The Guarani heritage
In the heart of Montevideo's old town, the Museo de Arte Precolombino Indígena(MAPI) highlights the heritage of the country's indigenous peoples, in particular the Guaraní culture. This major group in the country's history, apart from the Charrúas, has preserved its traditions by cultivating numerous arts and crafts. Woodcarving, practised for centuries, found a new lease of life in colonial times. The arrival of the Spanish and Portuguese brought with it an unprecedented cultural melting pot. Concerned to protect the Guarani communities, the Jesuit fathers taught them the arts in their reductions or missions. They passed on European canons, particularly in sculpture, based on imported or reproduced models. The result was a Baroque-Guarani art form designed to embellish Catholic buildings. The polychrome statues we still admire today come from these workshops, which were active until the expulsion of the Jesuits from the region in 1867. By adapting the models, native craftsmen gave life to a more sober style, but one of remarkable expressive intensity.
From academism to modernism
Juan Manuel Blanes (1830-1901) drew inspiration from his country's history for his most emblematic paintings. This representative of national classicism was born the year Uruguay officially became a country in its own right. He began drawing at an early age. After opening a studio in Montevideo, he earned his living as a portrait painter.
A painter of realism, he went to Florence on a scholarship to improve his technique. There, he discovered the possibilities offered by oil painting. On his return, he painted major historical events and portrayed the figures of the Independence movement. In 1879, he returned to Italy with his family to develop his talents as a sculptor. But one tragedy followed another: his wife died in 1889, then he lost one of his sons in an accident in 1895, as well as his very close brother. He also lost all trace of his son Nicanor, who had remained in Italy and with whom he was in conflict (he had had a relationship with Nicanor's wife). The artist stayed in Pisa for ten years to look for him, until his death in 1901.
Works by this artist, acclaimed in Latin America, are kept at the Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales and at the Museo Juan Manuel Blanes, such as the patriotic Treinta y tres Orientales .
Pedro Figari (1861-1938). Considered the precursor of modern art in this part of the world, and whose works can be seen in these same two museums, as well as in the Museo Figari, Pedro Figari was first and foremost a writer and politician. Because of his political career, he took up painting late in life. He drew his themes from his childhood memories, which lent a great tenderness to his works. He spent ten years in France, from where he returned with hundreds of paintings. His rural scenes or his colorful urban scenes inspired by candombe are in the continuity of the nabis. His line remains naïve, but it's his sensitivity and sense of color that make his style unclassifiable.
Constructivism
Joaquín Torres García. Born in Montevideo in 1877, Joaquín Torres García moved to Barcelona with his family in his teens. A student at the Barcelona School of Fine Arts, the man who would become the father of Uruguayan Constructivism set out to propose a new vision of modern life. In Paris, where he was reunited with Picasso in 1920, his style moved towards Cubism.
After a trip to New York in the 1930s, he turned his attention to the ancient arts. Pre-Columbian, African and Egyptian culture inspired him. Returning to Spain, he chose Madrid to write Arte Constructivo. The manifesto, published in 1935, was dedicated to his friend Mondrian, a pioneer of abstraction. Constructivism, born in Russia in 1913, is also a non-figurative art form based on geometric composition.
In 1934, at the age of 60, he returned to Montevideo for the first time. He founded the equivalent of the Bauhaus, and opened a workshop to train his students in constructivism. Some of the greatest artists to emerge from the Atelier Torres García were the stone sculptor Gonzalo Fonseca (1922-1997), who conceived his creations as microcosms linking past and future, and the Lithuanian-born painter, ceramist and musician José Gurvich (1927-1974), another major figure of Constructivism. The Museo Torres García pays tribute to the artist.
Carlos Páez Vilaró
Carlos Páez Vilaró, a prominent figure of the 20th century, has been a tireless creator throughout his career. Born in 1923 in Montevideo, he went to Buenos Aires to work as a graphic designer. On his return to Uruguay in the 1940s, he began to paint. For this, he was inspired by Afro-Uruguayan culture, including Candombe music and dances, punctuated by drums.
Over the decades, he explored all forms of expression. Sculpture, ceramics, frescoes, writing and even cinema as the documentary Batouk. Co-written with Aimé Césaire and Léopold Sédar Senghor, this film was shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 1967.
The primitive arts and travels renew his style thereafter. He exhibited on all continents, alongside the greatest masters of the twentieth century. Carlos Páez Vilaró died in 2014 in Casapueblo, his house-museum-hotel in Punta Ballena, which he considered to be his habitable sculpture. This sprawling Mediterranean-style construction, he built with his own hands with the help of his friends and the fishermen of the village. Every evening, as the sun sets in Punta del Este, the voice of Carlos Páez Vilaró declaims one of his poems. The Sun Ceremony is a must!
Street-art
In Uruguay's capital, street art flourished after the dictatorship in the 1980s. Inhabitants remember the work painted in 1984 in tribute to Victoria Díaz, a teacher who sacrificed her life during the Spanish Civil War. The caption, before it was removed in 2017, read Ánimo compañeros que la vida pueda más: "Courage compañeros, la vida pueda más ": "Courage companions, life will resume".
In Ciudad Vieja, and around the port, the most diverse styles reflect the creative energy of the inhabitants. In every district, murals recount historical or sporting events, or convey messages of love and peace... Since 2014, however, the practice of urban art has been strictly regulated: it is only permitted on certain supports, such as the facades of shops or buildings, and always at the request of the owners or the municipality.
Let's stay outside and follow James Turrell, the master of light-sculpting land art. His Ta Khut installation, Uruguay's first independent observatory, can be seen in the coastal town of José Ignacio, on the grounds of the Posada Ayana hotel. An astral journey in art and design.
