English
Another big event in 1963 was the Premio Instituto Torcuato Di Tella. It had already taken place during the three previous years at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, due to a decision by Romero Brest, who was also Director of the Institute’s Centro de Artes Visuales. A previously unheard of attitude was therefore initiated in the [Museo Nacional de] Bellas Artes: to exhibit new manifestations of art. […]
There were two particularities in the 1963 competition: it was held in the Institute’s new building on Florida Street, between Marcelo T. de Alvear Avenue and Paraguay Street, and it had also been divided into the Premio Nacional (National Prize, as it had been until then) and the [Premio] Internacional (International Prize), to which well-known artists from other countries were invited, along with the winners of the previous years’ prizes. Given that the jury—comprising Jacques Lassaigne, William Sandberg and Romero Brest—decided to award the Premio Internacional to Macció and the Premio Nacional to me, the joy was immense, even while I felt that the two of us had received recognition for something that all four of us had laid the foundations for. The work chosen for the Premio Adquisición within the group that I had submitted was Introducción a la esperanza (Invitation to Hope). Later, when the Instituto Di Tella was dissolved, this work passed on to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes.
Account by Luis Felipe Noé included in the book "Mi viaje-Cuaderno de bitácora" (My Voyage – Logbook, 2014).
[...] Seeing my own paintings from several years ago gives me the same feeling as seeing a photo from my childhood. It is me, I recognize that because I remember it, but I now have a different way of being. I don’t believe in artists who express their world, but in artists who are compelled by it to investigate, because it isn’t that an artist is a particular way and then expresses that manner of being, but rather that he or she goes along being through their relation to their work.
This belief is intimately tied to the meaning of my search, since I became aware of this when I realized that I wanted to achieve an image of what exists by way of its vitality, of what it goes along being in relation to what surrounds it. That’s how I knew that I was aspiring to a new figuration […]
Thinking about new figuration on my way to Europe, I came to the conclusion that up until that point, it had aspired to give an image of the relationship through fusion alone, but that if there is one outstanding note in contemporary relationships, it is that they come about through opposition or tension.
This led me to work a great deal in that direction. And so I became aware that aspiring to that meant juxtaposing two or more self-sustaining units within the unity of the painting, making opposite atmospheres live with one another. It was about breaking the traditional unity provided by the atmosphere (the principal characteristic of my painting until then, since the atmosphere prevailed over the characters), not by ignoring its existence and moving onto the plane, but rather by accepting it as a cornerstone of a vital air, which is the best characteristic of painting from any era.
Breaking up the unity provided by atmosphere practically means looking for unity through opposition or tension in the eyes of the viewer as he or she receives these contrary stimuli which are living with one another at the same time. I similarly realized that one fundamental element of this opposition should be the painting’s atonality. This was equivalent to looking for the inverse side of Cubism. While it had managed to destroy real unity by supporting itself with a virtual unity, the atmosphere, now it was a matter of destroying that in search of a new image of reality, that of humanity living together in search of a subjective realism […]
I returned to Argentina to contribute to the formation of a national expression by way of a living image resulting from a process of invention born out of inner demands. It is time to elaborate our own avant garde movements. While I do believe in the path I am on, I believe even more in the spirit with which I am taking this path. I believe in creation, not in trends.
