The Jorge Mara gallery presents these days a series of paintings by Juan Lecuona (1956), just under 30 works made in 2024. From the shapes of the coves painted in the 80s in black and white, the works of Lecuona They have turned towards abstraction. However, the motive that inspires it always appears in a veiled way.
To this day, his art is located on the threshold of figuration. And the formal ambiguity that characterizes it is reiterated in its latest series. The artist worked after the coves, with his own cuttings from sewing molds. There you can guess the silhouettes, the shapes of the body in different positions and even a quote from the famous Victory of Samothrace.
In the current exhibition the forms are reduced to buildings, rectangular blocks that, for the most part, stand on the horizon line or a little further ahead. Sometimes, in some paintings, Lecuona plant two horizons. A challenge to nature? “No”responds the artist. “There is space. There is atmosphere, air”. This is his search, his true desire: to create landscapes where the viewer can not only enter but also breathe.
“I like to paint”he clarifies, to explain his ambition. And, of course, in the production of his works, materials occupy a primary place. In fact, he uses a paper called marouflage as a support and explains it this way: “I prefer it because it bites, it absorbs the paint in a different way. It provides me with the possibilities of generating transparencies”.
This is how we understand the taste for the condition of oil paint and the desire to create new colors with the transparencies of the material, by applying layer upon layer of paint, over and over again. The condition of the oil painting, on a sensory level, influences the brightness, increases the beauty of the color, and causes the ineffable sensation that the paint flows voluptuously. If the viewer observes an oil painting with favorable lighting, they can notice that it has a life of its own. Paint can reverberate in a special way, letting light in and reflecting it from within.
In the exhibition catalogue, the critic Pablo Gianerapoints out: “The geometric rigor of Juan Lecuona’s paintings provides an apparent firmness: these shapes – blocks of supposed urban buildings – are like the shapes of a dream upon waking up: one is sure of its contours, but the very intensity of what is dreamed makes the dream foggy. sharp cutout of the figure. In two ways the artist achieves the morphological reverie, which we had already seen in previous works, but which now achieves with these the impossible weighing of matter and weightlessness..
The calm and silence of these enigmatic constructions can be associated with the isolation of the monuments of metaphysical painting. And the fading of the “dreaminess” that Gianera mentions becomes perceptible and real in the treatment of some paintings. The simplicity of the rectangular buildings matches the format of the fabrics.
However, beyond the austerity of the forms, the greatest virtue of the artist who has resided in San Pablo for a decade, consists of his ability to disseminate energy over the entire surface of the painting. You have to get closer to the works to discover the variations of the paintings that can be seen from afar as large, almost monochromatic fields of color. It is then that the strength of the artist’s hand, his gestures and his firm presence are noticed.
Juan Travnik
In a hectic week for the art world, Juan Travnik He was distinguished as an Outstanding Personality of the Culture of Buenos Aires. The author of the project was Cecilia Ferrerolegislator president of the Culture Commission of the Legislature.
“His work is the faithful reflection of that continuous walk through the city, wandering aimlessly, the results of which were already beginning to be seen in that first exhibition in 1970 at the Ateneo Foto-Cine de Rosario. Having started very young, his career went through different stages. From those beginnings, influenced by the humanism of Henri Cartier Bresson, he walked the city recording street scenes from that perspective. In the ’80s his career took a turn and he began to photograph urban corners with larger format cameras.”he pointed out.
In the Golden Hall of the Buenos Aires Legislature more than one hundred people celebrated the work of Travnik and his fruitful teaching task. The academic José Emilio Burucúa introduced to Travnik at the ceremony, with a series of quotes and reflections on his work. own Travnik has some surprise: “He asked me if I had photographed animals. And I told him no. He seemed a little displeased to me, and didn’t say much more. But in the presentation he pointed out: ‘Juan and I were wrong. Yes, he photographed animals! Those from the Calesitas (last job I’m doing). Of course they are toys… but dazzling nonetheless! For the vibrant colors and for the wide universe of living beings they encompass, those of the water like swans, those of the plains like horses, those of the African sheet like elephants. They are ghosts, childhood dreams of animals. But I will wait patiently for adult dreams of animals. And I say, dreams because among the disasters we cause is the extinction of real animal beings.’”.
The photographer’s name Juan Travnik began to sound in the art environment when Sara Facio He asked him to take over the direction of La Fotogalería del Teatro San Martín. Shortly after, he won the Guggenheim Scholarship with the project of portraits of the Malvinas War Veterans, followed by recognition from the Art Critics Association and was the guest artist at the Buenos Aires Photo Fair along with Coppolawho was the honoree.
Travnik He celebrated his tribute and with joy he tells it: “together with my children and grandchildren, family and friends and a significant number of colleagues such as Marcos Zimmerman, Sebastián Szyd, Gabriel Díaz, Dani Yaco, Alejandro Gulminelli, Esteban Pastorino and many more. Personalities of the arts and culture such as Jean Louis Lariviere, Clarisa Rueda, Gaspar Carvajal, Luis Ovsejevich, the Academics Matilde Marín and Gracia Cutuli, as well as Burucúa and more than a hundred people who accompanied me.”
Source: Ambito
