NEWSLETTER Nº 34

January 2024  

Editorial

By Roberto Vega Andersen


In the task of editing each issue of this publication, the editorial's writing places me before the crucial hours of closings in the editorial office of a newspaper. In the days before, I always look for international and local signals that are in tune with the topics that interest our readers and with the delivery already defined, I enjoy the ritual of sitting in front of the computer and accompanied by some small notes, letting the thought flow and bring them a kind of cardiogram of feelings, joys and sorrows.

 

This time, the cultural crossroads that our country is experiencing captures maximum interest, and I understand it. A few days after taking office, the new government of President Javier Milei presented a series of initiatives that, in the cultural space, promised the closure of relevant institutions, such as the National Fund for the Arts and the National Theater Institute, also affecting other vital areas, such as the National Institute of Cinema and Visual Arts (Incaa), and the National Commission of Popular Libraries (Conabip). And it even proposes repealing the book law which, for the vast majority of actors in the sector, will make small publishers and professional bookstores more vulnerable, favoring sales on the Internet and in large stores, and also limiting the bibliodiversity that today it distinguishes us.

 

These planned measures aroused such a level of complaints that they largely underwent modifications in the Executive's initiatives, although they still remain in a parliamentary state and in some cases, they are approached as if they were "bargaining currency" in the negotiations for the substantial economic transformations. that the ruling party promotes. All under the decision to eliminate the fiscal deficit, that cancer that has accompanied the Argentine governments of recent decades.


Having said this, and with apologies to the readers who follow us beyond the borders of Argentina, we announce an issue rich in themes: art, crafts, collecting, historical avant-garde and cultural heritage occur on the following pages, always with the wisdom of the authors summoned: Sonia Decker, Irina Podgorny, Ma. Gabriela Vázquez Moreno, Regula Rohland, Denise Reyna Berrotarán, Guillermo Palombo, Abel Alexander, Guido Chester, Carlos Abel Tellechea, Sebastián Hidalgo Sola and Guillermo Vega Fischer.

 

For our part, we will get back on track in March; As in previous years, in February it will be time to enjoy the annual break.

 

Enjoy!


THE VOICE OF EXPERTS
THE VOICE OF EXPERTS

Brief history of Emma's life. Enea Spilimbergo linen and the naturalness of vigor

By Sonia Decker *

"Buenos Aires saw him born in 1896, when the pictorial profession acted as the almost absolute ruler of turn-of-the-century aesthetics."


"Excellent draftsman," says Sonia Decker, "very refined engraver and one of the few true muralist talents in our country, Spilimbergo builds his figures and his landscapes, avoiding any decorative or anecdotal resources, to transform them into essential, absolutely universal works."


This judgment already explains the validity of her art, but the author enters here into a special stage of her artistic creation, the one that bequeathed us the series of thirty-four monoprints titled “Brief History of Emma's Life,” a masterful creation of an artist committed to social issues.


THE VOICE OF EXPERTS

Karl Oenike, an unknown German cartoonist and his travels through Argentina

By Regula Rohland *

Interesting journey through the life of a German painter and photographer who arrived in our country in 1887, trained in Berlin. Rohland, a specialist in the history of the German-speaking minority in Argentina, tells us about the biography of an elusive artist in the historiography of art and photography in the region. While passing through these lands, Karl Oenike participated in different expeditions that first entered the center and later, through the northwest of Argentina - he visited the provinces of Córdoba, Catamarca, La Rioja and Salta - and even through Paraguay and Brazil.


Although few works are known referring to his experience in Argentina, it is auspicious to retrace his footprints.





THE VOICE OF EXPERTS

Pedro Grenón S.J.: an iconic priest-historian of Córdoba

By Denise Reyna Berrotarán *

«Pedro Juan was born on July 26, 1878 in Colonia Esperanza, province of Santa Fe, Argentina, a place characterized by being a colony of Swiss immigrants. He entered the Jesuit novitiate in 1898 and moved to Córdoba in 1914. While in this city he was entrusted with writing the history of the Society of Jesus in 1916 and, from there, his interest in writing and graphic representation was awakened. From the past. He served as parish priest in different neighborhood churches such as those in Barrio Zumarán and La France, in addition to the Compañía de Jesús, a church located in the historic center of the city of Córdoba.


From early on, Grenón participated in spaces that wanted to build history as a scientific discipline through the creation of magazines, archives and institutions.


THE VOICE OF EXPERTS

Encounter in Turin with the dinosaurs by Ezio Gribaudo (1929-2022)

By Irina Podgorny *

The travel chronicles of our faithful collaborator allow us to discover distant worlds in geography and time. This time she shares the surprise of a discovery and her excitement when exploring the work of an internationally renowned Turin artist.


Among paper and metal dinosaurs, among other materials, Podgorny walked through the vestiges of those beings that became faithful companions of humans. «Today, dinosaurs – she says – sneak in through windows and cracks [...]».




THE VOICE OF EXPERTS

Florence is not just Renaissance.

By Guillermo Vega Fischer

«Deep minds, sharp pens, complex personalities, sometimes incendiary, all very different from each other but united by a fundamental characteristic: having (re)animated and fructified, with the magazines that they themselves founded and directed, the intellectual and political debate of the country in the first decades of the last century. Now, for the first time, a museum describes and narrates in its entirety, through the pages of its own protagonists, this restless and fertile period, fervent with ideas, visions, provocations whose genius and avant-garde scope has resisted the wear and tear of time and continues to generate fruits today.


Member of our team, composer, pianist, playwright, musical and theater director, Guillermo delves into the depths of Italian Futurism, a movement that had its echoes in our country.


THE VOICE OF EXPERTS

When admiring is not enough

By Ma. Gabriela Vázquez Moreno *

«There is currently a resurgence in interest in what is handmade, antagonistic to industrial products developed in chains. A new value has been given to craftsmanship in the contemporary world, where sustainable work, the conservation of traditional techniques and individual creative expression have finally become visible in many cases [...]».


The voice of the director of one of the most important South American institutions, the Inter-American Center of Crafts and Popular Art, CIDAP, domiciled in Cuenca, Ecuador, addresses certain crossroads of craftsmanship in the twenty-first century.







THE VOICE OF EXPERTS

The donation of cultural assets and the strength of a country by Sebastián Hidalgo Sola *

By Sebastián Hidalgo Sola *

In the midst of the debate on the participation of the State in the cultural field, it is worth thinking about donation as an option to increase the public heritage collection.


This is a highly standardized practice in Anglo-Saxon countries, but it is accompanied by strong tax incentives that are unimaginable in the near future of Argentina.


TIPS
TIPS

Jesuit slavery: Doctrine in the language of

Texts: Diego de Torres Bollo S.J. and Norberto Pablo Cirio. In 4th (20.5 x 15 cm), 146 pages. Paperback publisher's binding. Buenos Aires. Author's edition. 2023.


The reissue of the first bilingual publication - Spanish - “Angola” -, Prayers translated in the language of the Kingdom of Angola [...], presided over by a critical essay, the work of the author of the present issue, places us in viceregal times in our region, when the body (not just "the hand") of African slave labor benefited both the work in the mines of Potosí, as well as in urban tasks and on the haciendas of individuals and of the Company of Jesus itself.


For the essayist Norberto Pablo Cirio, an anthropologist specialized in the Afro-Argentine populations of the colonial trunk, this work was written by the first provincial of the Jesuit Province of Paraguay at the beginning of the 17th century.


TIPS

Drawing factory. The birth of photography in Paraguay

Text: Juan Alberto Migliore. In 4th (28.5 x 21.3 cm), 198 pages. Paperback publisher binding. Assumption. Fondec. 2023.



«We want to highlight that the photographic books published by collectors on the subject have an imprint that makes them unique of their kind; The passion for those brownish images of yesterday is reflected in his texts and in the careful selection of the most emblematic photographs. With Juan Alberto Migliore these requirements are fully met and grateful colleagues note this in his pages, whose texts are born in the meticulous research of newspapers through the advertisements of those artists of the chamber, and are supported by the consultation of the archives public and private photographs.


The judgment of the prominent photographic historian Abel Alexander invites you to read such a significant work.


TIPS

Photography and political propaganda. Archive of the Undersecretariat of Public Information, 1951

Text: Luis Priamo. In 4th landscape (23.3 x 26.2 cm), 130 pages, 1 sheet. Paperback publisher binding with wide flaps. Buenos Aires. Ceppa Editions Foundation. 2023.


"This new photographic book reaffirms the natural leadership of Luis Priamo as the most important historian and photographic editor of our country, a cultural militancy that already has many decades of tireless work in favor of our old photographs" - maintains Abel Alexander.


NEWS AND MORE
NEWS AND MORE

Augusto Camilletti's Italian armory in the city of Córdoba

By Guido Chester *

«The study of ancient Creole knives brings us permanent surprises. "To the traditional and fairly well-studied brands such as Arbolito, Dufour, Defensa and some others, we add, from time to time, stamps about which we know little and that test the investigative capacity of historians in the industry."


This is how Guido Chester's brief story begins, a qualified scholar of the Creole knife and its historical evolution.


COLLECTORS, STORIES AND ANECDOTES
COLLECTORS, STORIES AND ANECDOTES

The collection of Carlos Alberto Pueyrredon

By Guillermo Palombo *

Lawyer and doctor of jurisprudence, businessman, politician, delegate to the League of Nations and Mayor of the city of Buenos Aires, Carlos A. Pueyrredón [1887 - 1962], exquisite bibliophile and distinguished historian, was a member of numerous international Academies and Institutes.


The pen of Guillermo Palombo internalizes us through his achievements and passionate connection with the book, exploring his collections of incunabula, travelers' chronicles, historical documents and Cervantes' works, from the princely editions onwards.










COLLECTORS, STORIES AND ANECDOTES

The pulse of history. Donation of the “Álvarez Colombres” documentary collection to the Peyrano Communal Museum

By Carlos Abel Tellechea *

«Family archives sometimes hold surprises for us. Forgotten, scattered, poorly kept papers describe traces and paths, loves and disagreements, the travels of a “bon vivant” uncle or those of the family who were left to “dress saints.” They can also tell us about times of fat cows… and lean ones. Written by who or who? So that? But apart from these microhistories, if we know how to read between the lines and in the light of specialists in the field, it will be possible to discover political, social, and economic memories. Papers that sustain the “pulse” of history.


This is how the Director of Heritage of this Communal Museum, recipient of an important collection of historical documents, begins his testimony. His "seriousness in terms of quality of work", and his "proposals and challenges" made the last owner of this family collection choose this institution in southern Santa Fe to donate such a large collection. Congratulations to both sides of this beautiful coin!


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Correo de lectores

Si usted nos autoriza, compartiremos sus palabras con nuestra comunidad.

4 Comentario(s)

25/01/2024
Fernando Schulkin

(Desde Uruguay. Abogado, escritor, coleccionista y sensible lector)


Se vino con todo este número, a disfrutar pues cada artículo. En realidad el tema fotografía me robó la vista. Allí voy. Felicitaciones.


26/01/2024
José Burucúa

(Doctor en Filosofía y Letras de la UBA, Académico de Número de las Academias Nacional de Bellas Artes y de Historia, ex Directeur d’Études en la École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales de París, catedrático universitario y autor de numerosos libros, entre los que mencionamos Historia, arte y cultura: De Aby Warburg a Carlo Guinzburg (2003), Historias y ambivalencias: Ensayos sobre arte (2006), Cartas de Berlín I (2015) e Historia natural y mítica de los elefantes (junto a N. Kwiatkowsky, 2020)

 

Como en todos los números anteriores, encuentro aquí nuevas cosas para aprender: vidas de pintores, fotógrafos y otros artistas, historia curiosa de la paleontología, coleccionismo público y privado, instituciones culturales argentinas. Al considerar la situación del país, el desastre legado por el gobierno de Fernández y las perspectivas algo bárbaras que se anuncian en el campo cultural, esta revista servirá para que en el futuro pueda decirse: "Aquí habitó un pueblo bastante cultivado y civilizado. Se extinguió por los embates de los populismos berretas de izquierda y de derecha."


26/01/2024
Manuel Luis Martí

(Miembro titular de la Academia Nacional de Medicina, doctor en Medicina, además es miembro de número de la Academia Belgraniana de la República Argentina y del Instituto Bonaerense de Numismática y Antigüedades)


Todo de primera, como siempre. Me interesó mucho el trabajo de Guillermo Palombo sobre Carlos Alberto Pueyrredón a quien conocí, como a su hija Victoria de quien fui amigo y colaborador en "Letras de Buenos Aires"

30/01/2024
Carlos Canali

(Platero de San Antonio de Areco)


Buen día: Solamente para saludarlos y comentarles que me pareció espectacular la nota sobre Benbenuto Cellini [*] Muy buena! Que interesante! Yo de pibe leía un libro que traía la vida de él, empezando cuando hizo el León de San Marcos con manteca (!!) siendo un niño prácticamente, y a lo largo de su vida fue un pendenciero empedernido, pero con un talento único. Me encantó y no quería dejar de decirlo. Todo lo que sale en la revista es interesante. ¡Falta tiempo para leerla completa! ¡Abrazo! 


* Nota del editor: El 30 de enero nos llegó este Correo de Lectores, y hace una referencia especial a un artículo publicado en el número de diciembre. El mensaje "explica" también que la revista puede leerse en cualquier momento, ya que todos los números permanecen subidos a nuestra web.