Interview with Lucio Fontana by Raffaele De Grada

Argentine art and Italian artists

We know Argentine art only from a few reproductions we may have seen here and there, and generally we must acknowledge that, from what is known, Argentine art is linked to Italian names. Is this impression accurate?

It is indeed accurate, because the main Argentine artists are children of Italians: Verni [sic], Spilimbergo, Sordi [sic],¹ Cogorno, Castagnino, Fioravanti, and others. Artists who stayed for a period in Italy and whose type of art also connects to the Italian tradition. The aspiration of the very young is to come to Italy, where they know they would have the opportunity to pursue their aspirations toward a modern art that responds to their needs.

Artistic currents in Argentina

Argentine artists, especially of Italian origin, have come to our country several times to study with scholarships, pensions, or other means. However, I have noticed that they often returned to their country with only a more or less vague idea of ancient and Renaissance Italian art. Others, on the other hand, have penetrated the heart of the contemporary artistic question precisely as a product of all the culture of the past. Therefore, our public would be pleased to know, even schematizing for convenience of reasoning, what are the artistic currents (in painting and decorative arts) that determine the development of the arts today.

In Argentina, there is talk of a national art represented by artists who paint and sculpt in a dull and realistic manner (I speak of folkloric or traditionalist realism). Pampas, gauchos, etc., in the manner of the painter Quiroz [sic], Quinquila [sic] Martìn,² etc. While the true, most vibrant values of Argentine painting and sculpture enter an international climate.

The origins of the international climate

This climate that you call international, what is its essential origin?

It has an Italian and French origin, although they also refer to Spanish painting, for example El Greco and [incomplete sentence].

To say Italian and French origin is to say a somewhat European origin. But which trends in Italian and French painting and sculpture find more openness in Argentina?

Nineteenth-century French painting with Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin are reference points for these Argentine painters. But the influence of contemporary Italian painting is also equally strong, and this influence together with that of nineteenth-century French painting gives the predominant type of Argentine painting.

The main Argentine artists

Can you give me some names and specify the direction of the most important artists?

One of the most vibrant painters is Lino Spilimbergo, who began with an almost metaphysical style of painting, as defined by his famous terraces; beside him another great painter, Victorica, whose painting is instead Impressionist, reminiscent of Gola or Tosi, Da Neri [sic],³ Berni, other valuable artists, Raoul Sordi [sic], a highly valuable Argentine painter who studied at the Academy in Milan.

The Spatialist movement

I recently saw a manifesto by some Argentine artists who call themselves Spatialist artists.⁴ What movement is this?

While all the artists I have mentioned so far could be said to move in a climate of modernity with recognizable origins, the artists who call themselves Spatialists want to break with tradition and are concerned with rendering precisely a spatial vision. Imagine, they even go so far as to conceive art in such a new form as to think they could transmit it by television. The theoretical foundations of the Spatialist manifesto are based on distrust in the material eternity of art. Art, according to them, cannot remain as physical matter in the face of eternity, but continues as a spiritual part; the medium changes, or rather the technique is updated to inventions, just as it has happened in the past. For example, just as the caveman engraved an artistic figuration in stone and only after many centuries was color discovered, a chemical and technical medium that gave artists the possibility to express themselves in a new field, so today why not accept the recent discoveries of science? I state some concepts of the manifesto” [this is what] the Argentine artists believe: Arias, Fridman, Cesanuevez [sic], and Rocamonte [sic], Eldesten [sic].⁵

Interest in Italian art in Argentina

This experiment is very interesting. But now I wanted to move to another topic. Is there interest in Argentina for contemporary Italian art? Can an Italian presence be envisioned in Argentina?

There is very strong interest in the Italian market, as demonstrated by the exhibition brought by Zuffi, and those of Barbaroux,⁶ who is now going to Buenos Aires, and the invitation to the sculptor Manzú for a solo exhibition in Buenos Aires.

But to conclude, I want to express all my confidence in the tenacity and effort that Argentine artists are making today, and I hope that the authorities of that country will find the means to send the best young Argentine artists to study in Italy and to make contact with what is your artistic reality, precisely because, I think, as long as things are not known directly, there always remains a climate of uncertainty.