Five paintings that honor the Argentine worker

Wednesday 1.5.2024

/

Last update 21:30

Art, in all its variants, is a useful tool to better understand reality and reflect on it to establish more accurate diagnoses. In the specific case of Argentine painting, the worker always occupied a leading role. Their struggles, demands, efforts, sufferings, sorrows and daily joys were a source of inspiration for artists of different eras and movements.

On an emblematic date like Labor Day, which is celebrated today, delving into this field allows us to update discussions that are current in the 21st century. From the precise brushstrokes of Lino Enea Spilimbergo to the committed look of Ernesto de la Cárcova, passing through Quinquela Martín’s expressive view of port life, each of the five works mentioned in the lines that follow, allow us to contemplate the daily reality of those whose hands literally built the country.

“The ironer”: It is an oil on canvas by Lino Enea Spilimbergo, dated 1936. Spilimbergo was a painter, linked to surrealism, considered one of the masters of Argentine art of the 20th century. He said that “painting is a terrible commitment, not only with oneself, but with the world.” In this case, the protagonist is a young woman who works as an ironer. The scene takes place in an interior space, stripped down, minimalist, humble. Carlos Avalle points out regarding this work: “the woman is dressed in simple, everyday clothes, with characteristics that make us assume a winter climate. She is wearing comfortable shoes, which correspond to the task of a person working in these tasks. hands on the table, perhaps in a moment of rest. Her hair combed without any special arrangement. No bracelets, no necklaces, no earrings. But this woman’s gaze is somewhere else, definitely somewhere else. the figures of Spilimbergo, who leave the scene.” There, the master places an intrigue, which remains out of the field.

“Elevators in full sun”: Benito Quinquela Martín stood out for his connection with the Buenos Aires neighborhood of La Boca. Daily life in that port and working-class area “beats” in his paintings. But, at the same time, he was a firm defender of the less privileged, something evident in this oil painting that dates back to 1945. It clearly shows a feature of his artistic work: the features of that urban landscape are accentuated that link it with sacrifice, tenacity and development. Thus, the daily work of the workers is represented, as the curatorial text of an exhibition held in the museum that today bears his name points out, by “figures-signs” of the stevedores that synthesize port work. The human figures (of which there are several) appear carrying very heavy bags, behind them you can see the chimneys of the factories that are working at full capacity.

“Without bread and without work”: It is considered the first painting with a working-class theme with the intention of social criticism in Argentine art. Ernesto de la Cárcova created it when he was still young, in 1894, sustained by a commitment and a sensitive view regarding the lower classes and their shortcomings. It tells a story of misery and frustration: a father, whose work tool is stopped on the table, looks out the window, with anger, at a scene of empty factories and few prospects of getting a job. Next door, his wife languishes while she tries to breastfeed a baby. María Gainza maintains that “De la Cárcova painted the picture of him in an agitated manner, as if the same brush were dragging the contained anxiety of the unemployed.” “The painting responds to a naturalistic style and a theme that had an important presence in European salons in the final years of the 19th century: large paintings resolved in somber tones that displayed dramatic scenes of misery and contemporary urban social conflicts,” he wrote. Laura Malosetti Costa in a text about the work that appears on the website of the National Museum of Fine Arts.

“Lunch time”: Pío Collivadino was a painter whose works attempted to address the new forms of beauty that life introduced in the changing cities of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Juan Gabriel Batalla mentions him as an essential painter in the difficult passage from the 19th to the 20th century, who documented his time with a “pointillist and precious aesthetic.” In this large oil on canvas, which is now housed in the National Museum of Fine Arts, he shows a group of seven workers eating at a work stop at noon. Unlike the work of Ernesto de la Cárcova, a priori there is no premise of social criticism here, although some dynamics typical of the working class universe of those years are shown in detail. “Far from the dramatic narrativity of its previous shipment to Venice, Lunchtime seems like a ‘motif’ painting, in which the formal treatment of the refraction of light on the whites and the dazzling effect of the sun on the well prevails. lime. But it is evident that this was not the artist’s only intention. It is a painting with a working-class theme, although largely stripped of conflictive connotations,” wrote Laura Malosetti Costa.

“The basket maker”: The artist Ricardo Carpani conceived this oil on canvas in 1957. The theme and tone are not strange, since Carpani was prone to paying attention to social causes in his works. So, problems such as unemployment, poverty and the strength and dignity of the dispossessed appear in his works. This work is inscribed in that line. In fact, Carpani was part of the Espartaco group, which along the same lines as the Mexican muralists attempted art with a nationalist imprint and focused on the needs of working people. In the 70s, as a result of the Coup d’état, he went into self-exile in Spain and from there he traveled the world, until returning in 1984. He also addressed urban Buenos Aires issues such as tango, cafes and neighborhoods.