Dolores Pruneda Paz
08/12/2021 7:01 AM
Clarín.com
Culture
Updated 08/12/2021 7:01 AM
55 Walker
.
This is the name of the
first retrospective of Marcia Schvartz in the United States
, "a rarity" says the painter, although not so much, being a review of
four decades of celebrated career
, of New York, a city considered the international center of painting. especially Latin American and, in these times, especially figurative painting and made by women.
Organized by the galleries Bortolami, Kaufmann Repetto and Andrew Kreps, the exhibition recovers
some 23 works made between 1976 and 2018
: drawings, textiles, paintings and reliefs that will be exhibited until September 7, during an "atypical summer," says Schvartz in statements. to the Télam agency-, culturally interesting, because now it is as a whole, winter-summer, full of events, more after the Covid. It seems that in New York there is a lot of movement after the stop ".
Curated by Amanda Schmitt, the retrospective has text by Lucy Hunter, who wrote: “Schvartz basks in grotesque fidelity to the world: fidelity yes, beauty no.
His work vibrates with a physical intensity that seems to represent everything with human overtones, be it a warty cactus or a ghostly face in a cloudy reflection, the carnal madness of two lovers, a ruthless self-portrait. "
Style.
Marcia Schvartz and one of her works.
"The experience of these works is both magnetic and stirring, full of anxiety and emotion," Hunter notes. anti hierarchical, who rejects the airbrush and revels in the harsh reality ".
This exhibition
"was a rarity"
that includes "very old things, portraits of Barcelona, pastels, the entire series of the river, another of the black north, of lianas, things that are not from series and self-portraits", the author goes back to Guaranitic, where water, flora and pre-Columbian women are the protagonists, or that of the arid landscapes of Salta, Jujuy, Córdoba.
"They invited me and I accepted. I zoomed in and it was all very fast, three months. It seemed to me that it would not be possible, but they took a risk. I had exhibited two years ago in a very small gallery of an Argentine, Eneas Capalbo, another The artist saw it, told them about me and then I don't know: they
googled, they saw my site and they called me "
, one of the great Argentine artists, who emerged from the hand of the" new image "after the dictatorship, reviewed.
He called her "the artist friend who has a connection with that gallery," he told her that "they were interested" in her work and "blah."
In the large space that remains precisely at 55 Walker Street there is much of what was exhibited in the last retrospective, the one that was seen at the Neuquén Museum of Fine Arts, and works from museums and private collections.
"Portraits, self-portraits, some yarns with which I worked a lot and three reliefs with epoxy and glued things from the 'Fondo' series with which we had problems at customs, because they carry snails and others and it seems that they are re puffing balls -he says- . I could not get the visa so I did not go, but better, because that way I could not return. This is a very complicated moment, very dilettante ".
Why his work?
"First, it is fashionable for you to be a woman and then, figuration and painting - he presumes -. And then there are the prices, here they are laughed at, or Argentina or Burkina Faso: in Brazil an artist my age is worth 10 times more, or even more. We have half joke prices. "
Picture.
This painting was part of the sample "Therapy", exhibited at the Malba museum.
Anyway,
"in Argentina many still haven't found out that painting is highly valued
and they continue to do other little things," she points out. "At the Metropolitan in New York there is a retrospective of the great American painter Alice Neel, who, like her, She portrayed her neighbors and a society in metamorphosis. She focused on the people of San Telmo where she lives (merchants, bus drivers, taxi drivers, soccer fans, militants) or on the lumpenaje that haunts hotels and dances in railway terminals such as Once and Constitución. .
"And at the Tate in London -he continues listing-, there is Paula Rego, an amazing artist" who, again like her, left her country in 1976. She, 21 years old, in a hurry by the dictatorship: student of Fine Arts, Peronist militant, daughter of the owners of the Fausto bookstore and with a missing friend she went into exile in Barcelona.
Rego, 41, arrived in London leaving behind Salazar Portugal, whose sad and oppressive atmosphere brought his work.
-Why is an Argentine artist worth less than a Brazilian?
- I don't know, because I don't play on the subject of the market, I dedicate myself to painting as honestly as possible. I don't paint to sell but because I like it, it comes out of my guts. There is historical disinterest I suppose, since I remember it is like that, there is no incentive, there is no such thing as elementary school kids going to the museum, middle school kids either, and Fine Arts kids either. In Mexico it appears on the front pages of the newspapers that an exhibition is inaugurated, in Brazil too, here neither on the front pages nor inside. In Brazil there are billboards for exhibitions, such as cinema. Here, not even on the day of the Culture page they put you on a billboard for exhibitions, to tell you a few things. There are things that interest, such as football, a lot, more and more, and others that do not give five balls. They give the whole ball to the music, I do not mean it with a grudge,It is a faithful description of the situation, which is not current, since I started it was like that and I doubt that it will change.
-The Argentine scene, anyway, is broader.
-Of course, despite that there are very good things that are installed here and that in many countries do not exist.
I have the National Award and the Municipal Award.
The National Hall is a marvel.
But I also have a political stance and I am a plastic artist, a horrible word, and that is out of the imagination of some people who think that the artist is an asshole who runs behind the TV.
We do not run behind the camera, we are painters, sculptors, we are not actors or people from the entertainment world.
They put everyone together from a very tricky point of view.
The intellectuals are the writers and the philosophers and there is no assimilation that the painter's work is very intellectual.
"El baño del morocho", 1989. Another of Schvartz's paintings.
-How does the pandemic impact on that scene?
-In the beginning I was re happy, everything was nightmarish and with the pandemic it was going to shit: biennials, art fairs, there were articles by historians and painters who said that it was over but it did not happen, now they are doing everything again as If nothing had happened, inequality increased and the art world, which was previously on the side of the rich, now has been on the side of the very rich. In the 60s, you went to a middle-class doctor's or lawyer's office and had paintings hanging, that doesn't happen anymore. One, because they became brutalized and did not even come across buying art from young artists, and another, because it was left as a vice of the rich. But painting has nothing to do with that, which is the market, the artist needs to express himself, he is something old like the human being and it is arduous and expensive work.
-Would that description define what some call the "new normal"?
- I have the hunch that it is going to deepen, there will be a frivolization of the above: the artist mixed with the kitchen (...), this world is getting smaller and smaller.
Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Rosario and stop counting.
I exhibited in Neuquén, Bahía Banca, Tucumán, Resistencia, a place with a lot of life, always moving with my motor and with a lot of effort.
I gave classes everywhere, in the School of Fine Arts of Salta, in Belgrano and Pueyrredón, these last two years
by zoom, the inconclusive talks that I call them
.
I used to do it in La Cárcova, which is now a museum but was the oldest school in Latin America.
Idea.
The artist maintains that the painter also makes "an intellectual work of the painter, which summons the body and at the same time is very philosophical".
The artist adds:
-It's great, but everyone wants to go to the Di Tella because from there they go out with a gallery and things are quite dense.
Painters and plastic artists will continue to exist, there is no doubt about that, many kids have that inclination and end up doing graphic design to sell shoes, all that exists.
There is that and there is the other: kids who do things with enthusiasm, who commit and play.
The situation was never easy and now it has to be sustained.
Here is a very creative place, there are divine young people, many people who work, do things and have ideas, that's why I try to get closer and throw a wave.
There is
the intellectual work of the painter
, which summons the body and at the same time is very philosophical, a way of standing before the world.
Basic
Schvartz participated in exhibitions such as
Radical Women
, at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, the Pinacoteca de Sao Paulo and the Brooklyn Museum.
And his work is in public collections around the world, such as the National Museum of Fine Arts, the Reina Sofía Art Center in Madrid;
and the Bronx Museum of Arts.
Source: Télam
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