Just when a century has passed since the arrival of Xul Solar and Emilio Pettoruti to Buenos Aires, the Delinfinito gallery opens the exhibition “New World”, cured by Javier Villa. The exhibition recreates the arrival of the avant-garde and celebrates the refreshing airs of two artists who, in 1924, came from their long stay in Europe to found a new world. The two had planned a joint exhibition. But finally Pettoruti He presented a solo exhibition with his futuristic designs at the Witcomb Hall.
In his autobiographical book, “A painter in front of the mirror”the artist says that he requested an audience with the president Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear to invite him to the inauguration. The president accepted. However, as disturbances could be foreseen, they agreed that he would come at eleven in the morning. Although Pettoruti He had only notified his closest friends when he arrived. Alvear A crowd had already gathered. According to the painter: “Alvear was very nice, he looked closely at the paintings and wished me good fortune and the chance to emerge unscathed from the ordeal that awaited me. ‘Please Heaven,’ he wished me, ‘that you do not need the services of Public Assistance this afternoon!’” That night the aesthetic discussion ended at the police station.
After the battle, Xul wrote an article in the newspaper “Martin Fierro”. Although the conservative resistance against innovation was very strong, it is not safe to say that in Buenos Aires the “roaring twenties” were lived with a vertigo similar to that of Paris and Berlin, although somewhat more provincial and with a very political-economic background. different. They were the “last happy years of happy men”, which in retrospect seem idyllic, with international agricultural prices on the rise, harvests more than satisfactory, the Argentine peso on the rise, full employment and thousands of immigrants from impoverished Europe arriving to our port to fulfill his American dream here The president. Alvear Not only was he a protector and friend of artists, but he also supported them with scholarships, awards and even public jobs.
Meanwhile, the aforementioned book “A painter in front of the mirror”allows us to trace the close bond they soon established Xul Solar and Borges. Pettoruti He says that, in 1926, when Marinettithe father of futurism, arrived in Buenos Aires, he was surprised and asked why his friends, instead of being painters, were writers. This is how he explained that, upon arriving in Argentina, they warned Xul Solar that painters were fifteen years behind current trends in Europe, while literary life was characterized by the professionalization of the craft of writing.
Not only were there writers who made a living from their work, but literary magazines also proliferated. The most important were the ultraist “Bow”the newspaper “Martin Fierro” of the Florida group that was published between 1924 and 1927 under the direction of Evar Mendez and, “Wooden Bell” of the Boedo group. There were great individualities with very disparate aesthetic criteria and not easy to classify: Macedonio Fernández, Oliverio Girondo, Leopoldo Lugones, Norah Lange, Roberto Arlt and Ricardo Güiraldes, among others.
Xul and Pettoruti They became friends with these intellectuals and, especially, with Jorge Luis Borges. Owner of a library that was not exhausted in the West, Xul won the admiration of the writer. Later, the wealth of wisdom on linguistics, religions, astrology or hermetic philosophy consolidated a mutual admiration. In “The size of my hope”, Borgesobserves: “Now Buenos Aires, more than a city, is a country and we must find the poetry and music and religion and metaphysics that go hand in hand with its greatness.”. And it is no coincidence that I dedicate this book to Xulcreator among other languages of neo-creole, which takes words from Spanish and Portuguese to facilitate the communication of a utopian “Confederation of Latin American States of the future”. It is also no coincidence that Xul illustrate this book. Both represent the arrival of modernity and, furthermore, they agreed in the aspiration of finding the words of a Creole mythology. They were looking for the new world
The European Adventures of Xul Solar and Pettoruti They had started in Italy, in 1916, when they met. According to account Javier Villaboth “They seem to cross each other and distance themselves, but never get too far away and then get closer again. In certain cities they lived together, in others they vacationed. They sold works on the street as a method of survival. They self-organized exhibitions and wrote cross-reviews to support each other. They shared evenings until dawn discussing the most varied topics, either alone or with the avant-garde groups on duty. They enjoyed and understood each other’s vision despite their differences.”.
Pettoruti He was the most combative of the Martinfierrista painters and, consequently, the one who garnered the most adverse criticism. For years he had to protect his paintings with glass from the attacks of a bellicose public. When in 1962 Borges writes the prologue for the catalog of the tribute exhibition of the Museum of Fine Arts, relativizes his previous adherence to avant-garde doctrines and those of any “ism.” But, perceptive despite his blindness, he praises the work “noble and rigorous” of the painter who qualifies as a “CLASSIC”, thus, with a capital letter. Give up reviewing your theoretical support and rescue “a time we will not forget”. Without a doubt, it is that decade where Buenos Aires gains elegance, the eclectic and cosmopolitan spirit that characterizes it to this day and that differentiates it from the rest of the metropolises in Latin America.
Villa clarifies that for the exhibition design he was inspired by the labyrinthine architectures of Xul Solar and the game between full and diaphanous planes that Pettoruti applied to investigate light. In the beauty of a “Farfalla” You can perceive the solid chromaticism of that very “Argentine” sun that reveals the search for one’s own.
“The continuity of the forests” brings together brief landscapes “whose possible destination was street sales to achieve a certain economic subsistence”they report in Delinfinito. “Pettoruti also painted wooded landscapes for this purpose, in parallel to his abstract compositions”they report. So much Xul as Pettoruti They represented in Europe the visions of the present and, perhaps, also, those of a past that they kept in their memory and that they wanted to see again.
The exhibition presents more than 50 pieces, some already emblematic in the artists’ careers, mostly those by Pettoruti; others, which have been seen little and even “some unpublished”. “At Xul Solar everything is wonderful, the kind that breaks reason”writes Pettorutiexalting the magical condition of the work of Xul which on this occasion is difficult to discover.
But the most important space of the exhibition is the block that reconstructs the exhibition of paintings, drawings, studies, mosaics and sketches for stained glass. Pettoruti in it Witcomb Hall. Delinfinito presents an archive exhibition for the second time, the previous one was dedicated to discovering the universe of Emilio Renart. Now the file is configured with the original tabs with which Pettoruti He organized his own story. On the other hand, the artist never stopped explaining the foundations of his works in texts and conferences. This file of 20 cards comes from the Pettoruti Foundation.
Source: Ambito
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