Guarani heritage
In the heart of the old city of Montevideo, the Museo de arte precolombino indigena(MAPI) invites you to discover the art of the natives, especially the Guarani culture. The Guaraníes are one of the main ethnic groups of the country. Guarantors of the indigenous customs, they practice all the arts and crafts. The tradition of woodcarving, perpetuated for several centuries, was renewed during the colonial period.
The arrival of the Spaniards and the Portuguese caused an unprecedented cultural mixing. Anxious to protect the Guarani Indians, the Jesuit fathers taught them the arts. They transmitted the European canons, especially in sculpture, from imported or reproduced models. This is how a baroque-guarani art was born, intended to embellish the catholic buildings. The polychrome statues that we can admire today were produced in these art workshops until the middle of the 18th century. The Indians adapted the models, creating a refined style that was no less moving.
From academism to modernism
Juan Manuel Blanes (1830-1901) was inspired by the history of his country to paint his most emblematic pictures. This representative of national classicism was born the year Uruguay officially became a country in its own right. He began drawing at a very young age. After opening a studio in Montevideo, he earned his living as a portraitist.
A painter of realism, he left to enrich his technique in Florence thanks to a scholarship. There he discovered the possibilities offered by oil painting. On his return, he painted the great historical events and became the portraitist of the figures of the Independence. In 1879, he returned to Italy with his family to develop his talents as a sculptor. But tragedy followed: 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 remained in Italy and with whom he was in conflict (he had had a relationship with his wife). The artist stayed in Pisa for ten years to look for him, until his death in 1901.
The works of this artist, acclaimed in Latin America, are kept in the Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales or in 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 of all a writer and politician. Because of his political career, he started painting late in life. He draws his themes from his childhood memories, which gives his works a great tenderness. He spent ten years in France, from where he returned with hundreds of paintings. His rural scenes or his urban and colored scenes inspired by the candombe are in the continuity of the nabis. His line remains naive but it is his sensitivity and his 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 met Picasso in 1920, his style turned towards cubism.
After a trip to New York in the 1930s, he became interested in ancient art. 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, but based on geometric composition.
At the age of 60, in 1934, 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. The greatest artists came out of the Torres García workshop. Among them is the stone sculptor Gonzalo Fonseca (1922-1997), who conceived his creations as microcosms linking the past and the future; the painter, ceramist and musician born in Lithuania José Gurvich (1927-1974), another major figure of Constructivism. The Museo Torres Garcia 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 the capital of Uruguay, street art was born after the dictatorship, in the 1980s. Residents remember the work painted in 1984 in tribute to Victoria Diaz, a teacher who sacrificed herself during the Spanish Civil War. The caption, before it was erased in 2017, read Ánimo compañeros que 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 all neighborhoods, street art recounts historical or sporting events, or conveys messages of love and peace... even though urban art was banned in 2014.
Let's stay outside to follow James Turrell, the master of land art who sculpts light. His installation Ta Khut, incidentally the first independent observatory in Uruguay, can be discovered in the coastal town of José Ignacio, on the property of the Posada Ayana hotel. An astral journey under the sign of art and design.
