The presence of Argentine art in the Spanish capital transcends the outstanding performance of the works of national artists at ARCOmadrid, which closed last Sunday with interesting sales for the delegations that traveled from Argentina.
While artists, gallery owners and collectors walked the corridors of the IFEMA property, in the cultural heart of the Spanish capital, the missionary artist
Andrés Paredes worked on the assembly of a new exhibition
, which will open this Wednesday, March 1 at Casa de América, and which promises become the viral event of the coming weeks.
An
immense migrant butterfly
landed this Monday on the façade of the Palacio de Linares, headquarters of Casa de América, in front of the Cibeles Fountain.
The work, made in warm fluorescent tones with vinyl canvas and hand-embellished, replaced the six giant cockroaches with the heads of human beings made of iron, a tribute by Cuban Roberto Fabelo to Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis.
The installation will be part of the programming of
Conexión Buenos Aires-Madrid,
a program organized by the Government of the City of Buenos Aires to promote the city as a destination to live, visit and study.
It has the support of Ñ, Clarín's cultural magazine
, which last November celebrated its 1,000th edition, presented in the Salón Dorado of the Teatro Colón and at the Instituto Cervantes in Madrid, and which this year celebrates 20 years of continuous presence both in its paper format and digitally.
The Ministry of Culture headed by
Enrique Avogadro
will take samples of visual arts, films, plays, music and dance proposals between March 1 and 15 at Casa de América.
The minister has not yet defined, based on his schedule, if he will travel to the Spanish capital to tour the proposals.
An immense hand-embellished butterfly, by Andrés Paredes, perches on the façade of the Casa de América building as a symbol of union between the Cities of Buenos Aires and Madrid.
Photo Alejandro Montes de Oca.
The Buenos Aires-Madrid Connection program was a project devised a year ago by the director of International Cultural Cooperation of the City of Buenos Aires
, María Victoria Alcaraz,
together with the director of Casa de América, Enrique Ojeda Vila.
The immense Paredes butterfly welcomes visitors and captures the attention of those who pass the Fuente de Cibeles, where Madrileños gather to celebrate and also protest.
It is a reproduction of
the migrant species native to the City of Buenos Aires,
female, also known as "four eyes" or, its scientific name,
Junonia Genoveva hilaris
.
"The intervention on the façade will give this connection its identity because it is the stamp that Buenos Aires puts on Madrid, the butterfly is of a species that inhabits the Buenos Aires skies,"
the artist explained weeks ago in dialogue with
Clarín Cultura.
Meanwhile, inside Casa de América, in the Torres García room, the artist has already set up his exhibition
The Revolution of the Butterflies,
made up of 10 watercolors from the
Hospederas
series , openwork on paper and a central installation of 60 sculptures of small multicolored butterflies. .
The immense butterfly is already emerging as the protagonist of all the selfies while the exhibition lasts.
Photo Clarin.
"The exhibition
talks about temporary migrations.
There are 60 butterflies floating like on a cloud in the center of the room, native species of Buenos Aires, made of resin and wood, and there are also 15 paintings that represent the eggs of those butterflies with their host plants," said Paredes.
And he continues: “There is the concept because the butterfly lays the egg only on a host plant.
If it does not exist, the butterfly cannot lay its egg.
It is a metaphor of how the people of Madrid at some point came to Buenos Aires to lay their eggs for a better future for their children
and the migration that is going to Madrid today”.
The exhibition is completed with the installation that will be located in the center of the room, the final stage of the reproduction process of the butterfly, when it already unfolds its wings.
They are
the 60 reproductions of Buenos Aires butterflies that float in a cloud
, fly free, before migrating together to arrive again at a host plant where they reproduce and start the process again.
The artist Andrés Paredes dedicated the last weekend to the assembly of his exhibition at Casa de América.
Photo Clarin
The curatorial text was written by
Helena Ferronato
and she is the one who ends up giving meaning to the three axes that make up the exhibition.
She holds the healer.
“Paredes recreates in Hospederas, an unprecedented series of inks on paper, which represent the life cycle of butterflies.
Subtle, curved lines and organic shapes resemble the foliage of plants in which butterflies lay their eggs,
then transform into caterpillars and return to rest in the form of a chrysalis until finally becoming a butterfly.
This transformation is undoubtedly a long and intricate path, a great commitment to the future marked by effort, development, growth, the future and not giving up in the face of adversity”, reflects Ferronato.
Argentine art is strong and safe in Madrid
In addition to the Paredes exhibition, the Buenos Aires Ministry of Culture scheduled the exhibition
Un Obrero de la Fotografía
by Antonio Massa, which celebrates the 60th anniversary of the Massa studio, made up of three generations of photographers and with one of the most important archives in Argentina. .
This Monday the assembly teams of the exhibition Un Obrero de la Fotografía by Antonio Massa worked ahead of the opening this Wednesday, March 1.
Photo Clarin.
At the same time, the Tesoro Vestuario Collection of the San Martín Theater
will be exhibited
, which brings together a careful selection of garments from the theatrical costume collection of the Complejo Teatral de Buenos Aires;
and an exhibition on the Sur de ella
Magazine
, founded by Victoria Ocampo in 1931, which will show objects, documents, first editions, and letters belonging to the writers of the South Group.
The Buenos Aires-Madrid Connection program is part of
the emerging Spanish interest in the production of Argentine artists
.
While national artists and gallery owners stood out at ARCOmadrid, the photographer Facundo de Zuviría opened his exhibition at the outstanding Fundación MAPFRE, made up of the Siesta argentina and Frontalismos series, where an anthology of the surrealist Leonora Carrington was exhibited alongside.
In turn, the cultural authorities of Spain have stressed that
the Argentine public, in all its age range, is one of the most faithful cultural consumers in their country.
The writer Luis Gusmán presented on Monday night the Spanish edition of his classic El frasquito, which this year celebrates 50 years since its first edition.
Photo Clarin.
The fury of the Argentines is also literary.
At the beginning of February, the Argentine writer based in Berlin, Samanta Schweblin filled the Gabriela Mistral amphitheater of Casa de América, where she brought together more than 300 people who listened to her dialogue with Javier Rodríguez Marcos, coordinator of literary information for 'Babelia', the cultural supplement of the newspaper
El País
and with Juan Casamayor, editor of Páginas de Espuma.
And this Monday, at the
Olavide Bar de Libro,
the space opened by Raquel Garzón and Daniel Ulanovsky Sack in the Chamberí neighborhood, the writer
Luis Gusmán gathered his audience to present the Spanish edition of a classic, El frasquito
, which this year celebrates its 50 years of its first edition.
Gusmán was accompanied by Hugo Savino, Rubén Arribas, Raquel Garzón herself and Ricardo Piglia's widow, Beba Eguía de Piglia.
look too
The landscape of the Buenos Aires neighborhoods, the axis of the mega exhibition of Facundo de Zuviría in Madrid
Fabiola Yañez at ARCOmadrid: photo with the King and Queen of Spain and promises of support for Argentine artists
