![Casa de Pablo Neruda La Chascona 03](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Casa_de_Pablo_Neruda_La_Chascona_03.JPG)
La Chascona is a house in the
Barrio Bellavista
Barrio Bellavista (''Bellavista Neighborhood'') is an area that lies between the Mapocho River and San Cristóbal Hill in Santiago, Chile. It is known as Santiago's bohemian quarter, with numerous restaurants, boutiques, avant-garde galleries, ba ...
of
Santiago
Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile as well as one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is the center of Chile's most densely populated region, the Santiago Metropolitan Region, whose ...
,
Chile
Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...
, which was owned by Chilean poet
Pablo Neruda
Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (12 July 1904 – 23 September 1973), better known by his pen name and, later, legal name Pablo Neruda (; ), was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature. Nerud ...
. La Chascona reflects Neruda's quirky style, in particular his love of the sea, and is now a popular destination for tourists. Neruda began work on the house in 1953 for his then secret lover,
Matilde Urrutia
Matilde Urrutia Cerda (30 April 1912 – 5 January 1985) was the third wife of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, from 1966 until his death in 1973. They met in Santiago in 1946, when she was working as a physical therapist in Chile. She was the first woma ...
, whose curly red hair inspired the house’s name; ''chascona'' is a Chilean Spanish word of
Quechua
Quechua may refer to:
*Quechua people, several indigenous ethnic groups in South America, especially in Peru
*Quechuan languages, a Native South American language family spoken primarily in the Andes, derived from a common ancestral language
**So ...
origin referring to a wild mane of hair. In the house, there is a 1955 painting "Matilde" by
Diego Rivera
Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez, known as Diego Rivera (; December 8, 1886 – November 24, 1957), was a prominent Mexican painter. His large frescoes helped establish the ...
. It was given to Urrutia by Neruda. It depicted a two-faced Urrutia, one face depicting the Urrutia as the singer the public knew, and the other depicting the lover Neruda knew. The painting also has a hidden image; the profile view of Neruda's face hidden in her hair, showing their continuous secret relationship. Urrutia would become the poet’s third wife and she took on the task of restoring the house following the poet’s death in 1973, when La Chascona suffered damage during the
military coup
A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare
War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such ...
.
La Chascona is managed today by the Pablo Neruda Foundation.
See also
*
Casa de Isla Negra
Casa de Isla Negra was one of Pablo Neruda's three houses in Chile. It is located at Isla Negra, a coastal area of El Quisco commune, located about 45 km south of Valparaíso and 96 km west of Santiago. It was his favourite house and ...
*
La Sebastiana
LA most frequently refers to Los Angeles, the second largest city in the United States.
La, LA, or L.A. may also refer to:
Arts and entertainment Music
* La (musical note), or A, the sixth note
* "L.A.", a song by Elliott Smith on ''Figur ...
References
External links
*
{{Chile-hist-stub
Buildings and structures in Santiago
Museums in Santiago, Chile
Biographical museums in Chile
Houses of Pablo Neruda
Literary museums in Chile