PEDRO FIGARI
www.pedrofigari.com
fernandosaavedra@pedrofigari.com - figarisaavedra@hotmail.com
PEDRO FIGARI and THE WASHINGTON POST
If You’ve Ever Dreamed of Being Artist
This Man Found Way to Fame at 60!
Of Great Pedro Figari’s Work
By Jane Watson Crane
If the stress in this column has been on Latin American art, it is because it has been the field of greatest activity and interest in Washington this summer. The peak is reached this week with the opening Tuesday at the Pan American Union of a small exhibition of paintings by the Uruguayan artist, Pedro Figari, an individual with a real claim to greatness.
Some artists object to biographies, on the ground that all you need to know is in their work. You don’t have to know anything about Figari to enjoy his paintings, but if you have some knowledge of how they came into existence, we believe you will get more out of them.
Figari was the kind of person who made the force of his character and ability felt in every activity he undertook.
A lawyer by profession, he did not begin painting in earnest until he was 60. He held several high government positions during his career and was at one time a newspaper editor. Once the central figure in a famous legal case, in which he defended a man whom he believed unjustly accused of a crime, Figari fought the law and public opinion in Montevideo for four years. He finally won the case, but at considerable personal sacrifice.
In his efforts to revolutionize the teaching of applied arts in Montevideo, Figari again went against public opinion.
Appointed director of a government-sponsored school, he established workshop methods and sent students out to get their ideas from nature and the life around them, a distinct departure from their slavish copying of classic design. He was constantly at odds with the board of this institution and finally was forced to resign.
His theories of art have been published in various forms, the most notable a fat volume devoted to philosophical discussion of art an esthetics.
Suddenly, Figari did what others have perhaps thought, or dreamed, of doing.
Like Gaugin, he made his exit from home and family and all his former associations. But he waited until he was 60 and he did not go as far as the South Seas.
With his architect son he took a tiny apartment in Buenos Aires, across the River Plat(t)e, and began to paint with the furious energy of a man many years his junior.
What took place under his brush were half real, half fantastic scenes concocted out of memories of the past. He painted the dances and ceremonies of the almost vanished Negroes of the River Plate region, the life of the lonely gaucho on the plains, the semifeudal existence of the big ranch owners, still steeped in Spanish colonial tradition.
A remarkable sense of color and a strong feeling of rhythm, plus the intensity of his desire to paint, seemed to overcome all obstacles for this virtually self-taught artist. His work was first shown in the ‘20s in Buenos Aires, where it was received with interest, astonishment and some misgivings.
Again Figari and his son packed up, this time to go to Paris, where he won almost immediate recognition.
Echoes of his European success doubtless contributed to his reception on his return to the River Plate, for later exhibitions in both Argentine and Uruguayan capitals were well received.
Figari returned to Montevideo shortly before his death in 1938. Many of his paintings, a great majority of which were done in oil on cardboard, are now in museums in these cities and there are thousands in the possession of his family. Only a handful are in this country.
These oils represent 17 years of the most extraordinary prolific activity. Insofar as we know, they are unique in the history of art.
It is almost 10 years since the death of Figari, but less than a year since the big retrospective exhibition which honored him in Montevideo, his home city.
This spring some 40 of his paintings were shown at a dealer’s gallery in New York and the Washington show marks the beginning of a tour which will take his work around the country.
These 18 little paintings are worth more than a whole shipload of officially gathered exhibitions. It is gratifying to know that they have been booked by top flight art institutions from coast to coast.