PROFILE

I am thinking of when was the first time that I had contact with the plastic arts. It was at school. I would have been about seven years old and, at class, I had to draw and paint some flowers. I remember I painted some little daisies with watercolors and I remember that I gave a pink shade to the point of the petals. The teacher liked my work so much that she asked me to go to the main office to show it to the principal. What a great pride.

My father was an artist; he painted and drew very, very well and somehow he always kept me in contact with beauty. On Sunday mornings, when he took me on promenades, he taught me to admire – on the floor made with pieces of marble in our famous Galleria – the fossils. We studied them either because of their shapes or their essence. The outings were in general visits to a museum. He loved, in the art gallery of Brera, the work of the XIX century and together we admired especially the one of the Induno brothers and Giacomo Favertto.

I don’t remember exactly when, but I have very present some drawing classes I attended when I would have been about ten or twelve years old; I remember I had to copy some plaster casts of Greek and Roman work. Another memory of my drawing, I think, was in 1938, when the Walt Disney movie of Snow White was released in Milan. I made several copies of the film scenes; I drew them with China ink and painted them with watercolors; I still keep one of them.
When we had to emigrate, and for several reasons, I couldn’t continue to study a career, I dedicated myself entirely to drawing and painting.

I started going to Pierre Fossey’s studio, from whom I keep beautiful memories. The studio was in the Plaza Independencia. That studio was of much interest, either for the teaching than for the classmates that frequented it. There, I drew a lot of ‘dal vero’ landscapes with charcoal technique, for example the square, the Solis Theater, some old house, or whatever I was able so see from the studio window, and also portraits of my classmates. They were drawings and oil paintings.

During that time, 1942, I participated in a collective show of women’s art at Moretti gallery when it was located inCiudadela Street. A critique appeared from that show in the El Dia newspaper signed by Eduardo Vernazza. I liked that note. I look for Vernazza and asked him to give me lessons; he agreed. He used to come to the house to give me lessons, at the same he would pose for me and teach me. He taught me new techniques and a different way of seeing. It was a very prolific period. I keep many portraits from that phase; many of them are portraits of Vernazza. I use to draw him; sometimes I painted him full-body, or sometimes I painted parts of his body: hands, ears… with great prolixity and thoroughness.

That was from 1944 to 1946, year that I got married and that I went to live with my husband to Buenos Aires, where I continued to work. I took my painting equipment with me to my honeymoon. I remember myself in the middle of the hotel courtyard, in Villavicencio, Mendoza, with my portable easel, happy and painting.

When we settled in Buenos Aires, where my dear friend Chola – also a painter – lived, I continue working, and also being pregnant with my daughter Martha. I use to go to drawing sessions with live models (nude) in a beautiful old house in Florida Street. It was the Circulo de Bellas Artes. It was the end of the year 1946. At the same time, my husband put me in contact with a master of the Argentinean painting, Horacio Butler. I started going to his classes in his studio in the Arenales Street in front of the square. It was a very joyful period. I continued the classes until the end of June 1947 when I came to Montevideo to give birth. At that time, the sex of the baby was unknown until the birth; it was my beautiful Martha.

Butler’s teaching was excellent: it was painting, exercise of harmony and proportions, division of the space, study of color spectrum, of values.

And I painted under Butler’s direction until the year 1948, when we decided to go back to Uruguay. The paintings that I keep from that time are: many studies of nude, some landscapes, some portraits and studies of objects, with different pallets.

When I went back to Montevideo in 1949, I decided to go back to the Torres-Garcia studio. Being in that studio has enriched me. The Studio has been one of the great movements of the plastic arts, not only in Uruguay. The atmosphere inside the Studio was practically religious. There was a great respect and admiration for the master and an attitude of discipline, seriousness, and work, a lot of work.

Julio Uruguay Alpuy was in charge of the Studio at that time, a great artist, a great man, a great friend. His classes in the great space of the athenaeum were very important, hard indeed, of tremendous exigency. For a year, Alpuy didn’t allow me to touch a brush. It was drawing, drawing, drawing! We were a group that worked very hard and humbly trying to forget the previously studied in order to absorb the new theories and teachings without prejudice. I still keep many friends among the classmates of that period.

In 1950 my son Roberto was born.
I feel that against all odds I managed to take care of the kids and paint!
After some time, Alpuy went abroad and Augusto Torres took after him. Augusto was a delightful and sensible man. In front of him I felt very timid, very small, very little thing. He was a great painter who was overshadowed by the colossal figure of his father, Don Joaquin Torres-Garcia. Augusto didn’t endure with the task and handed over the reigns to Jose Grurvich. Great change. Gurvich had, I would say, an explosive temperament; he would inspire rather than teach, he would correct the minimum, and he would transmit the teachings of the theory of Torres in a very subtle manner.

By now, Eva Olivetti had joined the studio. Daily and diligently, Eva and I used to go out in the car every morning to paint. We would settle in any place of the city that was attractive to us in that particular moment and… paint. I use to start in a cardboard of about 40 x 50 or 50 x 60; I used to do it quickly like if I was taking notes. When I was done, as Eva was still working, I would go back to the subject I had already studied and I would do little paintings of about 15 x15 that many times were in fact better than the original. They were the ones that my brother gave the name of “minis”. I exhibited those minis (with other work) in Galeria Trilce. They were sold at a very reasonable price and had very good acceptance among the public.

Besides leading Torres studio, Gurvich used to teach in his house of El Cerro and some of us used to go there; including, of course, Eva Olivetti. I remember Lilian Lipschiz, Sara Capurro, Angelina de la Quintana, Gloria Franchi, etc. The house of Gurvich was beautiful, full of love for life, full of paintings of different sizes and of small pieces of art, because he was tremendously creative and the items of ordinary use were in his hands objects of art. He used to transmit with his words, his suggestions, his example, something indescribable, the happiness, the fruitfulness, the joy of the task.

I don’t remember exactly how long this season of joyful creativity lasted, of going to the streets every morning to take notes, and, in the afternoons, to El Cerro to Gurvich’s. Sometimes I would bring something to eat, and because many times Rafael was busy until late, the visits were prolonged and we would continue the talks enjoying a kind of copetin.
My father died in 1955 and several months later, my grandmother. They had both been pillars of my existence; their death caused a great change on me. I stopped painting. I believe it was for four years.
One day I retook the brushes and a very different painting emerged, like if I had matured something that was inside of me.

In 1971 I had my first individual show. It was in Galeria Moretti. The painting was almost all very white. When I showed them to Augusto, he told me: “Some day, this series will be called your white period”. Since that moment, I have prepared a large amount of shows, in general always exhibiting new work.

I had started painting in series, or, I would exhibit a new series that it was in general integrated by about 30 paintings.
I have painted many series and I have exhibited many series and I continue painting series, but… also, along the search has emerged, almost in an involuntary way, other forms of expression. I broke away from the easel and I painted panels that form a screen, “The Great Screen”, a very interesting experience for me because it allowed for different possibilities of the plastic arts.

Also the series “The bed” was a new form trying to introduce the third dimension, because the work consisted of collages of fabric that, besides being painted, contributed to the work with its own shadows that, of course, changed according to the moment, light, and the spectator’s angle of view.
From “The great screen” emerged el Laberinto: the labyrinth, great, all black, complicated, with a meaning between plastic, philosophical, playful.
The years have passed; I have had the happiness of being grandmother and great-grandmother!!!!!!!!!!
And I continue painting…