepted a professorship at the University of Buenos Aires and, continuing to participate in international events, he garnered a silver medal at a 1916 Paris Arts Exposition. De la Cárcova's designs were chosen to represent the Argentine Centennial as the official medal, and as the great seal of the University of Buenos Aires in 1921. He was a founder of the School Superior of Fine Arts in 1923, an institution that absorbed Sívori's academy. The school is today part of the National University Art Institute, Argentina's foremost institution of its type.

Professor de la Cárcova bequeathed his collection of German sculptures for the creation of the Museum of Reproductions and Comparative Sculpture, which was named in his honor following his death in 1927. He was buried in La Recoleta Cemetery.