“I am used to doing multiples of my work. The artist, previously limited by oil, now with all the means at his disposal, aspires to see his work multiplied, to reach a greater number of people”. Clearly, the Galician-Argentine artist Luis Seoane (1910-1979) thus explained the axis of his monumental work: that which thought of culture for all.
Commercial posters designed by Luis Seoane, at the Larreta Museum. Photo German Garcia Adrasti.
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And exquisite sampler of his work can be seen since last week on the Enrique Larreta Spanish Art Museum. The exhibition is titled Seoane materials. Between Galicia and Argentinaa statement that contains, as if it were a code for insiders, the determining lines of the legacy of this superlative modernist.
First, because of the materials: because Luis Seoane not only did what is expected of an artist: to the paintings, illustrations, engravings and even murals, he added a true exploration of alchemist by many other subjects.
He was an essayist narrator, poet and journalista; he bequeathed a prolific activity as a magazine editor and creator of editorials (Botella al mar and Nova, for example); he weaved networks of friendship between intellectuals that still resonate; and even embarked on the porcelain production (although that adventure deserves another note)
Proto-audiobooks, writers album covers designed by Luis Seoane. Photo German Garcia Adrasti.
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Two countries, one artist
The second key is your binationality: born in Buenos Aires in a family of emigrants, naturally lived that double belonginga, refusing to choose or prioritize.
For this reason, in Galicia, Seoane is one of the most important Galician plastic artists of the 20th century; while in Argentina, he is one of the most notable Argentine plastic artists of the 20th century. And there are no contradictions here.
Luís Seoane, photographed in Buenos Aires in December 1978.
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That’s why, the sample in the Larreta was composed on two banks: between Buenos Aires and Galician institutions (the Ministry of Culture of the City of Buenos Aires and the Council of Galician Culture), with experts from there and here (Silvia Dolinko from Buenos Aires and Pablo García Martínez from Galicia), and with works that they crossed the Atlantic or just a few neighborhoods.
The Conicet and Unsam researcher Silvia Dolinko is one of the curators and also directs the creation of a circuit to tour the Seoane murals on foot, with the guide of materials available on the web.
“Whether on the ceilings or walls of commercial galleries, in the San Martín Theater or in building entrances, Seoane’s murals question the logic of the collection or of the institution and propose a variable for the ‘democratization’ of the access to art,” explains Dolinko.
Silvia Dolinko is one of the curators of the exhibition at the Museo Larreta. Photo German Garcia Adrasti.
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A guiding idea with which can now decode too the pieces that are exhibited in the Larreta Museum until November.
