"While visiting Malba, I came across a painting on display that looked very similar to one of my paintings from 2005 called Dragon Caller," the illustrator wrote on his Instagram account, accompanying the message with a photo of himself in front of the piece in question. The work in question belongs to Carrie Bencardino, an artist associated with Kirchnerism and part of the exhibition El desentierro del diablo.
Ciruelo's post quickly caused thousands of reactions: supportive comments, criticism of the museum, and a heated debate about the boundaries between homage, appropriation, and plagiarism in contemporary art.
La comparación de la pintura original y la plagiada
The comparison was inevitable. In the photos shared by Cabral, there are clear similarities between his Dragon Caller and Bencardino's painting:
The silhouette of the dragon in the center of the scene.
The rocky background and the fantastical atmosphere.
The color palette, almost identical in both compositions.
Although the illustrator stated that he doesn't want "to stir up trouble," he made it clear that the situation makes him uncomfortable: "Many of my fans reacted exasperated. I don't want to harm Carrie, but at Malba I didn't see any credit or reference to my work," he said in an interview with La Nación.
Ciruelo, an international figure in the world of fantasy art, added that Bencardino never apologized directly, although he acknowledged that the artist had declared herself a fan of his work since her youth.
In the same post, Bencardino wrote a cryptic message: "Childhood idols can become terrible ghosts."
That comment, far from calming the situation, further fueled the reaction of Cabral's followers, who accused the artist of deflecting attention without taking responsibility.
Meanwhile, Malba released a statement defending the inclusion of the work in its exhibition: "Carrie Bencardino's pictorial work draws from images found in magazines, album covers, music videos, the internet, and her personal archive of objects and other visual materials. This process is characteristic of contemporary artistic practices: images are nourished by other images."
