Carlos Páez Vilaró, one hundred years of a River Plate native on this side of the river

The exhibition that commemorates the centenary of the artist, creator of Casa Pueblo and great artistic bridge between Argentina and Uruguay, invites you to a tour of his unforgettable work

A golden zinc sculpture that looks like a key, almost two meters high, welcomes the visitor on the second floor of Colección Fortabat and opens the door to the building that rises over the Río de la Plata to an exhibition in homage to the Uruguayan artist Carlos Páez Vilaró: next November 1st he would turn one hundred years old. Another, also made of zinc, but silver and shaped like a sun or a rudder, bids farewell to the audience at the end. During the tour, eighteen paintings and endless brushstrokes and gestures of colored spatulas recount moments in the artist's life and reveal his imagination.

Old documents testify in a showcase to chapters of that biography: some letters from Astor Piazzolla, China Zorrilla and Jorge Luis Borges, appear among exhibition posters of yesteryear, including the first in the line of his long career, back in July 1955. , at the Wildenstein gallery, in Buenos Aires. Sixty-eight years later, four of these oil paintings dialogue on the same wall on the occasion of this commemoration. They are scenes of life in the Mediomundo conventillo [a house in Montevideo where Afro-descendant families lived] and Uruguayan candombe, portrayed in earth colors and old pink. “He had his atelier in the tenement. His work was very fresh because he was soaked in the space, the immediacy and the energy of the place”, says María Dezuliani, curator of this exhibition and executive director of the Casapueblo Museum. Two works from the late 1950s show the break in the painter's style. The curves are straightened, the planes are distorted, the form is dismantled and the figures are faceted. A cubist air enters the canvas and opens the way to the fourth dimension.
Crossing the room is like crossing the river from Uruguay, arriving in Buenos Aires and experiencing a bit of Buenos Aires culture on the same plane. Gardel, Maradona, 9 de Julio, the Obelisk, the Cabildo and the National Congress appear in the work Homenaje a Buenos Aires, a small collage that later originated the mural by Figueroa Alcorta y Tagle. The Boca fans are in a canvas titled Boca, una passion (1998) and the Buenos Aires night, in Fernet Branca (2011). If one stops to look, he will feel observed by dozens of eyes that repeat the same silhouette in these paintings. The football fans, the couple at the bar, a sun and a cat. They all look the same.

The three canvases in the background were exhibited in the last show the artist held while he was alive: it was in June 2013, at the Tigre Art Museum. On white backgrounds, images of people, cats, fish, turtles, butterflies, African masks, symbols, stars, and eyes, many eyes that look, unfold and intertwine like a mental map. “It is as if Carlos had wanted to unite in a trunk everything he painted during his life; like a summary,” the curator concludes. She wanted to pay tribute to the color that had inspired him to put his works on the stretcher: white.

To schedule
Carlos Páez Vilaró, one hundred years of a River Plate native, organized by the Casapueblo Museum, the Fortabat Collection and the Uruguayan embassy in Argentina, can be visited from Thursday to Sunday, from 12 to 20, at Olga Cossettini 141. General admission, $1000; Thursdays, $500.

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