ART BY ART

A dialectical spiral. Circa 1963.

Silver gelatin, measures 14.2 x 19 cm. On the back wet stamp “Photography: Sameer Makarius. tel 795 - 2768. Santa Rosa 1964. Vicente López - f.c.n.g.b.m. Argentina". Written in ballpoint pen: “Franco di Segni “A dialectic spiral…” mobile gimbal with motor. Bronze 1963”.

With an excellent play of light on a dark background, Sameer Makarius takes this very successful photographic shot of this geometric work made of bronze. To accentuate the astronomical effect, Makarius recorded this sculpture with a black background and erased the cable that comes out of the base with a marker of the same color, so that the sculpture “floats” in space. A dialectical spiral is a sculpture by the artist Franco Di Segni whose construction is cardanic.

Driven by a motor, these sculptures had movement through the mechanical system invented by the mathematical physicist Gerolamo Cardano - from whom he derives his name - through rotation from one driving axis to another non-linear. As a final effect, the concentric circles that the sculpture gathers can move independently, and in three phases. The visual effect is astronomical, like the devices that imitate the rotation of the celestial spheres. These movements are concentric, where does the spiral that the sculptor speaks of in the title reside? in the cylindrical bronze pipe that supports the whole, and attaches it to the marble base. Note that it is a spiral line. Interesting dialectic game, the whole moves on itself, and through space, by means of that spiral.

Dialectics is at the same time a concept dear to this artist of Italian origin, since in addition to being a painter and sculptor he was a writer, combining in his texts art, psychoanalysis and group theory.

As for the photographer, he was part of a migratory current that began after the First World War, and that was accentuated after the second conflagration. Talented camera artists who escaped the war, political and racial convulsions of the old continent, came to our country

Buenos Aires in particular, welcomed during those decades refugees from the East; Germans, Poles, Russians or Hungarians - in this country Makarius had started in the arts - ready to face a new life. In this group of graphic authors, the painter and photographer Sameer Makarius (1924. Cairo - 2009. Buenos Aires) stood out for his multiple initiatives. He arrived in this city in 1953 and immediately became involved in multiple photographic activities through exhibitions. , conferences, publications, etc. Just three years later he was part of the Forum Group (made up of contemporary photographers) and in the following decade he published two books (1) and embarked on an ambitious iconographic project making more than 150 photographic portraits of established and emerging artists; Among the first was the notable Italian-Argentine artist Franco Di Segni (1910-1985), whom he molded in his workshop with spatula in hand.

Makarius' relationship with this painter, sculptor and writer was very close and was reflected in the book that Franco Di Segni dedicated to him under the title "Death and Destruction in a painting by Sameer Makarius - Psychoanalysis applied to art", published in Buenos Aires in 1960 by Editions of the NOA Movement. (two)

Her daughter Lelila Makarius tells us that both men developed a good friendship over time and that Eva Reiner de Makarius wore a geometric jewel - a necklace-type pearl pendant - given by Franco Di Segni all her life. We must point out that, in recent years, there has been a significant revaluation of the photographic work of Sameer Makarius.

Notes:

1. Buenos Aires and its people (in 1960) and Buenos Aires, My City (in 1963).

2. In addition to the aforementioned title, Di Segni published A method for understanding art and Towards painting -psychoanalysis applied to art.

Abel Alexander

President of the Ibero-American Society for the History of Photography