Sunday, March 3, 2013

URU - 2012 - #033 - SERIE - URUGUAYAN PAINTERS


Uruguay - 2012 - Uruguayan Painters


Options:

SERIE --- 2,20 EUR
STAMP 1 --- 1,70 EUR
STAMP 2 --- 1,70 EUR
FDC not Sent --- 3,30 EUR
FDC Sent on First Day --- 8,00 EUR
COVER Sent on First Day --- 6,00 EUR

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Issue information:

Country: Uruguay
Date: October 31th, 2012
Printed: 15.000 copies of each one

Stamp Shape and Size: Both Rectangular [27 mm. x 39 mm.]
Perforation: Circular
Gum: Water Activated

Block Configuration: 25 stamps [5 x 5]
Block Shape and Size: Rectangular [Unknown Size]

FDC Type: Normal
FDC Shape and Size: Rectangular [165 mm. x 105 mm.]
Cover Shape and Size: Rectangular [238 mm. x 159 mm.]

Catalogue information:

Michel: No Data Available
Ivert: No Data Available
Scott: No Data Available
Stanley & Gibbons: No Data Available

Topics:

Issue:

This serie of 2 stamps it was issued to distinguish uruguayan Painters, more specifically to honour the painters: Augusto Torres, son of the world known uruguayan painter Joaquín Torres García, and Petrona Viera, daughter of uruguayan president Feliciano Viera.

The Uruguayan Painters serie, is another traditional one of the last years, as well as Spring serie, and Cruisers Serie. It has been being issued yearly since 2010, with the different in this year that it was composed only by two stamps, each one of each artist, and not as in the two previous year that the serie consisted in four stamps, two for each artist.

As in previous editions of this serie, the painters chosen were not form the group of most known uruguayan painters ones, however, all of them with a solid and remarkable career, mainly around the fifties of XX century.

The selected paintings for the stamps did not share any other characteristic, neither in style nor in contents, so the topic analysis will be continued in the section for each specific stamp.


Stamp 1:

The first stamp shows the artwork "Construcción", in english "Construction, of uruguayan painter Augusto Torres.

Augusto Torres was born in Tarrasa, a city of Spain near Barcelona on June 19th, 1913, and passed away in Barcelona, on March 13th, 1992. He was the second son of the couple of Joaquín Torres García, the great uruguayan painted, and Manolita Piña, that was a spanish, later uruguayan too, director of a school based in the pedagogical lines of Maria Montessori, Ovide Decroly, Friedrich Froebel, deeply rooted in the love, care, and liberty, of the child.

His childhood was spent in different cities, left Terrassa in 1919 to New York, where they will reside until 1922 when he returned to Europe and settled with his family in Fiesole (Italy), where he lived until 1926. These years allow him to familiarize with the frescoes of Tuscany and Florence.

Subsequently, went to Paris, and resided at the house of Jean Helion, a french painter, and there it was awakened his interest in African sculpture and anthropology. In 1928, only 15, was hired by the Musée de Trocadero (now Museum of Man) to illustrate and inventory a collection of Inca and Nazca vessels, what sparked his enthusiasm in American Indian culture, and begin his studies of art history, metaphysical, and customs of American Indians.

In 1930, worked in the studio of Julio González Pellicer, and helped him in making a replica of the "Hommage à Apollinaire" of Pablo Picasso, who often visits the workshop. In those years he participated in two exhibitions in Paris and met Theo van Doesburg, Alexander Calder, Hans (Jean) Arp, Jacques Lipchitz and Gino Severini, all friend of his family, whose conversations influenced the personality of the young Augusto, who also studied drawing in the study of Amédée Ozenfant.

In 1933, his family moved to Madrid, where he studied ceramics and visit the "Museo del Prado", allowing him to study the works of El Greco, Goya, and Velázquez, and specially the works of the last marked him deeply.

After exhibiting at the Salon des Surindependents Paris, his family settled permanently in Montevideo.

The return to Uruguay mark a turning point in his life. His father founded the Association of Constructive Art, later called "Taller Torres Garcia", where young painters were formed in constructivist theories. At that time, his friendship with fellow painter and disciple of Torres Garcia Alceu Ribeiro will take him to his first exhibition in Montevideo and to travel, together with this friend, to Bolivia and Peru, to study pre-Columbian art.

After his father died in 1949 combines the direction of the Taller Torres García, with trips to Europe.

After the close of the Taller Torres Garcia, divided his time between Barcelona and Montevideo, performing various collaborations with architect Antoni Bonet and presenting his work in exhibitions in galleries and museums in Montevideo, New York, Sao Paulo, Venice, Madrid and Barcelona, and participating in the Biennials of Venice and Sao Paulo, and the fair of ARCO.

He died in Barcelona in 1992.

After his death, his work has continued to be exhibited in galleries and museums around the world, standing out: a collecting exhibition in 1992 named "The southern School, the Taller Torres Garcia and his legacy," that travels through the National Museum Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, the M.Hintington Texas art Gallery, the Museum of Monterrey, the Bronx Museum in New York and the Museo Rufino Tamayo in Mexico City, then "Constructive Universalism", at the Art Museum of the Americas, Washington, "the exhibition at Cecilia de Torres of New York" 65 years of constructivist Wood" and also exhibitions like "El Taller Torres Garcia" held at Sala Dalmau in Barcelona and the Centre Cultural Caixa Terrassa in 1998, and "25 anys from gallery" at Sala Dalmau, both awarded with the prize of the ACCA (Catalan Association of Art Critics) for the best exhibition of the year. Among individual exhibition, the most remarkable are those held in 1994 in Torres Garcia Museum of Montevideo in 2003, also Sicardi Gallery, Texas, or the exhibition at Sala Dalmau in 2005 that served as the closing event of the 25th anniversary of the gallery.

His work could be foundamong mainly in the Miro Foundation in Barcelona, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the National Museum of Visual Arts and Museo Torres García in Montevideo.

The painting "Construcción" was elaborated by Augusto Torres in 1963, using the technique of Oil on wood, and the size of this artwork is: 51,50 cm. x 69,50 cm.

The elements shown in the artwork are basically abstract as it usual in constructive works, however some letters could be seen: B, R, O, could be also and U, and an X, and there is represented too a clock in the bottom right corner, in representation of time.


Stamp 2:

The second stamp shows the artwork "Recreo", in english "Playtime, of uruguayan painter Petrona Viera.

Petrona Viera was born in Montevideo, Uruguay on March 24th, 1895, and passed away also in Montevideo, on October 4th, 1960. He was the first child of the eleven ones that the couple of Feliciano Viera, president of Uruguay from 1915 to 1919, and Carmen Garino.

She suffers meningitis at only two years old, and that desease leaves deaf and learns from a specialist teacher to read lips and be understood with gestures. Parents of the future artist understood that education was essential, so they hired a French teacher specializing in deaf children Larnaudie Madame Madeleine, who was responsible for educating the girl in order that she would achieve good contact with other people.

Attentive to his artistic interests, his parents set out to study drawing and painting. This proposal was well received by Petrona, that when he was about twenty years began to receive private lessons in painting at home, with the Catalan master Vicente Puig.

Then, since 1922 Guillermo Laborde was her teacher and counselor, and he was her influence to the planist, artistic movement at witch she affiliated.

Planism is an art movement characterized by destroying the three-dimensionality, using two-dimensional images superimposed planes located in or characterized by a flat treatment of the colors, with a bright palette dominated more by hues than primary colors, and a evaded perspective, generating that the motives seem to be almost in the same plane. In the period between 1920 and 1930 a number of Uruguayan artists as José Cuneo Perinetti, Carmel Arzadun, and Alfredo De Simone, among others, performed planism works.

Petrona topics, were different from the typical planism ones, preferring to paint everyday scenes, as her home ones, children playing and studying, servants, sisters work with tissue. Later, as more adult, began to paint landscapes, which are more usual in planism works. In 1923 he began to exhibit in Montevideo and then abroad.

Petrona painted forms, not the details of the figures, as being the features of a face or the fingers of one hand. She sought that figure was a colour form, and that will be clipped by the edges, without describing them accurately. Her paintings have the typical features of the Uruguayan planism artistic movement that flourished in the early twentieth century where the forms and the outlines are clear, the structures flat, and the palette bright, and with pure colors. It is said that his art is intimate and subjective, because it tells us how she sees and feels those snippets or bits of her life. His family believed that his paintings were a different way of speaking, a way to express what Petrona could not say with your voice.

Beyond the personal and family situation of Petrona, her work is part of a hinge period of Uruguayan art history. They had left behind the cult of academic painting and preparing the ground for a more subjective art, more open to movements that could bring the masters who were sponsored by the government, to study in Europe and teach here their learnings.

In 1926 she held his first solo exhibition at Gallery Maveroff. The reviews were very good and many people went to see his paintings, all were curious to see the work of a woman artist. Petrona was not the only painter whoman in Uruguay at the time, but she was the first to be recognized, she win prizes and also was the first to be professional, make her painting her full time work. It was the first painter who succeeded in Uruguay, and also one who learned to overcome their disabilities and little chance that the deaf were at that time in our country.

The painting "Recreo" was elaborated by Petrona Viera in 1924, using the technique of Oil on canvas, and the size of this artwork is: 86 cm. x 90 cm.

"Recreo" is one of the most emblematic of the production of Petrona Viera. In this artwork she presented a group of girls that seem to dance in the traditional child game "Martín Pescador", in english it is translated as the bird "Kingfisher", that still resonates today in playgrounds.

Faithful to the teachings of Laborde, her teacher for many years, the picture is of planism colorful composition. Girls enjoy lively in a simple place, with strong contrasts between lightness of the day and shadow that comes from a vine.

The artwork as said is mainly about childhood, child games, girls, probably also dresses and traditional costumes, and it could be useful also for drinks an wines collections, because of the vine shown at background of the scene, an element that is quite rare in stamps.


FDC:

The Cancelation of the FDC shows the map of Uruguay as the canvas in an easel for the artist to create in it.

Also a paintbrush is shown in the cancelation.

And wood could also be a topic included in this cancelation.


If you consider that there are another topics in this stamp, that were not spot in this review, you are encouraged to telling me about them, so please do not hesitate to post a comment. I would appreciate your help very much.

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