Between Buenos Aires and Europe: Cosmopolitanism, Pensionnaries and Arts Education in late 19th Argentina

MARIA ISABEL BALDASARRE

Academies and Schools of Art in Latin America

Taylor & Francis/ Routledge

Lugar: New York ; Año: 2020; p. 18 - 31

The National Academy of Fine Arts (ANBA) was nationalized in Buenos Aires in 1905. This is a late date if we compare it with parallel cases in Latin America. In fact, this apparent "delay" in the creation of the first national school of artistic training is linked to a belated constitution which created several other fundamental cultural institutions. However, a more important formative element in the National Academy´s creation was the private society out of which it emerged. As happened with the transformation of private art collections, where private initiatives preceded and formed the basis for the constitution of public museums, a similar process was observed in the case of artistic training.The Society for the Stimulus of Fine Arts (SEBA) -- a private association with government support created in 1876 by a group of independent artists -- was the first, most significant initiative in this sense. From 1878 it offered free training in painting, drawing and applied arts. It was the place in Buenos Aires where the first artists to gain national recognition and amateurs interested in the fine arts were educated; it was also the place where they could take advantage of the practice of drawing from the live model that complemented the drawing of plaster casts and statues. Later, classes of painting, applied arts, sculpture, architecture, ornamental plastic, perspective, artistic anatomy and the history of art would be added, intended for painters, sculptors, as well as artisans and craftsmen. Teachers in the SEBA worked for free and they sold their own pictures with the objective of helping fund the institution. With the nationalization of the Sociedad into a state-supported Academy, came an increase in the number of students, as well as female attendance. Since its establishment, the Academy was an open training ground, attended by both sexes and that allowed contact among different social classes. However, the aesthetic education received in Argentina was often considered insufficient by its students, especially in terms of artistic tradition: the trip to Europe and attendance in the workshop of a renowned teacher occupied a central role in the formation of aspiring artists of the period.This work reconstructs and analyzes the organization and early development of arts training in Buenos Aires, from an initial phase in the SEBA to its later manifestations in the ANBA of 1905.