Alberto Delmonte

Interview witha Alberto Delmonte - 1998

By Rafael Pascual Robles

I was born in 1933 in Buenos Aires.
I'm from the neighborhood of Saavedra, the corner of Republiquetas and Vidal.
The house where I was born is still standing.
I remember it enormous covering half a block.
It had a bowls pitch, a tennis court.
In my child's world, I imagined it had everything.
My grandfather bought that house, and in time, he lost it, along with his savings, as a consequence of some financial crisis.
After that, we all went to live downtown in a rented apartment on Venezuela and Piedras.
I was two years old when that big house in Saavedra, which was so pretty and roomy, and had so much green, disappeared from my life.
I lived in the apartment until I was twelve.
I went through the primary grades in different schools.
I can recall at noon, when I was on my way to school, seeing some city bus or other on fire, or turned over on its side in front of the Cabildo, because it was the time of the Revolution, June '43.
I went to secondary school at the “Nacional Pueyrredón”.
That school was a real institution. I had really excellent teachers there, true personalities in the field of education.
There was one especially that I'll never forget: Emilio Gouchón Cané, the Psychology and Philosophy teacher.
I had him in my fourth year of high school and it was a breath of enlightenment, since he interested us greatly in the field of art.
It was thanks to this that some of my schoolmates entered the Teatro Colón, to study voice, and that I made the definitive decision to study drawing and painting…

Alberto Delmonte relates these episodes from has infancy and youth in the penumbral environment of the office-bedroom in his studio on Calle Estados Unidos, in the old San Pedro Telmo neighborhood of Buenos Aires.

Summer has stretched into this torrid porteño autumn afternoon. A fan sits buzzing monotonously on the floor, bringing only modest relief.

The room is small, four meters by four meters at most. The closed-in sensation is accentuated by a vast number of large framed paintings that hang vertically above our heads, supported by cross-beams that run from one wall to the other.

There's no free space in the room. It's as if open space terrified the room's dweller. The walls are festooned with pictures, posters, clippings, drawings and notes. Even the corners of the room are filled with things, same of them of apparently no significance whatsoever, except, perhaps for the person who has placed them there in some kind of secret order.

Delmonte is seated with his back half-turned to a sort of narrow, cluttered desk, very likely built by him, using elements that, without a doubt, have been de-commissioned from their original functions. The base is made of dark-painted solid metal and it doesn't take a detective's eye to figure our that once formed part of a sewing machine, since the word “SINGER” is molded into the steel in letters forming an arc. This rugged structure serves as a support for a plank of wood that acts as a table. On it in a goose-necked lamp, the head of which in bent double and almost touching the base it is the only source of artificial light illuminating the room around us. I move closer to the plank. I can barely see that the surface is marked with a series of incisions, lines, forms and colors, and in one corner, there are the three clearly marked ked initials, “JTG” (1)

Could this plank that is serving as a common table actually be one of the constructivist works of Joaquín Torres García?

I nervously ask Delmonte if this is the case. He puts my mind at ease: “No, it's not an original. It's a very good copy. At first glance and without much light, it can be deceiving for anybody”.

To either side of this little piece of furniture, rising from the floor to the mesh of cross-beams that support the paintings, there is shelving that sags under the weight of the books it bears. I get closer and read some of the titles: Lao Tse, “Tao Teh Ching”; José Ortega y Gasset, “The Rebellion of the Masses”; Gurdjieff, “Encounters with Great Men”; Antoni Tápies, “The Practice of Art”...

There's only one chair in the room. I've taken a seat on the edge of the bed in front of the unique desk.

There is a very reduced space between myself and my interviewee.

Delmonte always speaks in the tone of one who is convinced of what he is saying. He is assertive even in the passages in which he appears to vacillate. He transmits a self-confident impression, even when expressing the certainty of his uncertainty.

While he talks, he frequently runs a hand over his face, caressing his gray, patriarchal beard. His hair, which is somewhat thin and the same color as his beard, falls in a distracted forelock over one side of his ample brow.

His eyes, which are vivacious, darting, attentive to everything that goes on, only come to rest on a single point in space when he concentrates on a subject which he considers to be of particular importance.

The Painter and His Teachers.

What was your first approach to art?

My parents noticed that I had a certain knack for drawing and when I was five years old, they sent me to a sort of kindergarten where a former student of my great-grandfather's taught drawing. There, I learned the basic notions of drawing. Not very well, of course, because at that age, about all I did was lose the naiveté of a child's drawing.

You say you studied with a student of your great-grandfather's. Does that mean your great-grandfather was also a painter?

Yes. He was Bernardo Troncoso, an Andalucian artist with a complete academic background.

Do you still have some of his work?

I have a few of his works, among them, a self-portrait and a portrait of my great-grandmother. He was a great portrait artist, with real craftsmanship, the old Spanish school from which we've inherited the grays and earth colors. He became quite well known in the porteña society of that time. He painted nearly all of the Presidents of the day: Avellaneda, Roca, Pellegrini. Today those portraits are hanging in the National Congress.

Did you get a chance to know him?

No, I didn't. He died in 1929, four years before I was born.

Despite that fact, he must have had a strong influence on your childhood.

Without a doubt. Living in a house full of paintings by an ancestor who was a naturalist-style painter can be a pretty strong conditioning factor. I tried to learn by copying my great-grandfather's pictures, and everybody who saw my work treated it with only relative importance on comparing it with his. But that didn't discourage me. I began to develop an interest in drawing and started learning and practicing it.

When you copied the works of your great-grandfather -who had such a highly developed craft but who wasn't around to teach it to you- you must have been obliged to “invent” the craft, to discover it for yourself.

Yes, that's how it was. When I copied one of my great-grandfather's landscapes, I tried to attain the same results by imitating, experimenting, making mistakes and correcting them. Although I was really off the mark in the beginning, by persisting, I began to learn.

How did your parents take this vocation of yours?

They never put any obstacles in my way. I never lacked stimulation from them. I remember that when we moved to San Telmo I caught one of those childhood illnesses. My parents gave me water-colors and a drawing pad. From my sick bed I copied my great-grandfather's paintings and from that point on, my will to keep working never abandoned me.

How did your artistic development continue from that point on?

Little by little my interest in the excessively academic works of my great-grandfather wore thin. Instead, I started studying reproductions of more contemporary painters. I recall copying a Van Gogh, a head by Rouault and a painting by Tiglio (2), which had been published on the cover of Continente magazine. That painting, by the way, provided me with an opportunity to meet him.

How did that happen?

Rivara (3) -a friend who lived across the way- was one of Tiglio's students. He took my copy of Tiglio's painting of the church in La Boca (4) to his teacher and it seems Tiglio liked it and wanted to meet me. At any rate, at sixteen I started studying with him, when he was in charge of the Artistic Drawing Department at the Popular University of La Boca. The course lasted four years: two drawing plaster figures and two with live models.

What was Tiglio like as a teacher?

Methodologically speaking, he was very heterodox. He wasn't tied to any pedagogic method in particular, but taken from an artistic standpoint, he was a great teacher. What counts in art is not only the teaching of the craft, but also how to approach artistic activity. Tiglio was a very important influence, because he taught us an attitude toward life and toward art.

So you spent four years of your life with this teacher.

A little more, actually, since I was also a student in his studio. I went there to paint. The learning process was rigorous. A still-life was set up and you worked on it for months. You had to analyze and purify the study of forms, of values, of colors. It wasn't just a matter of painting and going on to something else. It was really quite different from what goes on in painting workshops today.

How long were you in his studio?

About six years. In 1955, Tiglio fell ill and never got well again. From then on, I had to develop more on my own. The next year, I attended the workshop of Carlos de la Cárcova (5) to study modeling. Later, I was attracted by art history and audited lectures by Julio Payró (6) at the School of Philosophy and Letters.

Did your school studies leave you time to paint?

Yes, but only because I wasn't a good student and took all the time I wanted to paint. There were always certain subjects that interested me and they were the only ones I studied. I was a good student of history, philosophy, psychology, literature and drawing, but I wasn't good at all in mathematics and geometry.

Tell me about your studies with Carlos de la Cárcoνa.

I studied modeling with him for a couple of years. It was a rich experience next to a very generous person. He gave us everything: the studio in which Rivara and I could stay and work for hours on end. He dedicated a great deal of time to us and provided us with notes and books that were of great value to us.

You mentioned your art history studies with Payró. That experience must also have been very interesting, since he was a scholar who was committed to contemporary art.

Yes. Although I never knew him outside of class, I learned a lot from him. He interested me, because he was all for a line of painting that I had real feeling for. Back then, we didn't have the audio-visual media that exist today. I remember Payró arriving in class with a pile of books under his arm, and using an apparatus known as a "magic lantern" to project the reproductions from the books onto a screen. That was between 1958 and 1959, and closing that initial cycle of programmed studies of visual arts, in 1963, I studied Art with Professor Héctor Cartier. (7)

Of all your teachers, Tiglio was the one who exercised the greatest influence. How did you cope with the process of estrangement due to his ill-health?

Well, it was an obligatory estrangement. But I always felt a great devotion toward my teacher -perhaps because, back then, students had a different conception of things. I maintained ties with Tiglio for a long time after he fell ill. His judgment of my work was always of capital importance to me. When he was in the hospital and I had some show coming up, I would take my paintings to him beforehand to see what he thought of them. Ог when he was up and around, I would go pick him up and take him to my studio.

Your painting of that time might very easily have been influenced by him. Was it?

Yes, it was influenced, of course, but it was a legitimate type of influence. When you study with a master, it is inevitable that you will feel his influence. But the influence is legitimate as long as it's not a matter of servile copying. Rather, it should be a likeness that permits one to go incorporating other things of one's own or those of others, until the time comes when a personal image emerges.

Does that mean that by the time you left Tiglio's studio, when you were twenty-two or twenty-three years old, you had already built a defined artistic image?

I wouldn't go as far as to say anything quite that definite, but that's somewhat the case. Already in my second year of studies, my drawings began to contain structural lines that spoke of a constructive, geometricized tendency. I can safely say that I al-ways was intuitively constructivist.

Did you know the work of Torres García (8)?

To a certain extent. Tiglio had talked to me about him and his students who had visited him in his studio. Later on, I made contact with them and with the Torres García Museum, and in this way I got a much deeper understanding of his work and ideas.

What attracted you so much about Torres's painting?

Well, if we were to take a look at the works of the painters that most interested me at the time, certain similarities appear. I liked Rouault, I liked Raúl Russo and I was Tiglio's student. They were all committed to painting in which respect for tone and the black line were in dialogue with form. And this was in keeping with the esthetic criterion of a line of painting represented by Torres García.

You mentioned Rouault, a painter who is pretty much forgotten today.

He may be forgotten, but he was, without a doubt, a great master. He worked with great responsibility, in silence and with decorum. So sure! He doesn't make the news!

Maybe his image was a bit repetitive, don't you think?

Well, with regard to that, I think an artist has all possibilities open to him. That is to say, it is legitimate for an artist to go through two or three stages in his life. When he goes through more, he leaves himself open to the thought that he is following the dictates of fashion and not his own forms of expression. But there are also artists who never change, since change is not obligatory, after all. It's not written anywhere that you have to change no matter what. The world that turns around art is full of prejudices generated by alleged experts. A classic prejudice is that “you have to change”. Otherwise, an artist is said to be repetitive, that he has fallen into a mannerism. At some point in time somebody issues a decree: “No more black lines in painting.” And just like that, we have to eliminate romantic painting, Byzantine painting, and the works of Russo, Tiglio, Rouault, Torres García and everybody else who ever used black lines, from the history of art. Then along comes somebody else and says: “Painting is color.” And so then we have to throw out Picasso's “Guernica” because it's all black and white and grays, or the black paintings of Goya.

Is there an excess of dogmatism?

Without a doubt. And it ends up placing limits on the perception of the work of art, which should always be open. There are painters who feel an internal need to change, and that's valid. But there are also painters who don't feel the need and don't change, because they feel an image so deeply that they make it theirs forever. The only thing that's worthwhile analyzing is if, between the first work and the last, there is coherence and permanent interest.

Between Art and Politics.

Do you have any defined political stance?

I've always tended toward stances in which the social aspect and deep respect for the human being are preponderant factors. Nowadays there's a tendency to say that the Utopias have become extinct. I don't believe that and I remain loyal to the convictions that are a means of preserving the Utopian ideal of a more just world. This brings to mind a Portuguese song that talks of the effort of some sailors to reach the isles of Ithaca. When they finally reach them, they realize that they must imagine new “isles of Ithaca” and set sail for them. The discovery they've made is that what is truly important is the journey, not the arrival. When a certain objective is reached, you have to set new goals, because reaching a goal signifies the end of a dream, of a Utopia, and if we conform to this, the dimensions of our lives are reduced and life loses much of its meaning.

Did you discover your social and humanistic convictions early in life?

I think so, because by the age of thirteen or fourteen, I was no longer comfortable with the characteristics of this society.

Did your personal history have anything to do with it?

It's probable, too, that it has been a reaction caused by my childhood. Once they asked me whether I'd been happy or not as a child. Actually, it was a neutral childhood - neither happy nor sad. If happiness means that I was able to study, that they dressed and fed me, bought me the books I needed and all that, well...yes, I admit that I never lacked anything. Now, if a happy childhood means realizing your own dreams, selecting your own friends, your hours of play, well...then I wasn't very happy, because since my family had held a certain social position but was somewhat degraded economically... I think I already said something about this...

Yes, the story of your grandfather who suffered that financial crash.

Right. My family couldn't seem to accept the drop in social class and maintained a lifestyle and customs that were of a higher class. Even though they had lost their position, they kept up the external appearances within which they had been brought up and they always sought to come between me and the friends I made spontaneously at school, which they considered unworthy of our social level.

How did your parents live through this situation?

I was coming to that. My liberation came when I was twelve and my father and mother broke free of the family circle and we went off to live by ourselves. That point marks the start of a new life, and if you ask me about my adolescence, I will tell you that it was absolutely happy and free. From that point on, my father had a much greater influence on my upbringing. He assumed a different role because, up to then, remember, he was living under the roof of my grandfather, who was a domineering character around whom everything revolved. But from the time we moved out, my father made the decisions.

How do you remember your father?

He had a very frank and free spirit. Proof of this is that from the age of thirteen, I had the key to the house, and absolute freedom to get home at any hour I wished. At fourteen, I went to Mar del Plata alone on summer vacation. Although that may be common today, back then, it was unheard of. When I was seventeen, I had my own studio in La Boca, which I shared with other painters. Later I had another one on Calle Córdoba, where I practically lived.

Did you work back then?

Yes. I worked from age fourteen on, while continuing my secondary education at night school. My first job was as a messenger for the railroad. Later I worked at the Guillermo Kraft printshop. In 1950, I started working for Banco Francés, and fifteen days later the famous strike began. I entered the bank under the sign of the strike and participated in it. When I was twenty-one, I was already participating in politics and union movements that were in keeping with my ideas. I expanded my union activity, joined the Socialist Party; I was a cooperativist, formed Americanist movements, participated in Socialist Youth Congresses as a delegate; I was a delegate on a clandestine internal commission at the bank, and so on and on...

Considering that we're talking about the latter years of the second Peronist government, in which there was political persecution, didn't your activism get you into trouble?

Well...in the Peronist era I was arrested in 1952, but only for 48 hours, since I was a minor. I remember another episode in which they set off a bomb at a political rally led by Alfredo Palacios (9) in Constitución. I was there with Tiglio and Rivara, and in the middle of the rally, the bomb went off on the speakers' stand. We all took off running. We dived under some cars. A gunfight broke out and the police charged. It was a mess... We just stayed there under the cars until the shooting died down and we could get out and get away.

So besides being your teacher, Tiglio was also your comrade on a political level.

Yes, Tiglio also had socialist leanings. Actually, just about all of the guys from the neighborhood and the studio were socialists.

Decades later, we lived through much bloodier stages that reached their peak during the self-styled “National Reorganization Process” imposed by the military. How did you live through the dictatorship and those “burning years” in Argentina?

Well, I think all of us Argentines, at that time, lived in exile. Some emigrated and others just withdrew into themselves. In any case, it was very tough, very unpleasant. I don't want to talk about myself or boast about attitudes. These are decisions in which personal circumstances have a great bearing on each and every case. I had to leave the country and others had to stay. I went to Uruguay for awhile, but I couldn't stand it. I said to myself that if something was going to happen to me, let it happen, but in my own country. Other than that, and as a general rule, I've never sent paintings to the Salones Nacionales during military governments. Only during democratic ones. The first time was in 1961 under the Frondizi administration. At any rate, I must confess that the (last) military government was a bit of a paradox in my case. As a result of the coup, I was forced to leave the bank in 1976. In all the time I worked there, I only did about six or seven shows. When I left, I was able to devote myself entirely to painting and teaching. Seen from that point of view, you could almost say that, in a way, they did me a favor.

Did working in the bank, with its routine of numbers and paperwork, conflict somehow with your artistic vocation?

Well, I was certainly never a “coat and tie” bank teller type. But back then, bank jobs weren't as all-absorbing as they are today. It was freer then. There was a different concept with regard to labor relations. Although, even then there were inanities like the lustrina coat, which was the reason I initiated my union activity. See, we started this protest...

Wait, sorry, I didn't get that. What kind of a coat?

Lustrina. The lustrina coat was a gray jacket with black sleeves you could put on and take off, designed to keep you from getting your shirt cuffs dirty. Some other workmates and I started a movement to refuse to wear them. We went to work in shirtsleeves, without jackets. It was a tug o' war with bank management. You'll wear the jacket! Oh no we won't! That sort of thing for fifteen days, until finally, we managed to get them to agree to our working in shirtsleeves. It was the first bank to produce this reaction, which later extended to all the others. With this example, I only want to show that I was never a typical bank worker. I was an honest worker, to be sure. I was a teller, and although my head was always in the clouds, I was never off on my balance. I belonged to an old unionist school. First I finished my work and turned in the key to my cashbox, and only then did I take up my union activities.

Was that a period of major labor conflict?

Yes. We battled for three years because they had taken a bonus away from us. It was a hard fight, including threats, but we won out in the end. The bank had to pay, and from then on, it became an acquired right of the bank's staff, which was the first to have a share in a company's earnings based on a ministerial decision. To say nothing of the fact that we started the bank's own club, organized an afternoon snack break and achieved other social conquests as well. The only struggle we lost was for the library. In 1956, we tried to start one, and management opposed the idea. As a protest, a group of us who liked to write and paint started a magazine called “Ensayo Cultural”. We interviewed personalities like Astor Piazzolla, Héctor Negro, Onofre Lovero, Julio Mafud, Tiglio, Francisco Petrone, etc. First its circulation was limited to the bank, but then it began to be distributed to the public, up to 1972, when we published the last issue, number forty-two.

Sixteen years of existence has to be some kind of a record for an independent cultural magazine.

I wouldn't doubt it. At first, we survived thanks to Tiglio's contribution. He donated a painting for us to sell. With that, we were able to put together a little capital that provided us with some autonomy, so as not to have to depend so much on economic accidents and advertising sales.

How did you get along economically after you left the bank?

Well, Rivara and I already had a workshop for artists with quite a few students and I devoted all of my time to painting and teaching.

When did you start teaching?

In 1971. From then until I left the bank, all we charged the students were the studio's running costs.

So you had a vocation for teaching.

Yes. I greatly admired the work of Torres García and Edgardo Ribeiro, who traveled around the towns in the interior of Uruguay teaching and organizing workshops. I understood that it was an inescapable task, something I had to do. But...I spent a long time going round and round planning the whole thing, until one day, at a show in the Moretti Gallery in Montevideo, Edgardo (Ribeiro) said to me: “Okay, enough already! When you go back to Buenos Aires you open your workshop. And don't come back to see me until you've done it!” What could I do? It was a direct order. So when I got back to Buenos Aires, Rivara and I founded our first workshop. The studio was on Calle Piedras and we called it (Taller) Río de la Plata.

Who were your first students?

The first ones came from a group of followers from our exhibitions. Relatives, acquaintances, neighbors, the people closest to us. But then the number of students began to grow. One person brought another, and those brought still others. The process began to generate other expectations.

What do you mean by that?

I mean, the students put something of themselves into it. When you teach, you transmit something, but the student also has to make a contribution. It's a two-way street. You can teach the craft, the ABCs, but that's not enough. The student has to have some kind of curiosity or some talent so that what one teaches permits him or her to fly, and then one can experience the indescribable satisfaction of watching that person grow. Not all of them manage it.

The First Exhibitions.

Returning to the subject of your own painting, when and under what circumstances did you have your first exhibit?

It was in 1967, eighteen years after I started studying drawing and painting. It was at the Galeria van Riel, a joint show with Rivara.

I understand that by that time you were already married.

That's right. In 1966, I married Josefa Cejo Rial, a co-worker, who then became a dear companion in my life. She was from the interior of the country, the town of Quiroga in Buenos Aires Province. My daughter, Maria Silvia, who supports me in all of my new endeavors and in my restlessness, was born in 1968.

You did your first solo exhibition when you were thirty-four and had started your studies when you were eighteen. The fact that you let such a long time pass seems noteworthy.

Yes, but it was only then that I felt my work was ready to be shown. I didn't show works from my early stage because they were influenced by Tiglio. Due to excessive self-criticism, I suppose, I decided not to exhibit...or perhaps I simply didn't dare.

What kind of painting did you exhibit at that first show?

I was at a second stage -“constructivist-post-cubist”. What I mean to say by this is that my painting was “constructed” in the sense that it laid down structural lines, geometrized, composed, the colors were orderly, tonal, linked to one another, but all of this took place within a framework of freedom, of an unorthodox cubism and beyond that movement.

How did you get to that stage?

There were certain things that led up to it. In 1962, I participated in a group exhibition with a picture that showed a La Boca landscape with a highly constructive resolution.

Do you still have that painting?

No, I don't know where it is now. One should hold onto the pictures that constitute milestones in one's career. Since then, I have. I believe that painting was premonitory, because that picture which I painted in 1962 would, years later, prove to be a mode of expression that constituted the second stage in my painting.

Your debut as an exhibitor was really auspicious, since back then, the van Riel Gallery was really important and always backed artists that represented renewal

Yes, it was one of the most traditional and prestigious galleries. It was on Calle Florida between Viamonte and Tucumán. The rounds of the galleries that we did I recall as one of the pleasantest times of my youth. We were a group of people that were interested in painting, from the workshop or just plain workmates, and others that came from outside and joined in. These rounds often ended up at Galería Bonino and the Institute of Modern Art.

What kind of repercussions did your show have?

I was fortunate, even economically-speaking, although that's an anecdote in itself. The fact is that exhibits offer a response for the spirit; an encounter with other beings who, as Torres García says, are attuned to the same tuning fork. It was at that show that I met Héctor Francia (10), who later, and until his death, became a close, life-long friend.

What about the professional critics?

The critics were never pitiless. They always treated me well. Even in my early showings a favorable commentary always appeared in the newspapers or came out on the radio.

Although you may consider it anecdotal, do you mind telling me who your first buyers were?

Well, the exhibition was over. It was Saturday and I was taking my paintings down. All of the sudden a man and a young woman appeared in the gallery. The man says to me: “No, wait! Don't take them away! I came with my daughter during the week and we want to choose one for her and one for me.” That's the way it was and the buyer was Judge Tedin.

A renowned personality in the Argentine Judiciary.

Yes, and a great collector too. It gave me great satisfaction, especially considering that it was my first show. It wasn't my first sale, nevertheless. It was funny how the first one happened. I had sent a painting to the Autumn Salon of the SAAP (11). As frequently happens with these salons, there was a large number of participants and part of the work had to be shown in an adjoining room, which, in reality, was the workshop of a tailor who had let them borrow it. I went to the opening with Francisco Petrone (12). And I found my painting there in that adjoining room that was empty except for a woman on security duty. I got close to the painting and saw that it had a sign on it that said “Sold”. Since nothing like this had ever happened to me before, I thought: “I know, my buddies from the bank came by and put this sign on it.” I even apologized to Petrone: “Sorry, Don Francisco, it's a joke my friends are playing on me.” I walked over to the lady who was guarding the room and said: “How can you let people get away with these things?” She looked annoyed and said: “Just what do you mean by that?, How dare you? Who are you, anyway?” I said: “I happen to be the painter of that picture.” And she said: “Oh, so you're the painter, are you? Well then, I should tell you that the buyer is the editor of the Jewish newspaper and that he wanted to meet you.” That was my first sale.

That really is funny. Now, that show in which you abandoned of the influences of your teacher and felt the time was ripe for you to show your work leads me to a question: When does one become a painter? More concretely, is there a moment in which one who is working with paintbrushes, delving into art, studying, practicing and so on, 'graduates' as a painter? Or is it a process in which this kind of clear-cut guideposts are impossible to establish?

No, I don't think any such thing exists, because it would be like reaching some point of termination. You just want more all the time. You're never satisfied. Once Tiglio said to me (in that way he had of saying really important things or giving the best advice at the most surprising times and in the oddest places): “One always has doubts, but do you know when you start feeling the most self-assured? When you come to the place where you can change a picture, transform it. It's when you're working with something that doesn't look like it's going to come out, and you make it come out. That's when you feel that you're dominating the craft, the language, that you're creating, that out of thin air you can create an image.” And that's the way it is. You start to realize that you've got certain control over the medium, although that alone doesn't make you a good painter.

And based on that control you can predict the results.

Yes, well, you know something is going to come out. That's something that takes years. It doesn't come quickly. But even when you become more self-assured as to how to work, you have to be aware that you never really “graduate” as a painter. And if somebody believes that, he's finished, his creative cycle is over. A humble attitude has to be maintained from the first moment until the end of one's life. Rouault titled his self-portrait "Apprentice Laborer". The best example resides in that title.

So learning is continuous?

We're always learning. And then there's something more: One begins to have a feeling that, to some extent, one's work is going to be noticed. You begin to have an interest in exhibiting because you're sure your work is of value, that what you're doing is of some use to others. Of course, these different stages don't come systematically. They are deeply personal and very serene events.

A Traveler's Impressions.

You've made several trips abroad, in the Americas and Europe. What impressions have they made on you?

I've made three trips to Europe and the experience of finding myself standing before the works of the masters of universal culture, with which I was only familiar through reproductions, was quite moving. Nevertheless, after the initial impression, I gradually began to get the feeling that I had very little to do with that reality, which I perceive as somewhat stratified. The Americas, while full of defects, give me the impression of something loaded with strength, something virginal, where everything is still to be done, where there's a pulsating will to grow, to change reality, as if we were moving through adolescence toward maturity.

Nevertheless, faced with the current flatness and indifference of the local market, can't going abroad be seen as a valid alternative for an Argentine painter?

From my point of view, I believe that an artist must tend, first of all, to express himself within the environment in which he was born and reared, get to be known among his compatriots and contemporaries. Furthermore, I don't think the foreign market for Latin America should be over-dimensioned. Europeans tend to look at everything non-European as “typical” and with certain reservations. The standard is European, but it's based on a lack of knowledge and I don't think that it's correct. Latin American art is in fashion right now, but because they see it as “typical”. They degrade it. A prejudiced viewpoint degrades what's being viewed. At international shows like ARCO, the Europeans marvel at River Plate and Brazilian art. But they continue to think that what's “normal” is European art.

The Zapping Culture.

Whenever you go to a gallery or museum nowadays, you can't help but notice how, with few exceptions, people “stroll” past the paintings. You begin to ask yourself if maybe the people aren't practicing something similar to zapping (with TV channels), just passing from one picture to the next and so on down the line.

Yes, that's absolutely true, but it's completely in line with current canons by which the public picks up bits of information of all kinds. The worst thing about this culture in which we jump from one thing to another without taking the time to stop on any one thing for awhile is that it's making us lose one of the most important achievements of the human intellect, the capacity to concentrate, to criticize and to observe. Zapping has become a highly ingrained trend in our attitudes: We don't limit zapping to the TV, but pass it on to reading. Unless it's a very light bestseller, actually reading a book, concentrating on the author's thoughts, the story being told, the metaphors being employed, has become a long, hard, winding, uphill road. We prefer to skip chapters or go directly to the end of the story. We read newspaper headlines, not the articles anymore, since, with few exceptions, the newspaper itself is designed so that the headline tells the story, the lead paragraph repeats the head and contains a little more information, and if we read the entire story, we see that it's an “extensive” repetition of what we already learned in the “lead”. But zapping is also being applied to learning. Today people want to spend three months in this workshop and three months in that one and by the end of a year they consider themselves proficient in drawing, painting, etching and sculpture, and are even thinking about setting up a workshop of their own to teach. In the case of looking at a painting -and that's what we're talking about- the general rule remains the same. We don't observe it, we don't back off from it to get an impression of the work as a whole, and much less do we get up close and analyze particular fragments of it, so as to discover the technique, the richness of the medium, the gesture, the brushstroke. For a large proportion of viewers, the difference between the painting and the TV is that, in the case of the painting, it's the spectator that must move and not the images that make their way across the screen as the viewer sprawls comfortably on the couch.

Friendships.

You said that Francisco Petrone was with you when you went to the SAAP show. Were you referring to the great Argentine actor of that name?

Yes, the same. We were very good friends, a beautiful friendship that I...let cool off. I stopped seeing him due to those silly things one does. They had named him director of Channel 7 TV and there were certain things I wanted back then and I was afraid if I went to see him, he might think I just wanted to ask him some favor or something. So in order to keep him from thinking that, so as to avoid any misunderstanding between us, I quit getting together with him. I regretted it later because I never saw him alive again. Shortly afterward, he died.

You've repeatedly mentioned Rivara and how he shared different stages of your life with you. Who is he and what was that friendship like?

When my parents moved to Calle Tacuari, I hooked up with a group of young people, who usually met in front of the bakery of Don Iglesias, El Sol de Oro, it was called. Among others in that group were Martinez (later an actor), Pollaccia (who became a writer), the Rivara brothers (who were to be painters), as well as a lot of others from a broad range of interests and professions -aviators, doctors, office workers, business people, soccer players, referees and lawyers. Almost all of them were inveterate dancers and billiard players, part of the cult of porteña nightlife. The bonds of deep friendship continue to unite me with all of those people that I just named, but with Jorge Rivara, it's something different. We were destined to be brothers in dreams and we've shared many important events in our lives. Even today, we continue to share a common activity in art.

Made in River Plate.

Back then, in the 1950s, who were the most renowned artists?

Although it's difficult to name names, because you always end up leaving people out without wanting to, in the '50s, the ones that were already artists of renown were Spilimbergo, Daneri, Lacámera, Victorica. Later came Tiglio, Russo, Libero Badii, Butler, Diomede, Gambartes, among others. And then there were also the artists who founded the magazine Arturo: Enio lommi as a sculptor, Alfredo Hlito, Tom's Maldonado, Gyula Kosice, Raúl Lozza -who later generated his own movement, known as Perceptismo- and a Uruguayan, Arden Quin. That generation of painters and sculptors was one of the most important ones the country ever had. Nevertheless, just as is the case today, they never got enough exposure. Despite how valuable they were, they remained almost totally confined to Buenos Aires. Later, in the '60s, came the Di Tella Institute and a movement called “New Figuration”.

Was the art public more or less numerous than today?

More numerous. There was public response. Many more people went to exhibitions. There was an interest. An art market was developing rapidly in Argentina. It's probable that back then the art collector with a certain level of knowledge was more prevalent than the capital investor.

Do you consider that Argentine painting back then was of a quality level to be shown abroad?

Of course it could be shown, and with great dignity. Argentine painting had come of age. Local artists dominated their media and were on a level with the best. It was no longer necessary for them to go to Europe to learn. They already knew.

That's fine as far as the technique and the craft go. But I'm asking about image. Was it an image of its own or did it continue to be a tributary of European movements?

In many cases, it was still a tributary of universal painting currents. But in others, there was also the expression of something particular, as expressed by the more local artists. Gambartes, an abstract painter linked to the mythical beliefs of the Littoral region; Policastro, quite singular.

The art movement of Americanist origin in which you are included has a highly recognizable image and spirit.

The thing is that the work of the River Plate artists contains certain particularities. I recall one exhibition at which a woman came up to me and said: “Look here Delmonte, I don't understand much and I never completely liked abstract art, but when I saw these paintings of yours I said to myself: “These are abstracts that are different from any I saw in Europe. They've got nothing to do with European abstracts.” (Delmonte laughs). Another time they asked me: “What kind of reason can we give for stating that your painting is American?” I said I couldn't give any specific reason, that what interested me was based on something emotional, on the image, the choice of color, which might permit the spectator to feel that what he or she were looking at is American. An American creation, but current, not merely a copy of formulas or forms that were created on the basis of certain beliefs, that were in fashion at a certain time and place. Trying to transfer these forms into the present would be an act of cultural violence.

Could you, then, state that there currently exists a truly Latin American art, with its own features and characteristics, but which, at the same time, does not ignore its European heritage?

On this question, it's important to distinguish between what one likes, one's personal preferences, and reality. The true objective is for the different currents to coexist. It cannot be stated that one is predominant over the others. But I feel that the one that has the most interesting creators is the one that drinks from the stream of all things American, from the poetry of America. Some of the biggest names in American art belong to this current of thought: Wifredo Lam, Tamayo, Szyszło, our own Gambartes, Torres García, etc. Then there is another type of painting based on “local image”, generally on the reproduction of landscapes and customs, which has also provided major names like our painters Daneri, Lacámera, Policastro, Figari, Gómez Cornet. And then too, there are the artists that have practically transferred the characteristics of the most important schools, first of Europe and then of the United States, to the (rest of) the Americas: This is the case of Raúl Russo, Petorutti, Del Prete, Butler, Spilimbergo, Aquiles Badii, etc. Many of them were educated in Europe, in the school of André Lhote or were students of Othon Friesz. And then, finally, there is the trend that copies and repeats here the “novelties” and “fashions” that emerge elsewhere.

Why is it that we don't lend importance to and promote our own cultural expressions, as is done in other American nations?

I don't think there's a general kind of answer for that. I think you have to distinguish between the cases of countries like Mexico, Brazil and Uruguay, which have sustained a coherent cultural policy over the course of long years and which has led them to export their culture, and those of Argentina, Bolivia or Chile, where this hasn't occurred. I believe that this phenomenon responds to the historical fact that those other countries have had a ruling class that has been aware of the value of the nation's own culture, as in the case of the Mexican Revolution. Diego Rivera, Orozco, Siqueiros were all assigned the task of painting murals in public buildings, so as to disseminate, through art, certain events of the Mexican Revolution. And this policy of giving importance to the cultural act has survived right up to the present. The Argentine ruling class, meanwhile, has no awareness of cultural value. When there's a budgetary problem to be solved here, the first allocations to be cut are those for culture, health and education. We consider culture an expense, while, in point of fact, culture, public health and education are investments. As long as our ruling class fails to review this stance, our decadence is going to become more and more pronounced, even if, economically speaking, our books balance.

Painting and Teaching Painting.

You're a painter who writes about art or events connected with art. Have you written a story or a poem?

Yes, yes (Delmonte laughs), I've tried. Some of the things I've written weren't serious. I just had fun making fun of myself. But others sought to be dramatic, like a story that described the circumstances of an office worker.

What was it about?

Well, I perceived those hopes that beat in the hearts of many employees to become the boss or the manager one day, those sort of minor in-house ambitions. I also observed everything they did to try to reach that goal. In the story, a man becomes more and more pusillanimous, resigning himself to making ever greater concessions on the ideals he once held. And what for? All of a sudden, he dies one day, and nobody even remembers him. His mourning relatives receive a flower arrangement from the bank where he worked and on the office bulletin board, an announcement is put up for a single day: “John Doe died” - period. This was all he got in exchange for all of his zeal.

Did you publish the story in that magazine, Ensayo Cultural?

No, no, I didn't have the audacity.

Didn't you ever make any further incursions into literature?

No, except for a few poems I “committed” (he laughs) and that I didn't keep because I didn't think them of any value. But, I do, in fact, write regularly. It's a way of getting things that are unfair or inappropriate off my chest. And I also write when I'm asked to present a catalog. I keep what I write about art, and some of the things I do on social to pics. What happens with poetry is similar to what happens with painting. García Lorca said that there were poets who had “enchantment” and others that didn't. That really goes for everything that has to do with creation in the field of metaphors, symbols born of the spirit and directed to the spirit. Poetry is metaphorical and so is painting. That's why poets and painters often make good friends and act together in artistic or social movements. These things call for the creator's having this "enchantment". I'm aware of the fact that what happened to me with those poems I wrote is what happens to the poets who have no “enchantment”. I remember attending literary get-togethers in which poetry was read, and each one in turn listened to him or herself and was moved to tears, while everybody else sat their bored to death, but, well, it was mostly a pretext for us all to get together and drink coffee. I always had the feeling that this was the case with my own poetry. Perhaps it was capable of making me break down and weep when I read it, but it didn't move a hair on anybody else. (Delmonte laughs). So, I think you have to try to see things objectively. Maybe I'm good at painting, and maybe I can even write, say, an article to get the things that bother me off my chest and keep myself off the psychiatrist's couch. But you have to get to know your own limits. I can go just so far, but if I go past that point and attempt to write a story or a poem, then I have to submit to the judgment of those who know the language of literature and admit that, in that area, I'm lacking “enchantment”. Knowing the craft of the painter or poet only serves as a means of permitting the “enchantment” to manifest itself, if one happens to have it. The craft helps one not to do things that are foolish, but it's not enough for the creation of works of art.

Does that signify that the teaching of painting can only transmit knowledge of the craft and certain rules, but that it can't make a painter of someone who doesn't have the knock for it?

Well, said in that way, it sounds pretty dramatic. Teaching should awaken two things in the student: first, respect for the craft, which is a necessary condition for anything that may come afterward. But it's also a matter of working on the inner life of each and every student o the sensitivity, that "enchantment" which one can help build or which will manifest itself. The activity of the person that teaches should be based on what one can suggest to another person, in order to contribute to that person's human and artistic growth. More than teaching the act of painting, it should be a matter of taking charge of the formation of the inner world of the student with appropriate comments, talk, good music, good books. Everything that can possibly accompany the teaching of the language of art is an important part of the (student's) formation.

Are you selective with your students? When you realize that one of them lacks the necessary capacity, do you say so frankly?

In the beginning, yes, I was pretty demanding, and when such cases presented themselves, I used to suggest that the student not come back anymore, explaining that he or she simply didn't have what it took. But later I had an experience that made me change. It was the case of a student that simply had no aptitude. Nothing worked with him. So I finally decided to tell him that it didn't make sense for him to keep coming to the workshop. Nevertheless, it just happened that some of the other students got wind of my decision ahead of time and made me see that the workshop filled a void in this student's life and that if he were told he couldn't come any longer, the damage this would cause would be much more serious than simply telling him he had not artistic talent. That episode, and others that happen over the course of one's life, made me gradually change my criterion. An influence in this change was what Saint Augustine teaches about accepting other men as they appear before us: If they appear good we accept them. If they appear bad, we don't. But once accepted, there are several possibilities we must admit to. One of these is that it's not of such capital importance that the students actually become artists, and that perhaps it is much more important that they have the experience of moving within a medium that will permit them to live well, and if that's the case, then I'm nobody to deny someone else this possibility.

Does it often occur that students seek to copy the teacher? What's the attitude you take toward a student whom you find is painting “in the style of Delmonte”?

Well, I certainly don't encourage that sort of attitude. Nevertheless, I take my time, to permit the student to, little by little, cut that kind of umbilical cord. An obsession with being “just like” someone else is condemned to failure. You can be “similar to...” but never “just like...”, because when you conscientiously learn a craft, you do not run the risk of transferring beyond normal similarity (to your work), because sooner or later, your own personality comes to the surface. Anthropology teaches us that Man learns by two methods: trial and error, and imitation. However, I'm also careful not to fall into an error which is typical of this century and which consists of not admitting any criterion of similarity whatsoever. It is only natural that when we participate in a given activity, we should absorb the influence of the group or individual who transmits knowledge to us. The need to emulate the person who cares for us or to whom we are closest is something which is part of human nature itself and cannot be denied. Earlier, I talked in reference to my own case about the “legitimate influence” I received from my teachers. I think it's worthwhile taking another look at what we mean by “influence”. In a first approach, we have to consider that Man is history: We come from something and develop that something from which we come and so the cycle repeats itself from generation to generation. The fact is that we are not born to create something new everyday. So, wanting to be original from the outset or even as quickly as possible is absurd. Originality will come in due time, if it's going to come at all. I'm repeating the words of Torres when I say that personality is like a shadow: when you chase it flees and when you forget it, it accompanies you.

How do you live experiences together with your students? For example, do you share the frustrations, which they surely must have?

Well, frustration is something anybody who teaches should take for granted. But pedagogic activity practiced with total authenticity constitutes a really enriching experience and such a commitment that it aids me both spiritually and in terms of art at such. As the years go by, I realize that it is in the workshop, in the company of students that were and are my favorites, that love for and sincerity in art are present. Thus, it is obvious that a relationship based on such infrequently found values leads me to live their achievements and hopes as if they were my own. Beyond this, there is an obvious fact: My student days were different from those of students twenty-four years ago when I began teaching. And times were different then from now. In the past forty or fifty years, there have been noteworthy changes in society. What I said before is a clear example: Tiglio used to set up a still-life model and we'd be painting it for six months, a hundred and one times over. And we accepted that as something normal. My first students spent two years just learning how to draw. Only after they showed a certain dominion over drawing did they start, very gradually, to paint. Nowadays, on the other hand, achievement has to be immediate. There's no road to be traveled, there's nothing to learn, they already know everything, and I don't think that's a good thing. They come to the workshop and want to start painting right away, and if I dare ask them to repeat a still-life, they say, “No, I already painted that model,” as if, in reality, the next day that object were the same, bearing in mind that, perhaps, it's another time of day, or another type of light, or another angle. And even the subject itself has been transformed in that time-span! It's the very lack of predisposition on the part of the students themselves that ends up discouraging one. You get no echo from what you're trying to teach and awaken in the other person. You see that it's useless to try to teach a craft, live with certain principles, dream, imagine, generate ideas and Utopias. It's useless because there's no response. The yearnings of many young people take paths that are very different from the roads one has traveled oneself.

Despite this fact, do you still form enduring relationships with your favorite students during the time from the start of their studies they become developed painters?

I establish lasting relationships with my students because I've always felt committed to what I am capable of teaching and to the desires and deeds of the people with whom I share my life. I can't conceive of the possibility of reducing the relationship with those who go through my workshop to a simple “commercial teaching” connection, which expires when the teaching process ends. On the contrary, I believe that the relationship with the majority of my students will remain alive forever because it is born of the concept of the workshop as a center of irradiation, of convergence, of friendship and of solidarity.

Did you ever feel that your teaching job interfered with or harmed your creative activity?

Absolutely not. To my mind, the task of teaching is absolutely creative.

Painting Won't Kill You…

How do you see the development of art from here on?

Art has always suffered the alternatives of history. The current stage is pretty negative for art, which is not to say that it has come to an end or anything of the sort. I simply mean we're going through an historical period in which art does not have a place of predominance. We're still dragging the positivism of the nineteenth century, and the twentieth century is the technological era. But these are just moments in history. Surely, the pendulum will swing back the other way, and the arts and humanities will retake their rightful place.

I have the impression that, despite technical advances, many people are, paradoxically enough, interested in art and practice it to an ever greater extent.

This is linked to what I said before. What you say is true, but it's because this activity is ever less demanding (Delmonte laughs). Today nobody feels inhibited. There are more and more people painting and sculpting, but this activity is accompanied by a growing disinterest in the craft or the materials. It's worth mentioning the etymology of saber (the Spanish word for “to know”), which comes from sabore (flavor/taste). This means that in its origins, knowledge was associated with “flavor” or the taste for learning. A lack of interest in learning is a lack of consideration for one's own self, for others and for what art represents in the life of Mankind.

But at the same time, there's something positive about people's concern with art, and particularly about their practicing it, no matter how good or bad they might be.

The thing is, the production of artists doesn't pose a threat to society. Painting won't kill you. If it did, we'd surely have a new holocaust on our hands (he laughs). Let's look at an example: If you decide you want to be a pilot, you'll know that there's a long road ahead of you, strewn with difficulties that you're going to have to overcome. You're going to have to go to a flying school, where you'll undergo rigorous training that you're going to have to accept with good will. You'll have an instructor and you'll have to obey orders. You'll have to memorize his instructions and copy his movements to the letter. Only after long practice and study will you become self-assured enough to obtain your wings. But that's still not going to be enough. Nobody gets a job with a commercial airline immediately; they don't just hand you a Boeing full of passengers to fly. Neither the company nor the passengers, not even you yourself will want to take any unnecessary risks. Before piloting that Boeing, you're going to have to acquire experience and fly a certain number of hours. It's a good combination: experience, skill, and all before hand, because you pay for a lack of knowledge with your life. So you have to study, and clock “flight hours”. Compare that with current studies in the field of art. And the attitude applied to study is also applied to exhibiting. It all denotes a paucity of work and background. People with almost no “flight hours” participate in salons and biennials. Moreover, this is talked about as if it were worthy of merit and is praised. Just imagine if painting could kill! Toward the end of 1960, the house we lived in was put up for sale, and in 1961, my father died. Then there was the problem of where my mother and I were going to live. I needed money to buy a place, but in order to paint, I had never accepted having more than one job. Back then, there was a lot of work and most people had two jobs, and even worked Saturdays and Sundays in order to buy a house, a car, and so on. I always figured that people who did that got used to a certain standard of living and to an income which was hard to give up later on. I decided not to work anyplace else, so I sold everything I had: cameras, a great big tape-recorder (the type with the spools), my Salvat encyclopedic dictionary, my entire library. I sold everything. I hung onto my job. With the pesos I got from the things I sold, I was able to make the down payment they were asking for on our place, and after that, I paid by the month. Thus, by sacrificing, I was able to buy the apartment where my mother and I lived, without having to give up my sacred painting time.

The Profound Reasons Behind The Task.

Why paint? What are the profound reasons that lead one to paint?

An initial approach is related to genetics. In my genes there are those I inherited from my great-grandfather. Even as a small boy, I had a very spontaneous inclination to draw. But leaving this genetic link aside, the fact is that I've always had an intense need to express myself and I've channeled it by means of painting. Beyond this, in every attempt at expression through the plastic arts, and particularly in the case of painting, there are two things that are important: knowing how to see -acquiring visual experience- and dominating the technique and craft, or in other words, having a docile hand that responds to feelings and thoughts. Then, as knowledge of the craft progresses, the motivations behind the election of this activity are strengthened. Behind the technique, there is something interior, that I don't know exactly what it is or how to call it -a strength or vitality, perhaps- which drives everything and creates the yearning to investigate, to know, to learn. The need to paint grows, not for oneself or for the simple vanity of knowing how to do something, but as a means of communicating with others.

That would appear to be the point at which the artist reaches maturity.

Well, it's at least from that point on that he gains a greater awareness of what he's doing and becomes more self-critical and responsible. He knows that he's not painting for the simple pleasure of the dilettante and that even when a lucid part of the activity is conserved, it is fundamentally a need to communicate thoughts, ideas, emotions, which may be of some service to those to whom they are directed. A painting is like a message in a bottle thrown into the sea with the hope that someone else will fish it out and that, between us, we will help each other to grow, live, awaken or think together.

Faced with this communicative objective of painting, the fact cannot be ignored that, in this century, a barrier appears to have been erected between the artist and the public. The common observer feels perplexed when faced with the innovative movements that had given an identity to the century.

That's true, and it responds to two specific elements. All activity, no matter what it might be, requires prior knowledge in order to understand it. The artist gradually attains the necessary knowledge in his field, his language, his activity. There can be little doubt that this growth does not come in unison with the majority of other people. In this case, knowledge and experience belong to the artist who has worked long years to develop his form of expression.

Should the spectator decode the artist's language, then?

Nothing more and nothing less. One discovers that as one grows internally and in knowledge of the language, one begins to move into fields that, for many, are incomprehensible. The person who has not studied the contemporary code of communication will find that he likes a work or doesn't, is surprised by it or isn't, is touched by it or left completely cold, What he won't be able to do is understand it. In order to gain an understanding of certain activities you have to study. That's the way science is and that's the way art is.

Prior preparation for the understanding of plastic language is one of the elements, but you mentioned two. What's the other one?

Communication: The so-called “channel of communication”. The act of human communication supposes that there is a sender on one end and a receiver on the other. In the middle of the two, there has to be some kind of vehicle, a transmitter, via which what the sender expresses gets to the receiver. That vehicle is the channel of communication and I doubt that, at present, it is adequate. If communication were fluid, if it had a proper course to travel, it is probable that the barrier between the observer and the artist would be much less imposing. There has been a reduction in the number of people visiting galleries and, in general, the traditional places in which the artist communicates with the viewer through his work. A suspicion thus emerges that the channel of communication might no longer be a proper one or that, in the best of cases, it requires modification.

Is this communication two-way? I mean to say, does the artist also receive a message from the viewer?

Of course. Every act of communication covers the trajectory from the sender to the receiver and the latter, in turn, develops this message, recycles it and retransmits it as a cultural deed. The issuer receives it through deeds, commentaries, attitudes, through different circumstances and via various means, and thus the artist is enriched and feels impelled to transmit new messages. This is a relationship that prospers by virtue of its own dynamics, providing itself with feedback in the comings and goings.

Does education have a role to play within this framework?

Of course. In addition to the problem of the channel of communication, there is the problem of education. The language of art is not adequately taught. It's only been over the course of the past few years that the teaching criteria for plastic arts and music in schools has started to be updated, and, truthfully, only slightly. The theories of Herbert Read (13) on art education are better than thirty years old, and yet, it has only been in the last ten or fifteen years that they are being proposed in some sectors of the education system. This signifies that what creators did at the beginning of the century won't start to be studied until the century’s end. We're 90 years behind. The plastic arts education that we've received comes from the Renaissance, and even today, it is that communication code, which was in effect four hundred years ago, that is being taught. So, we can hardly expect the communication code developed by the contemporary artist to be understood. It would be as if you had learned English instead of Spanish when you were a child and then they sent you to Buenos Aires, and you get here and don't understand a thing. The basis for all communication resides in the issuer and receiver's being able to handle the same language and its codes. If not, it'll be impossible for them to understand each other. Deficient artistic education has led to a sort of “visual illiteracy”, consisting in a lack of knowledge of the basic elements of the plastic language in every period and place. At this point in time, we've reached a level of “literacy” that permits us to differentiate between hands painted by Titian and hands painted by El Greco. In both cases, we're talking about “paintings of hands”. Nevertheless, we would never think of saying, “Oh! So El Greco and Titian painted alike because they both painted hands.” We've learned that the hands painted by El Greco contain differences when compared with those painted by Titian. Up to this point, visual knowledge has been attained. But when we're considering twentieth century painting and we look at an arrow painted by Torres García and another one by Paul Klee, we tend to say: “Oh! So Torres García paints like Klee, because they both paint arrows.” That happens because we still don't have enough experience with and knowledge of the visual code for this century. We can't manage to differentiate, in plastic terms, the distinct intentions and resolutions that exist in “a Paul Klee arrow” and “a Torres García arrow”, when, in fact, they bear differences similar to the ones that exist between “El Greco hands” and “Titian hands”.

In other eras, in the Middle Ages, for example, education only reached very reduced sectors of the population, and yet, art constituted a true communications medium. By means of the frescoes in the churches or in public buildings, the common people understood the art of their time. It formed part of their lives, and no one had taught them anything in this regard.

Despite the differences and shortcomings in education at that time, a common code existed. That theocentric society was founded on thought of all that was held sacred, on the permanent, on the Universal God: All the artist and viewer alike had to transmit to each other was a reciprocal sacred concept, belief in something transcendent. As of the advent of modern thought - as of the Renaissance - the center of the universe was no longer that Universal God. It was transferred to the common man, better said, men. One God was replaced with a multitude of men. With God displaced and replaced by Man, thoughts multiply, because each man begins to express an individual truth. And so, comprehension between men, communication between the issuer and receiver of the message, between the artist and the viewer, becomes much more difficult. This phenomenon was also seen in the field of thought itself. In the old world of the Middle Ages and up to the humanist Renaissance period, people fed on the classic concepts set down by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. But as of the Renaissance, and Descartes, Kant and Hegel, how many philosophical concepts and currents were there? Countless ones. That understanding, which was sustained by great philosophical systems, was broken, perhaps never to be put back together again.

In today's society, where the number of people that go to art museums and galleries is tiny compared with the hundreds of thousands that a rock star can pack into a football stadium, the process of communicating the message between the issuer and the receiver appears difficult to achieve.

Yes, very difficult indeed. There is a media culture that teaches the viewer to contemplate swift images at high speed. This doesn't go at all with art, which, in general, consists of a static image that requires time to go over it, to enter it, to decipher its code, to understand what it is trying to transmit. But, well, that's the way the situation is. As long as there's one viewer left who awakens to that world, I think it's worthwhile.

So does that mean contemporary art will be reduced to an elite?

I don't want to seem repetitive, but art, as we conceive of it today, is a product of the Renaissance. Before, what we refer to as art today was the creation of cultural objects at the service of some objective. The frescoes of the Middle Ages, to which you referred earlier, were destined to teach a mostly illiterate population visually about the life of Jesus Christ and the importance of all things sacred. The artists who painted these scenes didn't do it for an elite. On the contrary, they were filling a social function. As of the Renaissance, an idea began to be generated that art was an autonomous act, linked exclusively to the artist's need to express himself, which was absolutely distinct any that other social function. That's when the idea of “art” first appeared. Among primitive peoples no equivalent term existed for the concept of “art”. It was a question of functional objects or a dish or jug for domestic use, or some ceremonial ceramic work, for instance.

Yes, but those objects, despite being functional, were also beautifully constructed and artistically decorated. Does that mean that the artist always existed?

Yes, the artistic spirit of Man was manifest from very ancient times onward, but the purpose of the object created varied over the course of time. It's true that certain cultural objects were destined to be appreciated by only a small minority. Sometimes they even accompanied a deceased elite in their tombs, but an elite, nonetheless, because nobody could see these objects. But, digressions aside, back then there was something similar to what today we call “popular art” - art produced by the people, for the people's consumption, whether to render homage to the dead, as a religious offering, as tools for regular use or as handicrafts. The great art of olden days was linked to the transcendent and was created by a very special individual who played several roles: a creator, from the standpoint of popular art; a priest, because he developed a ritual; a magician, because through certain actions he could produce certain consequences. The artist brought together a variety of facets: poetry, myth, creation, imagination, ancestral beliefs. Today, on the other hand, the artist has moved away from the transcendental. He exercises no ritual, is at the service of nothing and has separated from God. That's why art is becoming, to an ever greater extent, an object destined to an elite.

"Seeing" The Picture.

Do you think a lot about your paintings? Do you meditate on them before you start?

No. What I need is peace, in order to see, to feel. Reflection comes later. That's why I lock myself away whenever I start a new painting. Once the painting is moving along, I'm no longer so interested in isolation. Then I prefer accompanied solitude. I can accompany myself with good music, or someone close to me, involved in some creative or recreational activity. At some point, we can stop, drink some mates, chat for a while, and then each go back to his own thing.

If you have that initial framework of solitude, do you always manage to “see” the painting?

Generally, yes. But not always. It's a random thing and I don't know what it depends on. A picture can appear out of the blue, or it can take days, months... You just don't know how long. You might go through periods in which you don't feel that all-pervading yearning to paint. Then, it's best to be quiet, not to force things, because, in fact, you are going through another stage of the process. Waiting is a way of painting, because, without one's awareness, the picture is being developed in some corner of the mind or heart, and when the time is right, it will emerge. Obviously, painting isn't mechanical, but occurs only when certain spiritual conditions are given. It must only be done when that moment arrives. Otherwise, there's nothing to say.

Are you talking about what some people call “inspiration”?

Well, I don't like to use terms that are so full of solemnity. These things happen naturally, not only in the artist, but in any thinking man as well. When the mind is blank, and an image suddenly appears, we say that it has been lying in the subconscious and, for some strange reason, it suddenly emerges in our conscious mind. That's what people tend to call “inspiration”. The surrealists sought to place themselves in a state in which things “arrived”. It was what they called “automatism”: The artist was a sort of middleman for his own subconscious. While it is true that there is a certain amount of subconscious in every creative act, it is no less true that, at some point, a balance must be reached between reason and the subconscious.

Do you work on several paintings at a time?

Exactly, and I work on the picture that calls me.

Do you do sketches or rough drafts first?

Sometimes, yes, but they are never paintings in miniature. Rather, they act as triggers. Very seldom do I do a very highly elaborated sketch. I start with a series of lines that insinuate structure. Then, I stand in front of the blank canvas. It might happen that I see that sketch, but other times, I'll see something else. Even on the occasions when I do a more elaborate sketch, I can't transcribe it faithfully into the final picture, which always ends up being different, as if it rebelled and had a life of its own. For my part, I respond to what I feel. I don't force anything.

What's the role of geometry in your painting?

I think that in the final stages of my “constructivist-post-cubist” period, I managed to interpret what Torres García and Juan Gris teach with regard to geometry: Go from the general to the particular, and never vice-versa. In other words, you shouldn't geometrize an object, but first propose a structure, and from that point on, objects, buildings, figures - the forms the structure suggests - will emerge. It also occurs that, when faced with a blank canvas, I see something - a stain on the canvas, for example - and I let myself be carried away by that vision: I design a structure based on almost magical callings provided by the canvas, from the elements, from the materials, from fate in the end, as provided by feelings and ideas.

That reminds me of Picasso's famous “I do not seek, I find.”

Yes, there's a lot of truth in that. Just as there is in the saying, “the artist paints the same picture all his life.” When I look at a picture from twenty or thirty years ago, when the image was still figurative, I ask myself. “What would happen were I to take out the figurative elements so that all that was left would be the lines and planes of color?” And the answer is that those lines and planes would reveal something very much like my current work.

Is your choice of colors based on scientific theory regarding the laws of color, or is it an intuitive resolution?

A little bit of each. A painter may know a lot about color theory, but if he lacks “enchantment”. More precisely: Theory says that yellow is complementary to violet. What it doesn't say is what proportion of yellow should be used in relation to the violet, or even what type of yellow should be used with what type of violet. There are painters that possess great intuition and knowledge of the product (that come) from continuous experience which permit them to see the yellow and to see the violet, along with the adequate proportions of each, according to the expressive need involved. Contrary to this, there are artists who don't have this gift and who don't “see”, even when they may have a firm grasp on the theory. Although color is an important area in the life of the painter, it is not a definitive element in qualifying him as an artist. There are numerous examples of very talented painters, geniuses, in whose work color played no essential role. Here I return to the examples I gave before: the “black painting” of Goya and the painting of the century, Picasso's Guernica.

What material do you most often employ?

Oils. That is what I feel closest to. I like the results they give on the surface and, from a technical point of view, the durability and nobility of oil-paint has been proven over the centuries. But I've also worked with monocopies, engraving, watercolor, pastels and acrylics. I've used every medium in accordance with the expressive need of each stage I've gone through in my development.

How did you start doing abstracts?

It was a combination of circumstances. For one thing, it was an artistic thought that oriented my search toward greater synthesis. And there was a reflexive attitude and a state of mind that can be described as “form revulsion”. These things came together at a given moment to permit me to arrive at abstraction without forcing things. It began to happen in the later part of my “constructivist-post-cubist” period. On putting that idea of going from the general to the particular into practice, I began to design structures and to situate elements in them. From there, I moved toward greater synthesis and, thus, into abstraction, in an evolutionary act that occurred intimately and spontaneously.

You must have made that decision knowing that, by doing so, you were renouncing the sector of the public that seek references to visual exterior reality in a painting.

Yes. I changed even counter to the opinions of my friends and some collectors. I didn't take into account anything which wasn't the image that was taking shape in my interior and which needed to come out. I didn't speculate on the possibility of people's no longer wanting to buy my work or on what would happen from then on. I was absolutely free. I had finished one cycle and was searching for the next.

In some of your paintings I seem to be seeing that the structure is “opening up”, as if the emotional were progressively gaining ground over the structural and as if you were entering another stage. Could that be happening?

Sure, that could be happening. The first steps of change are always pretty tenuous. As I said, my intention is for the work which sustains a certain structure to have a content that evokes images, deeds, feelings. This purpose makes the structure less closed, not so orthodox and, to a certain extent, it would appear at times to contain a certain sensation of imbalance, even leaving open the possibility that life might take place within the image. This is what's happening in the more recent works, in which, whether on purpose or not, the images are more evocative.

I've also seen in some of your works that you are gradually pulling away from flatness. First there were bidimensional constructions and, more recently, sculptures. What can you say about this process?

Well, I studied modeling, so I guess I always had a three-dimensional yearning (he laughs). Furthermore, part of the work that I carried out in the Torres García workshop was based on objects created by assembling pieces of wood. So, once in awhile, I give rein to that vice by making some object that I'd never dare call a “sculpture”, but simply, an “object”.

Does the relationship between the title and the image emerge after the picture is finished?

At different times during the execution. I like to say that you “have to let yourself happen.” And that's exactly what happens in a painting. An idea happens and is modified throughout the elaboration of the work, and this, in turn, leads to something else. The picture is always an unexpected and renewed event and so it is with the titles, which at times appear beforehand, and at others develop along with the painting itself, because as one paints it one begins to experience a certain impression. When that happens one incorporates elements which tend to reinforce this sensation. So the title emerges from the play between the image one is constructing and what is suggested to the artist by that image.

When do you consider that a work is finished? Why do you consider it finished?

Well... That's really a whole separate process for me. When I think I'm pretty well along with a painting, I leave it, “file it”, just as it is. After, say, four or five months, I “unfile it” and evaluate it. If it still satisfies me, I sign it, but I put it away again. I let a few more months pass, and if it still satisfies me, I varnish it. Once it's signed and varnished, I consider it finished. As to why I figure a work is done, it's because it has reached a state which is the most I can achieve with it. But this last process demands a variable time-span. A painting might be concluded in a single workday. Others, on the contrary, might take years. There are paintings that I date with a certain period of years, say, “1995-1998”, because one day I come upon a painting in which the first evaluation made years ago doesn't satisfy me now, or maybe I've changed in the interim...I don't know, but anyway, I discover that the painting isn't finished. So I take it up again and this time, if I finally consider it concluded, I date it with all of the years that passed in between.

Have you ever destroyed a work because you weren't satisfied with it?

Yes, many times. There are works into which one may pour one's best efforts, but they just don't come out. Regardless of the greater or lesser quality of the painter himself, his work has, let's say, a certain average level. When some particular work is below that level, it simply isn't worthy of that artist, and when that happens to me, I destroy the work without giving it a second thought.

On occasion, I've heard you talk about things like “sonority of color” or exclaim while standing before a painting, “This is chamber music!” What relationships do you establish between plastic arts and music or other forms of artistic expression, like poetry, for example?

Well, poetry is linked to a certain act of sensitivity, which may also be present in a painting. The underlying poetry in the painting of Diomede (14), for example, is clearly visible and no viewer can help but notice that it is absolutely sensitive and emotive. Today's painter, and particularly the non-figurative painter, emphasizes certain aspects of the contemporary code. He may make use of them all - and that's why he's in this century - but he will emphasize only certain ones. If we speak of Torres, we're talking about tone and structure, which are what he emphasized. If we talk about Diomede, we're talking about sensitivity, the melodic. Each artist can particularize some element or make use of all of the elements contributed to contemporary art, because, if not, he's not an artist of today.

The use of certain words beyond the limits of their accepted meanings is frequent in the world of art. Is there a vocabulary for the initiated?

Perhaps we use certain words with specific meanings that are different from the common ones. For example, we might say that a picture is a bit “acid”. Now, that doesn't mean that the painting in question has a sour flavor, which would be the common meaning of the term. Rather, we mean that, from a point of view of color, the hues are not well resolved, that there are dissonant colors, or that they have been placed on the surface in excessive quantities. When these dissonant colors are employed in small proportions, they can serve to liven up a zone that is too dull. But when dissonant colors are used in the same proportion as complementary hues, there is a non-harmony that we call “acid or sour sonority”. As for the expression “chamber painting”, it refers to the type of plastic manifestation that is formally simple, intimate but deep in significance, still, austere, stripped. Many paintings by Paul Klee and by our own Diomede, are perfect examples of chamber painting.

It is common to distinguish between “art” and “applied arts”. What do you think about this?

In my own criteria, no such division exists. This is also a product of the Renaissance. It's one and the same activity, that consists of creating objects, which can be paintings or ceramics, or sculptures. or beautifully designed furniture. This discrimination between “greater” and “lesser” arts didn't exist among peoples wrongly referred to today as “primitive”. The distinction was created in the Renaissance era, with the identification of “art” as independent creation. Meanwhile, manually constructed objects that served a concrete need were conceived of as “crafts”.

The Eye Of The River.

That “accompanied solitude” you mentioned earlier, perhaps it's linked to something group-oriented. For a time, you were, together with Julián Agosta (15), Adrián Dorado (16) and, initially, Adolfo Nigro (17), part of a group known as “The Eye of the River”. What was that experience like?

Working in a group is difficult, especially for us. While it's true that individualism has intensified on a worldwide scale, in Argentina it is aggravated by our own history: coups, persecution, kidnappings, black lists, killings. We've gone through long periods of fear and of withdrawing into ourselves, and when we finally break out, we want to impose our own ideas, everything that has been so repressed. Teamwork is just the opposite of this because it implies sharing: sharing ideas and spaces; trying not to overstep our boundaries; not trying to decide for the group; reaching common agreements in which the minority accepts what is proposed by the majority. You need predisposition and practice for that. You need to be humble and not to want to be more than others. Beyond this framework, it is very difficult indeed to advance in a group enterprise.

Be that as it may, “The Eye of the River” produced some important works. I recall, in particular, “Homage to the American Man”, exhibited in the Recoleta Cultural Center for the hundred and fiftieth anniversary celebration.

That was due to the fact that it was a group which shared a criterion with great conviction. It knew what it wanted to do in the way of a cultural manifestation. It was also influenced by the fact that it wasn't formed for all of the usual underlying reasons: like getting together as a means of exhibiting and to gain a position in a certain circle. By the time we formed “The Eye of the River”, we all had galleries in which to exhibit our work and long years in our area of activity. We got together for the sole purpose of sharing concepts, ideas. They were the ideas that later produced things like that installation.

“The Eye of the River” is a very suggestive name. What did all of you have in mind when you thought it up?

Well, we saw it as a symbol of strength and the passage of time, fertility and irrigation, essential elements for our peoples of America. It also proposed to be a creative vision identified with this part of the continent: the two shores of the River Plate, the geographic point at which our common existence unfolded.

The Language of the Twentieth Century and the Poetry of the Place.

They say that art cannot be the object of explanations, that it is a direct relationship between the work and the viewer. Nevertheless, I'd like to venture a question: Could you explain your painting?

I believe, in effect, that art is an experience that transcends reason and cannot be transmitted in words. You can attempt approximations and, within these limitations, it's easy to see at first glance that my painting belongs to the constructivist tendency. But a clarification is in order here: While construction is founded on a rational act, on reason, it is my experience that its purpose is simply to correct emotion. At an intimate level, I don't identify with the creative act that is born exclusively of reason. I always start from sensitivity, and when the image starts appearing in a picture, only then does reason come into play to balance, to correct, to relate the parts with the whole.

So then, we now have one element: “sensitive” construction. Con we call it that?

You could, surely. In other terms, it's what Torres called “sensitive geometry”. A second aspect that I give priority to is respect for the communications code of my time. The incorporation of values that contributed the first “isms” to the twentieth century. This century changed the code that we inherited from the Renaissance and the artist has updated forms, techniques, operating modes freed of all representation. The artist has moved away from the anecdote in order to create in keeping with his needs and dreams. From that point on, the work is conceived as an independent construction, developed, in the case of painting, within a bi-dimensional space, and responding to a sole language: the language of art.

Are there more elements that form part of your painting?

Yes, there are. What's been occupying me in recent years has been an attempt to incorporate the “poetry of the place” - this place, my place, the representation, if possible, of what we are - into the constructive concept and the universal language of twentieth century painting. In the field of anthropology it is said that every human community develops its own customs, beliefs, modes of relationship, because culture is an historical and social product. It is the result of a cumulative and selective process which is gestated and developed over the course of time and whose protagonist is society as a whole and not the activity of Man in isolation. That's why each people have a unique culture, neither better nor worse (than another), simply different. All cultures should be respected. The preservation of the difference between them is what prevents the globalization that unifies and impoverishes Man, because it's what is different and special that enriches universal culture.

You referred earlier to “values”. What are the ones that have characterized the artistic language of the twentieth century?

They are few, but of such singular importance that they produced a substantial change in image. First, the frontal concept, which is identified with the surface of a bi-dimensional support. Second, the utilization of color free of the need to be at the service of the representation of the tones of Nature and of things, acting instead as a factor that give the picture energy. Matter as an expressive factor, providing greater synthesis as well as a movement toward abstraction. The appearance of the real object in collages, in which a cigarette trademark, for example, isn't painted, but rather, the package as such is pasted on the surface, thus incorporating itself into the composition. Kinetic art, with the enunciative intention of movement and time. The light which, until the nineteenth century, indicated the location of an external source that illuminated the scene represented, is now part of the picture itself, it is the light of the painting itself that lights it. Finally, I should point to the sensation of space, as a sensitive part of the formal image, which brings with it a deep feeling full of refinement and silence which acts as a rhythmic counterpoint to the forms the work articulates.

The values you refer to - frontal-ness, construction, re-appraisal of space, and so on - appear to be limited to the twentieth century. Does that mean that they might not be eternal or universal art values?

I prefer not to talk about eternity, because it's a dimension that exceeds me. What I do indeed believe is that there are universal values that, since the prehistory of art, have been present, in part or as a whole. Throughout all that time, there were only two exceptions: Greco-Latin Art and the Renaissance. During these two periods, plastic arts were linked to the representation of reality and the appearance of a third dimension, simulated through perspective. Beyond these two exceptions, art has always taken other roads. If we start with Egyptian and Mesopotamian Art - that of the civilizations erroneously referred to as “primitive”- and continue with Byzantine, Gothic and Roman Art, we see that there was always a relative respect for frontal-ness. The great merit of the artists of the twentieth century has been the recuperation and updating of traditional artistic values.

Continuing on the theme of values that identify the twentieth century, on visiting different galleries, one becomes aware that although these values are present, they coexist with different proposals which, measured in these values, do not appear to be contemporary.

I honestly believe that the simple fact that one lives in this era doesn't necessarily make the individual a contemporary human being in terms of his or her concept of life and culture. Certainly, all of us who are painting in this world and in this era are contemporaries in terms of time and space. But that doesn't signify that we are also contemporaries from the standpoint of thought, our concept of art, or our code of communication, if you will.

Back To The Source.

I'm familiar with the work from your constructivist-post-cubist period, in which, apart from strong structure, there is generous use of color. Glancing through the catalog from your 1985 show at Galeria Palatina in Buenos Aires (when you moved into abstraction), I see that there is a color transformation: grays, earth colors, ochres appear.

Yes, the color changed for two reasons. I have employed intense, saturated color in the earlier period and felt somewhat drained o although I should clarify that my sense of color has always been tonal. I never used it as an explosion, as a sensation. It was (always) elaborated, blended. Beyond this, I drew my palette from the colorist tradition of American ceramics and textiles.

Reviewing the reproductions of your work I can see where, for the first time signs, numbers and letters of an unknown alphabet started appearing - elements which would later continue to be present in your painting. I also notice that it was at that stage that the black line began to lose its leading role.

Yes. That 1985 show was summary of four years in which I refused to exhibit, because I felt that the previous cycle had come to a conclusion and that I no longer was finding sensitive responses. I entered a period of research, of very reclusive work. I started on the basis of specific elements. One of this was the element of the sign, which had always attracted me and which grew from the time of my investigations in anthropology. At the same time, I constantly bore in mind Torres's idea that we had to return to the primitive if we wanted to find an art form in America. That thought guided my steps. Torres says (Delmonte picks up a catalog and reads from it): “Here, as in Egypt, faced with the desert, we would have to dominate the bareness of the hill, populate the space with an idea and not with elegant art like that of France, Italy or Greece, but a robust art, of big affirmative lines, large zones occupied by Druid-like constructions, something powerful to take away the anxiety of feeling nullified by immensity, a return, in a certain sense, to the prehistoric, to consider once more what is essential in art, to find its eternal origins once again and be what we've never been before: primitive. Only then, as I see it, will we be nurtured, as indeed we should be, by the essences of the earth.” These words summarize an idea that was working in me throughout all of this time. I investigated the world of symbols, of runic characters with all their poetic mystery, which, to a certain extent, I sought to relate to texture. The symbol, the archaic, the primitive, the prehistoric, became my intense concern, and for a time, all of my work was concentrated on going back as far as I could, so as to, from here, start all over again. Obviously, within this framework of thought, the sign and visual texture occupied the foreground and the line was temporarily put aside.

There's no doubt, from the reproductions I'm looking at, that this return to the source was very productive. With regard to the signs or symbols that begin to appear in this period, did they have any concrete meaning or were they employed as less formal elements?

Both of those goals are merged. An expressive need emerged in the painting and so, I use the symbol to transmit certain ideas with their concrete meaning. But I also employ it (the sign) bearing in mind its plastic value.

Some signs are clearly inspired by rupestrian paintings from our country.

Yes, that one you're pointing to obviously comes from Cerro Colorado.

What's the meaning you attribute to the “X” or cross that appears repeatedly?

It has several different meanings. One is the encounter, the crossroads. But it is also the symbol Man has used to bear testimony to his passage through the world, in order to say, “I was here.” There are other meanings too, but I don't want to overwhelm you, nor should I (he laughs). The symbol is a manifestation of feeling. It designates what is felt, that which is unknown to us, but to which we assign significance or which forms part of our intuition. If one attempts an exhaustive explanation, one runs the risk of unveiling the poetic suggestion contained in the symbol, and so the meaning destroys the metaphor.

This symbol here, the one composed of two triangles Joined by their vortices and....

In that case, it signifies the joining of two worlds, the celestial and the earthly. But you have to bear in mind that symbols usually have more than one meaning. (He points to an illustration in the catalog). This is an element that symbolizes the feminine, and this the masculine. But the arrow also signifies the source of energy, of power. But anyway, I don't want to go into this extensively, because it destroys the evocation. You have to leave open the possibility for the viewer to create his or her own interpretation.

The titles of the paintings from that time were very much linked to the purpose you were seeking to fulfill: “Pictografia” (Pictographs), “Tras la Memoria” (In Pursuit of Memory)...

Yes, well, you're also going to find that in many current pictures. I'm trying to achieve a synthesis of those two times. I mean to say, the texture of the first period with the linear aspect of the second, bringing the two together dialectically.

Once you had gone through this experience, line regained its importance.

That's right. In that first period of abstraction, I had a deliberate purpose, since I was emerging from another kind of painting, and had to develop a new field of action for my work, from a standpoint of both theory and practice. It was a forced-march search for the world I wanted to encounter. When I arrived, to a certain extent, in that world, what I had brought with me to it and what had to inexorably emerge started progressively to reappear: namely, the lineal element. I began to incorporate the line with the symptomatic, the textural, the material.

And this experimentation took you four years of investigation?

Yes, four years without exhibiting. But even afterward, I continued to experiment and spaced my exhibitions accordingly. During a ten-year period, I only exhibited on three occasions, and I hope that, with time, (the shows) will be spaced even further apart.

Why do you hope that?

Well, Lao Tse says that riches, honors and pride carry destruction within them; once merit and reputation are acquired, it is opportune to withdraw. This is true: Once we're a little better known, social commitments increase and this leads to distraction, dispersion and, of course, fewer hours for work and concentration. And this is also true of that activity known as “lobbying”, which has infected our way of life. There are many who, instead of working, develop intense social activity, in order to reach or maintain their place at the summit of success. All of that is detrimental to plastic art and to the life of the artist as such. One has to stay alert, because he who surrenders too much to the outside world, weakens his inner world, which is where the work is born.

Yes, but that life's goal of yours of transmitting a message is greatly hindered by an attitude of exhibiting less frequently. Doesn't that seem contradictory?

No. What's important is not to quit producing the message, and then to present it now and again. Whether I do it every two years or every four doesn't much matter. What one must do is take care to ensure that the message is produced and that it has the same impact. You could put on a show every month and exhibit works of no importance whatsoever. So if you do that, what kind of message are you transmitting? What is important is the content of the communication, not the number of times one communicates.

I'd like to point something out. Although I don't mean to dismiss the many followers of Torres García who followed a road to personal development, the production of others appears inextricably linked to the work and theory of their teacher. You, on the other hand, while declaring yourself a Torres follower, produced a break, a personal parting of the ways. That appears to be an achievement to your credit.

I don't know. Only time, and others, will tell. The thing is, although I belong to the generation of artists who admired Torres García's work and thoughts, I am, surely, somewhat heterodox, for the simple reason that I was not a direct student of his, nor did I take part in his workshops. In my case, Torres has been an adoptive teacher. That's all it is. It's not up to me to say whether I've contributed something or haven't, if I've done something of value or haven't. The truth is, I don't know... As to what Tiglio taught me, on the other hand, I can definitely respond: “At some point in life, one feels one is a painter.”

What is Important In My Life.

Would you say your work is the most important thing in your life, what makes the most sense?

Yes. At this point, I'm sure of it. When I look back over my life, I realize that I always put painting before anything else.

Even personal affections, your family, your children?

The artist is similar to the scientist in this sense. There is something that's hard to give a name - “transcendental egotism” perhaps - which places this great love of profession over and above all else. I'm not unaware that this attitude may be seen as inhuman. But it's not. It would be if one broke away from the family group for no good reason or to satisfy purely hedonistic objectives. But if one is trying to do something that, in some way, might be useful to others, it's not inhuman.

If your work is the most important thing in your life, when, for whatever the circumstances might be, you're not painting, how do you fill those empty spaces?

Well, by painting mentally. When I'm not painting. I'm reading books on painting, looking at reproductions, studying painting, preparing courses on art history, visiting galleries and museums and, fundamentally, I am in contact with my students.

Considering your artistic career and the level of technical expertise you've reached, do you, nevertheless, recognize some weakness in your work, something “left undone”?

Surely. So much so that I have to study constantly. There is a trivial question that is always repeated in interviews and which goes: “If you could be born again, would you do everything the same?” I would say yes, that I would do it all over again as regards my activity: I'd be a painter. What I would indeed modify are some aspects of my formative period. I would have liked to have developed with much greater intensity, dedication and depth. I believe, for example, that if I were able to go back in time, instead of going two or three times a week to draw nudes, I would go five, that instead of doing a hundred still-lives, I'd do three hundred.

Do you regret having exhibited any of your paintings?

Generally speaking, no. I have no regrets. I've already mentioned how demanding I am with myself when it comes to deciding when a picture is finished. Another guideline I follow is that if it's a matter of exhibiting 20 works, I have 60 ready to choose from. Thus, my exhibits are made up of a selection of works in which there are no major imbalances in level.

Could you provide some general considerations on your experience with regard to the shows you have done?

Well... a show is, in reality, a new composition which complements what's done in the workshop. It would be ridiculous for me to work in the studio on the basis of balance in relationship to forms and tension, color tones, structure, correction, elimination, and addition, if, when it comes time for a show, I take just anything, the first thing I can grab, with the pictures being left to their fate. In the gallery, the works must be perfectly arranged in relation to their size and tone and how one work functions with another. It's a new structure you have to make for the viewer, so as to facilitate the perception of the esthetic act. The viewer should find himself before a visual spectacle and give the work a good reading. Furthermore, a show is only justified when the majority of the works are of a similar level of quality, to be shown together alongside two or three capolavori. When that is not the case, you have to be honest with yourself and learn to wait.

You say that every show has a couple of “star” works, around which the others are strung. Does the taste of the public and that of the critics coincide as to which they are?

Cogorno (18) said that “people don't know anything, but when you show them several pictures, they always pick the best.” And that's the way it is. They generally choose the best, but it also occurs that there are “works for the artist”. These are the ones that contain merits that only artists perceive and value, because in them, they discover esthetic and emotional content which make the works special, identify them and differentiate them from the rest.

Are you talking about a level of sensitivity that ordinary people don't have?

No, I'm not talking just about sensitivity, but about visual experiences. An artist has ample possibilities to find visual perceptions at exhibitions, museums, and in art books, the works of colleagues and students, and through the fact that he spends most of his time thinking in visual terms. That experience, that educated eye, gives him a vision of that work which contains particularities which may pass unnoticed by someone who has not had the opportunity to acquire this kind of visual experience.

We should also include the non-transferable experience of actually painting, of knowing the difficulties of painting, as result of having practiced it for years on end.

That's true. The artist knows the “backstage” of painting. The art scholar or critic knows only the theory. He might even have his own philosophy regarding art, but he does not know it in practice, the effort that the preparation of a work demands. A contemporary writer or critic has disdainfully used the expression, “brutish as a painter.” It's not a fair description, since a painter may well know as much about theory as the critic, while inversely, the critic may know nothing about the problem of creating a work of art. It's like the old pirate films: The pirates buried the treasure, made a map and divided it in two. Only by putting the two parts together, could one find the treasure. The art viewer or critic has only half of the map. The artist, on the other hand, knows - or should know - both theory and practice, and so, can put together both halves of the map and discover the treasure, which, in this case, is the work (Delmonte laughs).

There were, nonetheless, movements that were led by theoreticians. I'm thinking of André Bretón and surrealism, for example.

Well, yes, but you have to make a difference here. The ones who co-founded and co-participated in those movements weren't theoreticians, but poets. The Futurist Manifesto was written in 1909 by Marinetti, the writer. In 1910, two poets, Tristán Tzara and André Bretón, contributed to the Dadaist movement. In 1924, this self-same Bretón and ApoIlinaire initiated Surrealism, a movement Antonin Artaud would join. Generally speaking, those who headed up given contemporary painting movements were poets or writers, not art critics.

You're saying, then, that they shared the capacity for creation with the artists.

Exactly. The great movements have been generated when a group of intellectuals and creators have converged around a system of ideas: people from the arts, theater, literature, music, artists of the most diverse disciplines. Surrealism brought together painters, but also poets and film-makers. The case of Buñuel is paradigmatic. Surrealism was one of the last great movements that contributed concrete elements to the plastic language of the 20th century, in the area of space, the expressiveness of matter and the manifestation of personal unconscious. It is evident that the work of Tápies is an overlapping of surrealism and informalism, just as in the case of American abstract expressionism. Then came other things, different recyclings dictated by the absurd need to constantly create new things, without their signifying major contributions to contemporary culture. When one analyzes what's left of everything that came after informalism, one realizes that it was all begun and abandoned within a very short time. Little of importance remained.

Abstraction and Americanism.

Abstract art is rejected by much of the public and even by many critics. Why do you think that is?

I think it's an attitude based on prejudice and a lack of knowledge. Abstract art is still censured because it is accused of lacking sensitivity toward the sometimes tragic reality that surrounds us. The truth is that it's a matter of another sensitivity, to which we have acceded in our own century. In point of fact, abstract art precedes plastic language, the permanent, the universal, the anecdotal, the temporary and the individual. Therefore, it requires that the viewer be informed with regard to the language, that he has a certain amount of visual experience, without prejudice and with an interest in exploring and getting to know new fields of perception.

Does that mean that abstract art is higher form than naturalism?

Actually, I think that talking about figuration and abstraction as opposing stances signifies sliding backward into old debates. Beyond the question of figuration or abstraction, what we have to analyze is whether or not the image is committed to the contributions made by contemporary art, and if it reveals thoughts, projections and internal worlds. The validity of a painting is not derived from whether the image is figurative or not, but from whether it possesses tone, structure, balance, rhythm, pro-portion and emotion. Wörringer maintains that, for a long time, there was a persistent assumption that the history of art was the history of artistic ability, and that the obvious and constant goal of that ability was to reproduce natural models. It was believed that humanity has required thousands of years to learn to draw with “exactitude”, and that within the order of ideas, this “exactitude” signified that drawings should reproduce forms provided by nature as precisely as possible. The mere ability to reproduce was traditionally valued as the capacity to create.

This is very clear with regard to representative painting taken to extremes. But in the specific cases of figurative painters like Edward Hopper, Lucien Freud or Francis Bacon, for example, could we state the same?

Clearly not, since this responds to something else. Earlier I referred to certain cases of shop-worn cast backs to the last century, which abound. But this other - that which is exemplified by Freud and Bacon - has nothing to do with these. Bacon is a great artist in whom, apart from figuration, we find a great relationship of color, form and line which demonstrate him to be a painter of knowledge and craftsmanship who is also absolutely contemporary. As for Hopper, he is, without a doubt, very good. If you want to see a portrait of the solitude of contemporary man in the big cities, all you have to do is look at those cafés and even those solitary summer resorts that Hopper painted. They are marvelous, with a content that goes beyond the merely anecdotal. What Hopper does is painting.

Nevertheless, the truth is that the art market - in Argentina, at least - tends toward the artists that painted, and those that today still paint, a figurative image.

Yes. This are several reasons that explain the more reduced demand for abstract art. On the one hand, there are is what I referred to before: a code of communication that is not understood because it is not taught. But there is also what I'm saying now, that there are no referential guidelines on which to judge a work, because each work inaugurates its own law, which is unprecedented. Therefore, the viewer arrives at the work without an inkling of how to judge it and suspecting that in contemporary art there is a large measure of falsehood. I might add that it is probable that difficulties in marketing abstract art are a repeat of the situation found in the 18th century, considering the characteristics of the buyers involved. Back in those days. the Dutch bourgeoisie only valued that which clearly reproduced reality. Today, as then, a large number of buyers have no interest at all in composition or color harmony or any of that. Why all the technical complications? They find a painted landscape or still-life that looks real quite enough. This provides them with their background and they thus believe they know when a work is well done. So when they buy, they assume they're acquiring something valuable. They don't realize that, with this attitude, they are merely rewarding reproduction techniques, while ignoring the fact that the authentic value of art is found in the problems of creation. The person who visually reproduces any sort of real entity is simply not the same as the artist, who faces the empty page and wages a constant struggle to create, imagine, and develop his world, while generating emotional responses in the viewer. We must avoid confusing reproduction with creation. A reproduction technique takes time and a lot of work, but in the end, it can be achieved. Facing the problems of creation, on the other hand, isn't for everybody.

Thinking And Painting From America.

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I think that when faced with your work, the viewer feels that he's standing before a mystery that takes him back to an ancestral and arcane state of the world and Man, but, almost contradictorily, he experiences it as something very personal and current.

Well, when an artist wants to communicate something, he has two paths to follow: the testimonial revelation or the higher plane. In the first case, reality is first reflected and then criticized, showing everything the human being is capable of doing when he stoops to the lowest levels of his culture. The second proposes a more serene, more balanced view of the world as it should be. Artists who dedicate themselves to expressionist figuration generally employ the image to reveal or testify to a reality that it is the destiny of all of us to live. So it is that they, to a greater or lesser degree, lay bare our miseries, shadows and fears. Other artists, whether they are aware of it or not, seek to project an image supported by balance and harmony, an image that is a point of encounter with serenity and with the higher dimension of Man. I've opted for the second alternative. I want to provide the viewer with an attitude of quietude that the world of today doesn't possess and that permits one to have a glimpse of a transcendental world. In order to achieve this, I resort to elements that, in some way, are linked to the earth and to life itself: man, woman, the seminal act, devotion for the planting of the seed in the furrow. Everything that has to do with the constant renewal of Nature, that which takes place in the soil, in the animal, in the plant and in the human race. To this I add the purpose of transmitting a poetic vision to our place, America, through the language of this century, with order, organization and serenity. That's my idea.

I ask myself if that goal of transmitting a state of serenity, peace and connection to the viewer isn't contradictory with your highly defined and active ideological stance. When you're composing a painting, do you deliberately leave that ideological position aside?

No, not at all. Earlier, I referred to reflexive thought as one of the paths to abstraction. What I meant by that was that the way one thinks reality and the way one thinks in artistic terms take neither parallel nor divergent paths. This simply can't happen, because I paint in accordance with my thoughts and convictions. This coincidence of attitude in facing both daily reality and my painting overlapped with my first research into primitive cultures American cultures among them. I got passionately involved in my studies of American anthropology with Guillermo Magrassi (19), and with my reading of Rex González (20) and Kusch (21). From that point on, I found unity between thought, action and fine arts. Now then, if I take this confession a little further for the sake of comprehension, if I state the need to reappraise American cultures from our pre-Columbian past to the present, and if my painting drinks from our own (cultural) fountains, it becomes obvious that I hold a position that is at odds with all types of colonialism, and I'm not talking about the kind of colonialism to which pre-Columbian peoples were subjected, but any and all forms of transculturalization of authentic forms of life anywhere in the world. Objectively considered, this is an idea that involves me with and commits me to the subject.

There are those who react against that position.

Yes. Certain sectors reproach us for embracing this concept, because they warn that what's behind it is a spirit of rebellion. At the same time, they suffered Torres García, Wifredo Lam, Gambartes, Rufino Tamayo. For my own part, I felt the need to abandon forms that I considered no longer served as a revolutionary force to help provoke others into thinking and adopting, to make others wake up to what is theirs, to identify with our origins, to turn their gaze back onto America.

I'm aware of three critical arguments against this attitude. One states that this Americanist current is mere posturing, since it was conceived here, in Buenos Aires, a region where no great pre-Columbian cultures existed, as was the case in, say, Peru, México and the Yucatan. We have no close models to be assimilated and from which to draw and update. The second argument maintains that, since, in our majority, we are a population that descends from Europeans and have no native American blood in our veins, we lack the capacity to interpret the sentiments of those peoples.

All right, yes, it's true. We're far from any of those great pre-Columbian cultures. But let me ask you this: Did we, by any chance, ever have a Greek Parthenon in our territory, or a Roman Coliseum? Obviously not. Yet, many of us feel ourselves an integral part of the Greco-Latin culture, when we're 13,000 or 20,000 kilometers and centuries away. Does that seem any more natural? Nevertheless, close by, in the Argentine Northwest, just 1,000 or 1,200 kilometers away, we have cultures like those of Tafi, Condorhuasi, La Aguada or La Ciénaga which produced important cultural objects. It's not necessary to go back to the Incas -although they indeed also inhabited our territory - or the Aztecs or the Mayas or to Chavin de Huántar. Instead of referring to the Coliseum or the Parthenon, let's talk about what's here, so close to us in time and space - the Condorhuasi culture, just 200 years after Christ. The problem is the existence of colonized thinking, which leads up to believe that what is natural and proper for us is to think like the West thinks. With this, I'm not embracing any chauvinistic idea of nationalism with a "z". I'm just saying that we must also look at these other cultures and assume what we are. We are a mestizo culture. We can't deny the past of a West that captured us and transculturalized us, but neither can we reject the past of our land the land we tread on every day. In applying this concept to art, I don't think anything should be excluded that is well done, no matter where it happens to come from. In painting, the only thing that counts, whether from my approach or any other, is good painting, which, to my mind, is the act of communication, which materializes by means of plastic language properly applied from a formal point of view and which, above all, contains a sensitive and emotional charge that is linked to the spirituality of others.

The third argument I mentioned maintains that, in the end, these Americanist painters produce nothing more than Europeans painting in Argentina, and the question is: What drop of Native American blood is it that runs in their veins and authorizes them to sustain that they are the heirs of the legacy bequeathed by pre-Columbian cultures? They all come from European immigration. I think we'll have to agree that you're of half Spanish and half Italian background.

Anthropological research teaches us that there are two types of heritage: “genotypical” and “phenotypical”. The genotype consists of what we inherit through our genes, what you and I and everybody else has in their blood, which, in our case, generally comes from Spain or Italy. But there are also phenotypical characteristics, which are socio-historical in nature and which are progressively generated within a community over the course of time, and which one absorbs slowly but surely, from the feet up, as it were. These characteristics represent the heritage of the land - what Jung calls “the collective unconscious”- which comes to us through time, from life, from common history, from habits and customs and values gradually generated within a community. It's no accident that, in a city as cosmopolitan as Buenos Aires - with its back turned to America and so open to everything that comes from Europe - it's no accident, as I say, that when the European immigratory syndrome halted and had less influence on our culture, some members of this human group turned their eyes on America and embarked on a journey inward (which is the meaning of the word “originality”, return to the beginning), a journey back to the origin to see what happened, what happened to us. We are moving away from our genotypical roots, and our phenotypical characteristics are surfacing to an ever greater extent.

If that's so, why didn't these artistic manifestations related to the land occur in the interior of the country? Why is it that in the interior painting continues to be of predominantly European style?

I think we can draw a parallel between what happens in Buenos Aires and in Paris, for example, and between Buenos Aires and the interior of our country. Just as for many inhabitants of Buenos Aires what happens in the great cultural centers of Europe is paradigmatic, in the interior what happens in Buenos Aires is equally paradigmatic. The influences we receive spread rapidly through our provinces. This happens not only in the field of painting but in all cultural activities. The most manneristic manifestations of our lifestyle, which are no more than a replica of what's fashionable in the developed countries, are copied.

How do artists like you, who are independent in your way of thinking and in your artistic qualities, take being ignored within the realm of official projects and by economically powerful circles and by the mass media?

Well, that attitude comes from way back and is part of the “official history” of our country. History is a way of playing politics, because history is written by the winners. The other point of view is absent. The “official history” generally relates a fabricated recollection of a people, which does not usually coincide with the legitimate activity of that people. In our country either part of our past has been denied us or we have been subjected to processes of amnesia which, without a doubt, were not coincidental. Our history has been articulated from Buenos Aires, or, better said, from the forty blocks that comprise downtown Buenos Aires. From there things have been manipulated by patriots and traitors alike. Those of us who profess some sort of thought and action which is not in agreement with the dictates and traditions emerging from those forty blocks and the institutions that they have generated, know that we are not on an equal footing with the courtesans of power or with the centers that dispense that power. But then, just as one must define oneself in the field of plastic art so too must one do this in other fields of life, and when one chooses to do so, one knows the consequences. My form of thinking - and consequently, my form of painting - does not coincide with that of the ruling class, nor does it with the sectors and institutions that direct the diffusion, consumption and projection of the work of contemporary artists. I think differently than they do, and therefore, I'm pushed aside. It's almost a logical consequence, isn't it?

You seem to take it very well.

That's because these things are circumstantial. Besides, I'm not the only one in these conditions. There's an entire, absolutely independent sector that presents no other argument than the work it carries out, and that, to a certain extent, forms part of the general outlook for Argentine art.

Identifying With The Environment.

What, in your opinion, are the deepest problems that Argentine culture faces?

Well, the answer I can give you is only an approximate response because I'm not a sociologist, which doesn't signify that I haven't thought about this. I think the main problem with the Argentine is that he does not identify with his environment. If we go to a Brazilian favela, we see that the Brazilian, even if he lives in poverty, has an absolute territorial consciousness, if not to say “national”, which is a word that is often misinterpreted. If we cross the River Plate, we will find that the same is true of the Uruguayan: he is proud of his territory and of belonging to it. Pride in “belonging” to a place is the beginning of the identification that we Argentines lack. The reasons behind this are, without a doubt, many. According to Julio Mafud (22), there are more than one. Our history changes every decade or two. Buenos Aires is a city a little like Troy in the sense that there have been many Buenos Aires, just as there were many Troys, overlapping one another. The successive layers of ethnic currents, population, concepts, ideas, customs, and architectures overlap in such a way that in a short time the image that surrounds us changes. What we knew as children no longer exists. What we saw as adolescents no longer exists. What we saw thirty years ago, no longer exists. How can roots exist within a population that sees its origins and its own personal history change within such a brief period? Kusch says that “where there is no recognition of the past, there are no roots. Without roots, there is no sentiment and without sentiment there is no culture.”

Art And Society.

Many theoreticians refer to the power of art in transforming society. What do you think about this?

When the work of art is carried out with profound dedication, from a commitment to serious creation, it constitutes an act of communication that tends toward the development of human thought and, when added to others, generates deep-reaching changes. Isn't it true that, by virtue of art, changes have been seen in fashion, architecture, furniture, and many other contexts within which man moves? What produces no change whatsoever is that which is not a work of art, but a mere outline of painted vanity. The works that count generate new ideas and contributions. Every time that two-way communication between the issuer of the message and the receiver, who re-elaborates it and transmits it once again, is produced, there are transformations in humanity.

With regard to the interrelationship between the artist and the viewer, do you think of the receiver when you are creating a painting?

When you're painting, you're in a special state. I'm not thinking of myself, of anybody else, or of anything. One finds oneself in a state of mental emptiness. One paints with no deliberate purpose. When the painting is done, then yes, I think of how to show it, where and when. Many people paint with a set purpose: to exhibit, for a certain show, for a certain prize. I feel that when the artist faces his work with a pre-established end in mind, that's when he has the least probability of communicating emotional content.

Regarding popular manifestations, are you attracted by graffiti painted on walls, the lines, signs, phrases, with which people try to express themselves?

Well, it's a little like what happens with paintings. There is graffiti that has content and valuable expressions, but it's a very reduced percentage compared with all of the dumb things that are written on the walls and which make no sense. This is not the graffiti of the revolution of May '68 which proclaimed “power to imagination” or “prohibiting the prohibited” These phrases were full of social, political and cultural content. The ones you see today, for the most part, don't do anything more than mess up the walls.

Ethics, Religion And Philosophy.

Do you think that an ethical stance is inseparable from art?

The ethical and the esthetic should always go hand in hand. I'm employing the conditional here because, since all of us human beings have weaknesses and cannot be compelled to behave in certain ways without considering the personal circumstances of each of us. I limit myself to believing that ideally the artistic act is linked to ethics. In reality, you can't help but notice, however, that many times they're separate.

Are you a religious man?

If by religion you mean some type of dogma, no, I'm not religious. But if by religion you mean “to reconnect” - which is the etymological meaning - then I am an eminently religious man, because my action is based precisely on the desire to transmit something to someone else. The communicative act makes one wish to tie men to one another within one's modest possibilities. From that point of view, I'm religious. And I am too, if the word religion alludes to belief in the transcendental. When I was young I always said I was an Atheist. Giving an opinion about the existence of God seems to me today to be a tremendous pedantry. The human mind cannot plumb such deep mysteries. I prefer to refer to what I think could be, not to what is, while managing to remain open to every reflection that can possibly make me better as a human being.

In your library I see titles that represent the most diverse schools of philosophy.

That's right. I manage not to close myself into any dogmatic body of ideas. Faced with one thing or another, before declaring “it's such and such a thing”, I try to question myself, reflect, and although I read Ortega. Kusch, Krishnamurti and Lao Tse, I'm not a fanatic of the Tao, or of Zen, or of Ortega, or of Marx. It is simply a combination of ideas with which I coexist most comfortably.

In some of your pictures - the most stripped ones, perhaps - I think I can see some influence of the Oriental doctrines you mentioned.

Yes, my work in recent decades has been a process of synthesis, which tends to assign value to silence. Space plays a determining role. I place fewer elements on the surface all the time. That search for greater synthesis, the attempt to say more with less, is an act of stripping which has brought me closer to Oriental thought.

I imagine that within your combination of ideas, the thinking of Rodolfo Kusch must occupy a place of importance.

Precisely, his thinking occupies the other side of my interest. But there's so much to say about Kusch that we wouldn't have the space to do it here. Briefly, I could say that Kusch stands out as one of the few renowned thinkers to ask questions about our identity. He presented a bold cosmovision of the American man, without resorting to the theories of other realities which others have tried to force into application in looking at concrete local situations. On the contrary, he made an effort to develop categories of his own. He was one of the few who encouraged us to think from within ourselves. He spoke to us of “an America for the re-assumption of our humanity, as if to start over...”.

Do you declare yourself against materialism?

I declare myself against the abandoning of myths, of beliefs, and of that which is sacred. Man has exacerbated his individuality. Each individual considers himself a god and his values reside in the concrete, in power, in the material, and also in pleasure and the rational.

Could that super-individualistic being survive if separated from the community?

That's a big contradiction. Man, situated in the center of the universe, devoted to his own personality, ends up indistinct from the masses. He is the “individual” who seeks to be different and unique in a consumer society and ends up being a number, a thing manipulated by the media that dictate to him from the time he gets up in the morning what his tastes and needs for the day will be.

How is this attitude reflected in art?

It is reflected in that there is no refinement of spirit, in which neither quantities nor qualities are perceived, in which the facile marks pedagogic levels. It is reflected in an ephemeral, lesser, more superficial art and in “kitchen” philosophy and sociology or in light, comfortable literature without surprises. Everything appears staged to issue quick fixes, to attain goals without effort, something “just for fun” and to keep us safe from the “boredom” of profound meditation. Because “fun” and “boredom” are the new classifications with which cultural work is qualified.

All cultural activity has its recreational side. As a matter of fact, don't you yourself have “fun” painting a picture?

Sure I do. But I'm not talking about the essential characteristics of human endeavor without which work would become an unworthy burden. I'm talking about a current trend that seeks to put everything on the same plane. Every scale of values is limited by banal frivolous activities, such as social get-togethers which people attend in order to show off in front of each other and the media, in order to be photographed for magazines devoted to the circulation and sale of these stupidities.

The Artist And His Era.

In these times in which consumption and the market dictate preferences and Man is manipulated to chase after the latest bauble, only to abandon it immediately for the newest toy to appear, what's your view of the future?

I'm neither optimistic nor pessimistic. These are moments in humanity in which support is sought through certain beliefs... especially when a sense of the transcendent has been lost. When this happens, everything turns trendy, even in the fields of thought, science and art. The gods of the spirit are replaced with those of fashion and technology. I think this is just a stage Mankind is going through. I don't think it's the end of Mankind. Although the way things are going, it does look like we're making a dash for collective suicide. Man is destroying all means and forms of life. There's not a river or ocean left that hasn't been polluted, the forests are disappearing, the deserts are advancing (and) we can't swim in the River Plate. The cities, instead of being a place of encounter for people, are a meeting point for automobiles. We've lost the pleasure of walking the streets, because the streets are dangerous, dirty and asphyxiating. I refuse to believe that things can go on like this. I think Man is going to react. My hope is that we do not succumb to a death wish.

Earlier we referred to the ever greater intervention of technology in art. Do you think that the use of video, computers, holography and so on will eventually do away with traditional media? It's already been a number of years since someone said “easel painting is dead”.

You have to go back to what the essence of art is, what it's founded on and what it represents to Man. I don't think any of the media you mentioned will ever be able to kill painting, or any of the other artistic forms, for the simple reason that Man, since the beginning of his existence, has had a need to express himself with his body - be it with his hands, through his voice or through rhythmic movements. So, painting, dance, writing, music and song aren't going to become extinct, because they constitute basic and essential means of human communication. It's true that certain forms could be modified, but basically, the essence of transmitting the movement of the hand, the tone of the voice, the grace of dance, the emotion of poetry are innate elements in the life of Man, who makes use of his physical, intellectual and emotional “humanity” in order to communicate. Now, that doesn't signify the disqualification of the application of more highly technified resources. If three or four sketches take hours to complete and with a computer I can have hundreds of color samples in a matter of minutes, then this would be a contribution worth considering. The possibilities become enormous and the creative process would be made much easier. But if what you're talking about is a machine making a work of art, then that's something else again, because it signifies confusing the means with the ends.

It would appear that through design, advertising and fashion, art is present in Man's everyday life. Every designer, ad illustrator or fashion creator is familiar with the great artistic creations. Do you think that these are alternative art media, or do you think they subordinate and limit art?

No, on the contrary. I think that it's a valid form through which visual arts make contact with the masses and are disseminated. This is related to what we said before: that painting as such has withdrawn into the realm of minorities. But the product inspired by it has become an item for mass use, by means of graphic design, architecture, decoration and the ornamentation of utilitarian objects. That's the positive aspect. The negative side, I feel, is that since every act of communication is roundtrip, certain resolutions conceived strictly for application specifically within an advertising or graphic design framework, have been absorbed by artists. Color is a good example. In the advertising field, it's valid to employ color as a sensation, as a means of provoking a visual shock in the consumer. But in a painting, that's not the objective. The painting is an expression of sensitivity, where color has a very different function: It is intonation and forms part of a structure.

What are your current preferences in painting?

Well, my preferences center on artists and art movements that reached their peak in the mid-20th century. Many of these artists have already passed on or are passing on. Just by way of example, I could mention American artists like Tamayo, Matta, Lam, Torres García; Britons like Nicholson, Sutherland and Henry Moore; Italians like Afro, Vedova, Capogrossi, Santomaso and Burri; Spaniards like Tápies, Millares, Saura; North Americans - or those who have developed in the US - such as Gorky, Pollock, Motherwell, Rothko, Kline, Rauschenberg; and then the Cobra Group, the Op-Art of Yaacov Agam, the oriental refinement of J. Bissiere.... Currently, I'm still interested in the work of those who are continuing to produce. Outside of these, what's been done over the past few decades doesn't attract me. I can't see any great artist or great movement among them.

Concretely speaking, what artistic manifestations are you referring to?

I'm referring to several. The movement referred to as “conceptual art” for example. The greatest portion of what's been done in this field seems totally unimportant to me. The same thing happens to me with the installations. At the last international biennials, there's only been room for installations, which goes to show the widespread banality that's abroad in the art world. Just as when a new fashion is launched, everyone seems to feel obliged to mount his very own installation. Many times these installations are accompanied by texts which seek to replace expressive vacuity with words. Most installations have to be explained, and currently, the explanation can just as well serve to explain this act as to do just the opposite, or anything else, for that matter. It's a curious fact that, in recent years as never before, the discourse about art, the perception of which is fundamentally visual, has become more important than the work itself. Frequently, when we read a write-up on a work of art, we find that there is no comparison whatsoever between the commentary and the sensitive experience of directly contemplating the work. I prefer to recall the words of Tápies, which remain valid today, when he referred to the “happenings” of the 1960s: “Everything in this world of art can be turned into an insignificant social game.” All art should have a reason for being.

On Prize-Winning.

What's your opinion of prizes?

It's something very relative. I don't think it's valid to reward or reject different (types of) productions. I can personally like one work more than another. But I can't state that one's better than another. Imagine a salon where the works of Mattise. Torres García, Tápies, Picasso and Chagall converge. Who do you give the prize to? Who do you reject? They're all expressions that are different from one another, yet all are equally important.

There are characteristics that are linked to the artist and his environment. A famous gallery personality, Pierre Levail of the Marlborough Gallery, says (and I'm reading here): “Some fashionable painters have been injured...they became the slaves of marketing and their creativity eclipsed. It is impossible to produce under market pressure and to live with the idea of becoming a star.”(23) Do you think that's so? Can success backfire on the artist?

Yes, it really can. Once a philosophy professor said to me, “there are certain things that, when popularized, lack depth.” I think that's the answer. It's almost impossible to be with a spirit of creation and, at the same time, to live with what's understood by the word success in today's world. For a painter, authentic success is painting a good picture, period. But in accordance with general criteria, success is related to how many paintings you sell and the prices paid for them, or in other words, in terms that are strictly quantitative and have little to do with the quality of the work. In the history of art, there have been numerous examples of very good painters who couldn't sell a single work in their lifetime or who only sold a handful. Since the world economic and political center is the United States, the manner of thinking of an imperialist nation ends up being imposed on other cultural environments. “Pragmatism”, as a school of thought, was born in the United States toward the end of the 19th century, and with it came the concept that everything that sells is necessarily good. Not selling well is equivalent to failure, to not being a success. This same competitive market system, which is valid for consumer goods, is applied to the field of art. The countries that orbit around the empire - including our own, of course - have ended up adopting the same criteria. Prestige is related to economic success: If a painter sells well, he's successful. If he's a success, he has prestige and is thus highly considered among a select social group. Even the salons are a product of the era. They appeared toward the end of the 18th century and became a trend in the 19th century, with all of the characteristics and rules of liberal thought. That's why they're not above the laws of the market, production and competition. So it's no surprise that it's rare to see art at the salons. Let's trade roles and let me ask you this: Have you seen the dimensions of the works that get sent to the salons? They're enormous. Now, surely there are artists that need a huge format to authentically express themselves and that's quite valid. But it is also probable that, in many cases, the disproportionately huge size of the work is more the result of an attempt to stand out, with a clearly competitive objective.

But if that's the case, what happens to content, to artistic value?

Content isn't granted any importance. Alexandre Dumas, senior, said: “When the giants arrive, art takes its leave.” This is a pretty good reflection of what we're seeing today, isn't it? Among ourselves, even though we might not say so, we know that if we send a reduced-format painting, like those used by Vermeer, Corot or Klee, the picture will only, with luck, enter the salon, but no way is it going to be considered for a prize when the judging starts. I can almost assure you that nobody's even going to look at it, even if it's a true masterpiece.

Why's that?

Because when the painter sends a work to a salon, his purpose is to win a prize. It's not a mere show where a number of colleagues exhibit freely. No. We compete when we exhibit at a salon. He who wins a prize gets, not only money, but the prestige that goes with it and, at the same time, a new round of success, sales and so on. We don't realize that, afterwards, we become victims of that prestige and these successes, because, in order to maintain them, we must make concessions in which it is not so much a matter of painting well or poorly, but of developing intensive social and promotional activity.

In these last passages, you spoke in the plural. Does that mean that, to a certain extent, you feel yourself caught up in this sort of whirlwind?

Look, the whirlwind enters your house whether you've got the door shut or not. Why? Because under today's circumstances, if a painter shuts the door, he'll be totally pushed aside by a society that is uninterested in anything that doesn't come easy. This is an era in which if you don't go out and beat the street, few people, if anybody at all, will be interested in what's going on inside the workshop.

Can there actually be a great artist who remains totally ignored?

Right. Totally ignored. There are great artists, like Espino (24), for example, who lived, worked and died almost totally unknown. During his lifetime, he had a few friends who tried to make his work at least minimally known. If other artists hadn't taken a hand in showing his work, nobody would have been interested. So, you've got to get out in the street and when that happens, you get immersed in daily life, which is what it is, like it or not.

Speaking of that, how about Braque's mandate: “The artist, to his cage.” Isn't that valid today?

I think in this time and environment, the artist can't shut himself up in a cage. At the same time, over the course of these encounters, I have repeatedly said that art is the language through which the artist communicates. So isolating oneself isn't healthy and doesn't serve this end of human communication. You can't verify that coming and going of ideas between issuer and receiver of a message, that rotation that enriches both and culture as well. You'd run the risk of crystallizing your action, of remaining detained and not communicating with anybody, which would constitute an egotistical attitude. My position is not one of total isolation, but neither is it one of constantly rubbing elbows socially.

It must be difficult to maintain that kind of balance.

You have to impose limits on yourself. If you don't think it's advisable to send your work to salons, you simply don't send it. If you're invited to the vernissage of a colleague whose work interests you, you go. What you should never do is send something to the salons with the idea of attaining success. or recognition. Nor should you go to inaugurations to “socialize” or so as to be “in”. I believe the artist should paint and prepare his exhibits. With that he produces a social event, but only under these circumstances and nothing more. Afterward, he goes back home and tries to work as quietly as possible.

There would appear to be two kinds of success for the artist: a “private” success, for lack of a better term, which is the success he attains in his studio in front of a fully achieved work, and that other “public” kind of success, which brings him fame and money.

Fame is not tied to economic success. If the work is of importance, then it will achieve a certain renown. As I said before, there comes a time when you have to decide between the permanent and the temporary. The temporary is external success, notoriety, status. The permanent is internal success that consists of knowing that one is trying to do things well and is on the right track. That, in the end, is the only thing that's really important.

What should the artist's attitude be in relation to the commercial aspect of his activity? Should he stay away from it entirely and let others take care of this matter, or should he, on the contrary, take an active role and, for example, set prices?

I think that, whether we like it or not, in this system in which our works become tradable goods, we should leave these things to the professionals. Our job is to create, not set prices, or sell or haggle. The artist is not prepared for that and when he has to do it, things can get pretty out of whack.

Are there marchands who carry out this function on the local scene?

I feel that the concept of the marchand signifies something that doesn't actually exist here. The marchand is a representative, an adviser, the artist's promoter in all of these commercial aspects. Locally, instead of marchands, we have gallery owners who sell pictures. The marchand is something else: He's the one who determines the policy the gallery will follow, what line of painting it will promote, because it's the line that convinces him and so he backs it. He's the one that visits the studios and selects a combination of painters who will exhibit in a gallery. He's the first buyer of their works. Here, the gallery owners remain aloof. They don't buy the works, or do so only very occasionally. They don't visit artists' studios, nor do they seek to promote the painter's image, his life, his relations with the public. They don't help him solve bureaucratic problems. In short, they don't do what's necessary to permit the artist to concentrate on his specific task.

That's linked to conditions or limits that market requirements can place on the artist. For example, you could be advised: “Don't paint in such-and-such a way, because if you do, you won't get shown or bought”, or “Be careful not to say this or that because the critics are going to be all over you,” and so on.

Yes, there's censorship and self-censorship. There's direct censorship, that comes from outside. And then there's the other kind, more subtle, that eventually turns into self-censorship. But on this subject you can't go pontificating with your forefinger raised high in the air and say, “Things must be done this way or that,” because fears and uncertainties must be deeply respected. In my days of political and union militancy, I lived through the spiritual conflicts born of participating in a strike at the risk of losing your job, especially in regard to my parents and family. I learned not to judge others conducts or blithely to accuse somebody else of being a coward. Under extreme conditions, a coward can act courageously, and the reverse can also be true. Self-censorship has to do with the personal situation of each individual and with the environment in which he is destined to act. Ortega says that the individual is he and his circumstances and it is evident that the circumstances are not the same in Argentina as in the United States. I'm talking here about the artist in Argentina and in Buenos Aires, which is where I live and work. Personally, I came to the conclusion that if I had to be constantly running after a sale, I'd be putting my creative work in jeopardy. So early on, I worked as an employee and then later, through teaching, I managed to keep making a living separate from my painting. Thus, I've always painted what I wanted or felt.

What does criticism mean to you? Are you permeable to it?

I find criticism interesting in as much as it acts as a bridge between the public and the work. In that sense, I think it serves a purpose. The criticism that is of no interest to me is that which seeks to establish guidelines as to what's good and what isn't, or what should or shouldn't be done in art.

There are those who maintain that criticism is a creative reflection that precedes and, to a certain extent, generates the artist's work. A renowned French intellectual, Pierre Bourdieu, says that “discussion of the work is not a mere additive, destined to favor the comprehension and appraisal of it, but rather, a moment in the production of the work, of its meaning and value. “(25). What do you think about this?

Anybody who says that is making the mistake of getting the cart before the horse. It's a typical attitude of scholarly ignorance. I'm referring to the “ignorant people with diplomas”, who think that just because they've earned a title or degree in some field, for that reason and that reason alone, they have an admission ticket to the creative world. The “scholarly ignorant” person is petulant enough to believe that the mere enunciation of a concept, or the elaboration of a complex definition can be elevated to the level of a creative act or to that of a created object, while ignoring the fact that for there to be creation, there must be a multiplicity of elements that goes far above and beyond mere academic learning.

Do you care who buys your work?

The destination of one of my paintings matters a great deal to me. Given a choice between selling a painting to a collector in Buenos Aires or selling thirty to decorators in Miami, I'd prefer the first alternative. I prefer that a work go to somebody who understands what it's about, rather than to someone who buys it because it goes well with the rest of the decoration in his home or office. That's a lost work with a highly uncertain and probably very temporary destiny. When the buyer decides to change the interior decorating scheme, the painting - which was never considered as a self-contained image, capable of unleashing a sensitive-emotive effect - becomes nothing more than a disposable ornament. In such cases, I prefer to keep the work in question.

That's a choice a painter can permit himself when he has a certain amount of economic backing, but if not…

No, don't you believe it. There are certain patterns of behavior in my life that have never varied. I try to be coherent, fairly coherent, as coherent as I can be, because I have my weaknesses. I've always painted what I wanted to. If I don't paint some other way and if I don't do it any better, it's because I can't, but not because I've been limited by conscience or finances. You also have to understand how the market functions. My production is individual and so is the purchasing of it. It goes to a single buyer who emerges from the market and whom I can't choose. Now, if you ask me if I like this system, I'll tell you I don't, not at all. I would prefer to paint a mural because it goes beyond individual appropriation and becomes an act I share with the community.

When a gallery sells your paintings, are you sorry to have to let them go? Have there been cases in which you refused to sell a work because you felt something special for it?

Sure. When there's a picture in one of my shows that my family or I are particularly fond of, I keep it. Besides being a painting, it's also a guidepost that anticipates new experiences. But I'm feeling ever less tied to my paintings. By the time I finish a show, I'm already looking at new plastic problems. I'm more interested in my future work than in past work. I prefer to generate images and solve problems than to sweeten myself with the presence of a picture, as if it were to be my last (he laughs). You love them, but when they go, it's like a child that leaves home and, even so, life goes on. I think one is more in love with them in the beginning. As the years pass one feels a greater need to create than to keep them. Look how, over the course of the entire life of an artist, only a handful of paintings remains that are of true importance. Books on the great painters always reproduce the same works. Depending on how prolific the painter has been, they'll be thirty or forty, maybe fifty, but no more. So one remembers with special affection these works that are considered the most important of his production: In my particular case, just as an example, Friso, which I exhibited in '91 and a Chamán which was in the Torres García Museum. There are also paintings that are associated with certain events in one's life, like Estela, for example, which marked the occasion of my encounter with Padeletti (26)

What was that meeting like?

It was a story that began long before. Back in 1976, I visited an exhibition of watercolors at the Dalila Bonome Gallery in the City of Rosario. I was very attracted by the work shown and wanted to get to know the painter, but had no success. Then, one day in 1988, during my show at Galería Palatina, in the early hours of the afternoon, a couple of people came in and started looking at my work in detail. On seeing me there, they came over and asked if I was the painter. I said I was and they started giving me their impressions. We kept on chatting and at one point, I commented that in Rosario I had seen the work of the great artist, Fernando Espino. One of them said he was a friend of Espino's and that, being Director of the Rosa Galisteo de Rodríguez Museum in Santa Fe, he had exhibited Espino's works. That's when I added that I had also had the pleasure of knowing the stupendous works of a watercolorist called Hugo Padeletti, but that I'd never managed to meet him. That's when this fellow looks at me and says: “But...that watercolorist is me!” You can imagine how surprised and moved I was. After twelve long years, and thanks to our work, two kindred spirits managed to find one another.

That's really a lovely story. Going back to your dearest paintings, I don't think you could leave out the ones you were invited to exhibit at the Trabucco Prize (27) showing at the National Fine Arts Museum in 1995 and at the Modern Art Museum in 1996.

Yes, I think those are important paintings, within the limits of what I can do. Particularly certain ones of them.

Let me venture a guess as to which ones you're referring to. In 1995, it was a white, horizontal picture called Horizonte Blanco, right? Tell me, in that picture, were you once again researching this question of material, of texture?

Every now and then I return to that subject, although never systematically. I don't do, say, a series of works applying a certain system. I might do three or four works, but then I explore something else and come back to it again later, perhaps. I don't know if it's a matter of temperament or unconscious self-defense against adopting some system that will make me repetitive.

Subjects In Review.

On re-reading some of your writing, I've underlined some ideas. For example, in the fourth issue of “El Ojo del Rio”, you say that “a good part of Argentina's artists, as men, think one way and, as artists, think another, (offering) a sort of dual message.” Would you like to add something to that?

The dual message is an endemic illness in Argentina. We tried for that magazine to formulate defined concepts so that the readers would be clear as to what our purpose was and could thus be in agreement or disagreement with it. Dual discourse forms part of a complex of things that has developed over the past sixty or seventy years, ever since Argentina lost is republican and democratic way of life. Since then, we've accumulated numerous fears and repressions and have configured an attitude that is ladina (or shifty) - as the (epic poem) Martín Fierro calls it - that slippery thing that makes us look up at the ceiling every time we're asked for an opinion and say, “Well, yes, but not exactly, or perhaps not.” What I mean to say is, we're not definite, we don't take a frontal attitude. The artist - who's also Argentine - isn't above this and suffers from the same lack of definition.

In another issue of “El Ojo del Río”, you talk about how Juan Acha (28) said that “Argentine artists lack a little belligerence”.

I was just about to refer to Acha. Once when we were having supper together in a bar here on Calle Venezuela, he told me: “Delmonte, Argentine painters aren't belligerent, they don't take a stance and fight for it. You fellows lack a little fighting spirit.” This is linked to what I said before: We're afraid to exercise our opinion.

Continuing with “El Ojo del Rio”, in the third issue, in reference to “the continuity of art above and beyond vanguards, that admit to no background and only seek to be pioneering,” you posed the question of “...if it isn't so that the artists that have been active over the past few decades are the ones whose mission it will be to develop the 20th century school of thought on plastic art."

I think that, behind that word “vanguard”, one of the problems of contemporary art is hidden. What I mean is this: Toward the end of the 19th century, what did society demand of the artist? Well, “mastery”. And when the artist reached the rank of “master”, it was because he had, at the same time, found a style of his own. When a style was achieved, you didn't change it. You continued with it. Within that style you indeed did evolve and perfect it, but you didn't change it. Then along comes the 20th century, and society's demands on the artist changed. Now he was no longer asked for “mastery”, but for “novelty”. And so, the place of mastery and style was taken by novelty and fashion. And contrary to style, which is immutable, fashion trends can change every day. That's why there's this demand for us to be constantly up-to-date, as if there were some principle on the basis of which nothing we do can have any kind of precedent. But originality - return to the origin - is one thing, and novelty is quite another. But more specifically in response to your question, I point out that the creators of the early part of the Renaissance - Fra Angelico, Boticcelli, Paolo Uccello - developed a communications code, the center of which was Man and which, within a bi-dimensional plane, generated the illusion of a third dimension. This code was in effect for four or five centuries, until the mid-19th century. Those artists of the 16th century didn't live with the stress of having constantly to generate something new. They simply adopted that communications code, developed it and perfected it. If we take a drawing of the human figure from the perspective of Uccello and compare it with those of Titian or Tintoretto, we'll see that a whole major change took place in between, successive moves toward a greater level of perfection all the time, but that the code remained the same, if improved and refined. Then, the question I asked in the article was: If during the first half of the 20th century visual arts developed a new code of communications - the return to frontal-ness and the recovery of structure through cubism and neo-plasticism, the appearance of the unconscious through surrealism, (and) the expressivity of matter with informalism - couldn't it well be that we painters of the second half of the 20th century have the same responsibility as those of the second Renaissance, who developed a communications code and perfected it? Why should we be obliged to generate constant innovation? Perhaps we'll come to realize that the contributions to plastic arts of the last forty or fifty years have not been very valuable or important, despite the dogged efforts of certain people to attribute value to every novelty that comes along.

What's the role of the artist in today's society?

I recall that Ezra Pound said the artist was like the seismograph of his era. Via the contents of his work, the true artist warns the rest of his fellow men regarding the direction in which they're moving. At times, communication is facilitated because the message is perceptible by other sensitive spirits or because the language is absolutely visible or legible, while at other times it is not, because when the work is not figurative, it takes more effort to perceive its content. In other cases, like that of music, the language is invisible.

You are affectionately known to your students as “Maestro”. As such, what's the most important lesson you could transmit to a person approaching the field of art?

I would tell them, first of all, to temper themselves. To temper themselves to withstand injustice and indifference, to remain above the prejudices that prevail in the field of creation and to maintain firmly their own convictions, over and above the pressures of fashion. Secondly, they should keep an open spirit and follow their own impulses, (since) what's important is to paint a picture as you understand it. Finally, be patient, as patient as necessary to face any lifetime activity responsibly.

How do you think your painting will develop from here on?

I don't know. If I did, it wouldn't make any sense to keep on painting.

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NOTES

1. The initials of “Joaquim Torres García”, whose custom it was to sign his works in this way.

2. Marcos Tiglio(Buenos Aires, 1903-1976), Argentine painter. “Marcos Tiglio was exquisitely sensitive. Landscapes, bar scenes, a few portraits, and, more than anything else, flowers gradually formed Tiglio's particular style in paint, which was characterized by rich impastos and vigorous brush strokes which, quite frequently, dissolved forms by means of pictorial effect. Fragmented color, accentuated in its vibration by black highlights and a lack of definition of expressionist intention provide Tiglio's works with a marked modernity, which reveals the temperament of a painter of very rich expressive possibilities.” (Maria Laura San Martin, A Brief History of Contemporary Argentine Painting, p. 157, Ed. Claridad, Bs. As, 1993).

3. Jorge Rivara (Buenos Aires, 1929), Argentine painter

4. "La Boca", a popular waterfront neighborhood, originally inhabited by Italian immigrants and located on the south side of Buenos Aires at the mouth of the Riachuelo River.

5. Carlos de la Carcova (Buenos Aires, 1903-1974), Argentine sculptor and architect. First Prize in the Salón Nacional of 1932. Among some of his best works are the monument to General Mosconi, located in the Recoleta district of Buenos Aires, and a sculpture of Lisandro de la Torre, located in the Buenos Aires financial district. Others of his works are in the Buenos Aires Museum of Fine Arts and several provincial museums.

6. Julio Payró (Buenos Aires, 1899-1971), Argentine painter, university professor and researcher in the field of plastic arts. Perhaps his greatest work was the book. El Estilo del Siglo XX - The Style of the Twentieth Century - (Ed. de Belgrano, 1980, Buenos Aires).

7. Héctor Cartier (Chivilcoy, Buenos Aires Province, 1927), an outstanding Argentine educator. He taught at the Advanced School of Fine Arts of the National University of La Plata and at the “Manuel Belgrano”, “Ernesto de la Carcova” and “Prilidiano Puyerredón” Schools of Fine Arts in the City of Buenos Aires.

8. Joaquín Torres García (Montevideo, Uruguay, 1874-1949). A passionate painter, tireless traveler and born fighter. “The idea of construction is a constant in his life. tending to establish an order that expresses a balance between life and abstraction, reason and nature. This is an order that transcends from the individual to the universal: “Constructivist Art seeks to find the forms of nature in geometry. He delves into the pre-Columbian cultures and declines their language in myth, fable and archetype. It is a primitive language in the original sense.” (María del Corral, The School of the South, Queen Sofía National Art Center, catalog presentation, p.7).

9. Alfredo L. Palacios (1880-1965), Argentine Socialist politician, orator, writer and legislator.

10. Héctor Francia (Buenos Aires, 1931-1996), poet, art critic and American ideologist.

11. SAAP: Acronym formed by the initials of the “Sociedad Argentina de Artistas Plásticos”, founded in Buenos Aires on December 5, 1925. The organization is a guild, the purpose of which is to unite plastic arts professionals from all over the country.

12. Francisco Petrone (Buenos Aires, 1902-1967), well known Argentine theater and film actor.

13. Herbert Read (England, 1893-1968), poet, novelist and, above all, art critic, historian and philosopher. His work has contributed to the diffusion understanding of the culture and art of the twentieth century.

14. Miguel Diomede (Buenos Aires, 1902-1974), Argentine painter.

15. Juián Agosta (Buenos Aires, 1935), Argentine sculptor.

16. Adrián Dorado (Buenos Aires, 1946). Argentine painter and sculptor.

17. Afolfo Nigro (Rosario, Santa Fe Province. 1942), Argentine painter.

18. Santiago Cogorno (Buenos Aires, 1915), Argentine painter.

19. Guillermo Emilio Magrassi, social anthropologist. Bachellor of Science in Sociology (Universidad del Salvador. Buenos Aires, 1968) with specialization in Anthropology Researcher, university professor and author.

20. Alberto Rex González (Pergamino, Buenos Aires Province, 1918), obtained his medical degree from the National University of Córdoba (Argentina) and completed his doctorate in Anthropology, with specialization in Archaeology at Columbia University, New York. Field researcher, author and university professor.

21. Rodolfo Kusch (Buenos Aires, 1922-1979), Argentine philosopher. “If we were to seek to generically characterize the philosophical efforts of works of Rodolfo G. Kusch, we would be remiss in not referring to his obsessive insistence on ‘all things American’. This insistence traces a vast and recurrent path which covers the gamut of research into popular esthetics, native American anthropology, critical dialogue with contemporary European philosophers, and even literary creations. Thought regarding what is American demands, in Kusch's opinion, not only the discipline to study all things American, but rather, fundamentally, a vital option that takes into account an existential commitment to the reality of our America. For Kusch, thinking American was, in the end, tantamount to deciding in favor of all things American.” (Gustavo González Gazqués, Cultura y Sujeto Cultural en el Pensamiento de Rodolfo Kusch [Culture and Cultural Subject in the Thinking of Rodolfo Kusch], Kusch y el Pensar Desde América [Kusch and Thinking from America], Center of South American Studies, Buenos Aires, 1989).

22. Julio Mafud (Buenos Aires, 1928), writer and professor of psychology and sociology. Author of Argentinians and Status, The Bosses of the Country, The Argentine Sexual Revolution, Sociology of the Tango, Psychology of Creole Liveliness, Argentinian Uprooting, (1959, 1st Prize from Latinoamerican Social University), Social Content of the Martin Fierro (1961, Essay Prize from Writers Argentine Society (SADE).

23. Pierre Levail, La Nación newspaper, Dicember 16, 1994, p. 9.

24. Fernando Espino (1931-1995.), Argentine painter.

25. Pierre Bourdieu , The Rules of Art. The Symbolical Goods Market, p. 252-261, Editorial Anagrama. S.A. Barcelona, Spain.

26. Hugo Padeletti (Alcorta, Rosario, Santa Fe Province; 1928), Argentine painter and poet.

27. Premio Trabucco (formerly Premio Palanza): Awarded annually by the Argentine National Academy of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires, for which six renowned artists are selected and asked to participate.

28. Juan Acha, (Perú, 19.. -México, 1995). His Thought goes towards the gradual creation of a Theory of Latin-American aesthetics: “The most significant matter that visual arts of our America currently confront, consists in the lack of an autonomous visual thought... We need the past...as an impulse to link it with the present. The fact, for instance, of searching the past for art origins - its primary idea -... is not due to a will of returning, but to an anthropological invocation that promotes the updating of man's primitive condition or, which is the same thing, the humanization of the present... we are impelled to look for the Latin-American development of the most western culture we have within us, since that is the part of our own that better trains us in order to change art and change ourselves...nobody would ever think of talking about a Latin-American chemistry or physicis... then why the claim of possessing an art of Latin-American nature? Because art tesifies and expresses what we are...” (Towards An Latin-American Theory Of Art. Towards An Independent Visual Thought, Ediciones del Sol, Buenos Aires, 1991).