Art brut in Argentinean collections
DFrom it’s beginnings psychoanalysis noted that art is a fertile ground which allows us to look into issues which are difficult to represent. It has been usual to check that art gives certain responses to the difficulties of science. The silenced in the image, the unsayable in the visual code and the most enigmatic in a work can be the most catching. The relationship between art and madness are part of a debate which has been linked to the history of the people.
When the psychiatrist Eugenio López de Gomara was placed in charge of a group of patients at the Hospital Borda in Buenos Aires, in 1960, he there founded the first Free Expresión Workshop which produced an extensive collection of works, many of them being exhibited today in this space. Numerous publications document this enormous work carried out over more than 30 years. Furthermore, this Art and Madness exhibition is supported by the recognition of Jorge Romero Brest – art critic, historian and philosopher – who at that point selected several paintings for their artistic interest. This painting, by using rustic methods and working with rough materials, by returning to the simple elements repeating doodles, strokes, marks, signs; by insisting on geometrism and zoomorphism; by isolating and fragmenting parts, by inserting objects and beings, one into the other, by giving visibility to the background or by covering it completely, by showing the aesthetic function that emptiness has, the outsider art has a style. In the image of this painting a fractured and anguishing universe is discovered, where the objects are part of the body or of the mind that wander about in the space – lost ghosts or dangerous demons – there is an effort to contain chaos. There are invasions of delirium and hallucination, and also invasions of a primitive and somehow barbaric sensoriality that conquers perception.
While he paints, he connects with colours, textures, sounds, smells. These facts which are not removed from the curative function that Freud discovered in art. A space for creativity is constituted. Roland Barthes had pointed out that the stylistic features are cultural deposits that can even be very antique, even gnomic. The psychoanalysis has taken charge of studying the symbolism of some of the primitive strokes, one of the most frequent being the spiral, the image of spool game. The source of life existing in the pulsing appears in the painting in a straightforward, barbaric way, BRUT, with no pact with the social requirements. Once artistic passion is discovered, which will occupy a large part of his life, he will learn how to elaborate and embellish his works. He will not cease to show the violent and disrupting element of the unknown that lives within the art’s heart.
Corina Bellati de Otero Monsegur
Curator
Algunas
de las obras que se exhiben en la muestra