The Tear of the World

Author: Sofía Bassi

Title: La lágrima del mundo (The Tear of the World)

Date: 1974

Material: Oil on masonite

Dimensions: 27.6 × 23.6 inches

Location: Private collection

Rights: Sofía Bassi Foundation

The Tear of the World presents a haunting and esoteric vision of the universe as a sentient presence. At the center of the composition floats a vast, luminous orb, its swirling surface enclosing a solitary, all-seeing eye. This eye, both watchful and melancholic, evokes themes of divine awareness, vigilance, and existential sorrow. Suspended in an ethereal sky, the orb radiates a mystical intensity and recalls Bassi’s recurring motif of the ovoid as a vessel of transformation and universal consciousness.

Beneath this celestial form, spectral figures reach upward, their arms extended toward the orb in a gesture that suggests invocation, surrender, or silent reverence. They rise from an organic, crumbling structure that appears to dissolve into the surrounding landscape, reinforcing a sense of instability and metamorphosis. The fiery glow along the horizon contrasts with the deep greens and blues of the sky, evoking the idea of an alchemical or apocalyptic threshold. Floating shapes and fluid terrain create an atmosphere in which material reality seems to waver, as if the visible world were on the verge of dissolution. In The Tear of the World, Bassi imagines the cosmos as a conscious force that watches, grieves, and perhaps still holds the possibility of guiding human destiny.