Art and Nation: to Rome and back

MALOSETTI COSTA, LAURA

Melbourne

Congreso; 32nd Congress of the International Committee of the History of Art; 2008

CIHA (Comité Internacional de Historia del Arte)

AbstractDuring the mass migrations from Europe (Spain and Italy in the main) to Argentina at the turn of the 19th century, certain young Argentinian artists, mostly the children of Italian immigrants, travelled to the main Italian centres and academies (Rome, Florence, Milan, Venice) to complete their artistic education. Among their number were Pío Collivadino, Cesáreo Bernaldo de Quirós and Carlos Ripamonte. This paper homes in on the strategies of the group of fellow artists in Rome, their connections with other Latin American artists during their European years, their projects and the formation of a nationalist art association, the Nexus group.Particular attention is paid to two issues. On the one hand, I examine the tensions these artists introduced into a mainly French-oriented modernism in Buenos Aires upon their return between 1906 and 1910, a period when millions of impoverished immigrants were arriving in the city, and a cultural prejudice against Italians was developing among many members of the ruling classes. On the other, I deal with these painters? artistic production in terms of their pursuit of a ?national essence? in both rural and urban landscape. After spending sixteen years in Rome, Pío Collivadino in particular created a new, highly influential perception of Buenos Aires, much commented on in the newspapers at the time. Collivadino made the tensions between the old and the new, between demolitions and constructions in the dramatically expanding city, and the contrasts between the rich North and poor South of Buenos Aires the subjects of his paintings.Traditional Argentinian historiography of Art has interpreted the tensions and conflicts of the first decade of the 20th century in Argentina in stylistic terms (i.e. ?who introduced impressionism to Buenos Aires??). The hypothesis of this paper is that, after their training in both French and Italian ateliers and academies, these artists managed their stylistic decisions and appropriations freely and pragmatically according to their individual political agendas, in a rapidly transforming cultural framework.