Silvia Dolinko. Wonderful Universal Energy Series. Ivan Rosado. Rosario, Argentina. 2021.
Quaerto (21 x 15 cm), 81 pp., 3 sheets. Paperback publisher Binding.
If you enjoy Argentine art and especially engraving, this title deserves to be in your library.
Without much fanfare -it is a kind of pocket book-, the work introduces us to one of the most original and fascinating series published between 1958 and 1967: the Ellena collection. Fifty folders with a circulation of fifty numbered copies, an unequaled work of the Rosario Emilio Ellena (1934 - 2011), mathematician, university professor, collector and editor.
Such a company, says Silvia Dolinko, a specialist of great academic prestige, with the original woodcuts and etchings of thirty national artists that she gathered in her folders, she made up one of the most significant sets of engravings in the history of Argentine art. In a short essay, Dolinko states: “Ellena editions had the city of Rosario as their center of production and impulse. The artists of the first folders were from Rosario, the first subscriptions came from Rosario collectors. The public presentation was at the Juan B. Castagnino Municipal Museum of Fine Arts, "space of imagination", in the words of the editor; fundamental for their artistic training and institutional support of the enterprise. If the local imprint is evident, the intention was not, however, to limit itself to that cultural field: the proposal aspired to transcend its limits to aim for an international projection. This objective was made explicit from the very beginning of the project, when Ellena made the decision that the short introductory texts and the included biographies be bilingual, in Spanish and English. "
Among other names, it brought together works by Gustavo Cochet, Juan Grela, Pompeyo Audivert, Ricardo Supisiche, Víctor L. Rebuffo, Abraham Vigo, Ana María Moncalvo, Fernando López Anaya, Juan Batlle Planas, Sergio Sergi, Agustín Zapata Gollán, Raúl Soldi, Leónidas Gambartes, Luis Seoane and María Rocchi.
The set includes reissues and also specially made works, such as the woodcuts by Zapata Gollán, Seoane and Zelaya. In each folder it was indicated that it was made up of original engravings, differing from an industrial reproduction, highlighting that particularity of the engraving that makes us appreciate in its objectuality "something of the idea that the creative hand transfers to matter" (Dolinko dixit).
For collectors
“Ellena folders. Stamps and affections of an editor” details the fifty edited folders, an authentic bibliographic reference, indicating the date of publication, author, measurements and works included.
In addition, it gives an account of two catalogs that deserve to be part of any collection of the Ellena Folders and Argentine engraving in general. We refer to the catalog that accompanied the exhibition organized in 1963 at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires, an "art object" in itself, carefully published, on heavyweight paper and with a limited edition (six hundred copies). with numerous prints printed directly from the original studs. And the fold-out -open measures 68 x 50 cm-, printed for the exhibition held in 1999 at the Museo Nacional del Grabado, also in Buenos Aires; a singular “catalog” with the reproduction of the woodcut Nocturno by Juan Grela on one side and the text by Ellena on the back. Said text, of great testimonial value, is reproduced in this book.
Without a doubt, a title that is worth reading.