Catalogue
The Universe of Futurism. 1909 – 1936

The Universe of Futurism. 1909 – 1936 book collects an essential group of manifestos, documents and theoretical texts in Spanish with more than 200 images that show the multidisciplinary character of the Futurist movement: visual arts, literature, architecture, cinema, photography, theatre, dance and fashion.

Gabriella Belli, art historian and curator of the exhibition, presents her essay “Protagonists and events from Italian Futurism” unveiling the most significant events and the artists involved in each discipline that gave Futurism its personality and importance. A documentary section presents thirteen rigorously translated Futurist manifestos, which helps in the understanding of the revolt, the struggle, the will to invent and the constructive utopia for a new society, from the voices of the artists themselves.

Marinetti and Bragaglia’s visits to Buenos Aires are retold by investigator Cecilia Rabossi. Through the selected testimonies, she establishes a chronology in the format of a travel journal that triggers a reflection upon the repercussions and contradictions that this visits aroused in the Buenos Aires’ artistic field of the 20s and 30s,

The illustrations of the most relevant works of the movement enrich this edition making it a key Spanish written contribution to understanding Futurism. This book is the chronicle of a movement “lacking past and deprived from tradition” that despite it all managed to mark an era.

ISBN 978-987-1164-07-3
268 pages / 200 reproductions / 27 cm x 19 cm /

AR$ 150.-
The catalogue is available for purchase at Fundación Proa’s library:
libreria@proa.org / +54 11 4104-1005

Purchase by phone available with American Express and MasterCard.

Av. Pedro de Mendoza 1929 (La Boca), Buenos Aires, Argentina

Library interventions: Mirtha Dermisache

Proa Library continues with the contemporary artists´ interventions series. In this occasion, Mirtha Dermisache recovers her 1970s works and combines them with her current editions displayed within the Library.

Mirtha Dermisache: Beyond the written word
By Olga Martínez, curator

Within the framework of Sintonies, the works of Mirtha Dermisache make Fundación Proa’s space their own. Tables, shelves and stands will give the viewer/reader the opportunity to look at/read and travel the world of graphisms the artist has been developing since the sixties. Dermisache's work is conceived of as a sort of writing. It was Roland Barthes who included her in the category of "illegible writings" and it was the artist herself who made clear "this does not mean anything." But that she does not want to say anything does not mean it ceases to be a work with full rights, in the words of Barthes. These same writings or graphisms are manifested in formats that are common in communication, including books, letters, articles, journals, postcards. This, apart from reinforcing the idea of writing, gives it some framework for readability. At the same time, in their materiality and in their expression through gestures, her works do not let us forget that their origin is in the field of visual arts, more so than any conceptualization.

In perfect agreement with the destination of her works, the artist adopted an approach of multiple diffusion, including the publication and its proper forms of circulation. For this fundamental reason, one of the accents in this intervention is placed on a publication as important as Diario Nº 1, Año 1, 1972-1995, a work that had great impact on the world of graphics as well as displaying a strong political commitment. This piece, made available to the viewer/reader and put into dialogue with a selection of original works conceived before or simultaneously with this publication, will put on display the richness of the artist’s work, both as it pertains to the graphic world and in the variety of different formats in which it is etched.

Reinforcing the above, we return to this central point in Dermisache’s work: the multiple and her decision on how to make known the reproductions of her original works. It is important to point out something from the publishing criteria offered by the artist and jealously respected by those who have been her publishers: the work must not have any printed word, only a removable cover note without which there would be no reference to the author, publisher, or collection, thus achieving absolute autonomy. This is where the work takes on its full meaning, reaching a point where the publication displaces the original -manuscript- to begin its route through the channels of the publishing world. It is as such that in the Proa Bookstore the artist's recent publications will be sold, made available to the visitor to touch, read, and buy, and as such creating a space to link the publication and the viewer/reader.

This intervention also has two recent works from the series Lecturas públicas and Textos murales.

The particularity of these works is evident in their format and purpose. It is no longer an intimate text that one must sit down to read, but rather something that demands to be looked at/read by the visitor from a very public space, despite the fact it will not impose itself with loudness, but with the subtlety of its ink and pencil tracings. A curatorial text presides over the Bookstore, designed by the artist to initiate and encourage the public in this particular form of reading, that they may accept the challenge and let themselves be seduced by the journey of the tracings, finally to reach what Roland Barthes once called the pleasure of the text.

The works

Diario Nº1, Año 1, 1972. Offset print on paper, 47.5 x 36.5 cm, 8 pp.

This work was made to be published by the Center for Art and Communication (or CAyC, in Spanish), directed by Jorge Glusberg, and displayed in the exhibition Art and Ideology CAyC in Open Air, within the framework of Art of Systems II. It was inaugurated in September 1972 and demolished by the police and municipality for its political content criticizing the government of Lanusse and alluding to the recent Trelew Tragedy (August 1972). The artist’s creative process incorporates graphisms developed mostly in her books prior to the Diario, and includes a story that allows the intervention through writing of any viewer who is so disposed. Furthermore, there is a clear symbolic reference to the act of mourning represented by a black rectangle. Taking into account the cultural horizons of those politically agitated years, the symbol made explicit what had been happening just months prior to the completion of the exposition. Guy Schraenen, its European publisher, also suggests a political reading of this and other works of illegible graphisms in times when society is silenced by coercion. The piece has been published on five occasions: CAyC, 1972; Mirtha Dermisache, 1973; Guy Schraenen, 1975 (Antwerp); Artinf, 1974; Mirtha Dermisache, 1995. Besides Diario 1, Año 1, several other works are also presented: books, postcards, loose works, short stories, etc., which correspond to the development of different graphisms in this variety of formats of communication. The original work makes evident, among a number of details, the presence of color that from 1967 onwards was designed with the sole intention of avoiding a decorative interpretation of her work.

Mural text, 2009. Ink and pencil on paper, 70 x 100 cm

Public Reading No. 3, 2006. Ink on paper, 59.5 x 72.5 cm

The Public readings and Mural texts series are works begun by the artist in early 2005. The particularity of these works is evident in their format and purpose. It is no longer an intimate text that one must sit down to read, but rather something that demands to be looked at/read by the visitor from a very public space. In the retail sector of the book store are available the publications of two of these works: Public Reading, 2005, and Public Reading No. 3, 2006, published by Florent Fajole (for Le clou dans le fer), Reims and Mirtha Dermisache, respectively.

Text, 2010. Cutting plotter on vinyl, 150 x 150 cm.

A curatorial text in the Bookstore space intervenes in the institution itself with its graphisms, designed by the artist to encourage in the spectator this particular form of reading. The piece was designed especially for this occasion in the traditional format of curatorial presentation texts.

Mirtha Dermisache
She was born in Buenos Aires in 1940. She studied visual arts at the Manuel Belgrano and Prilidiano Pueyrredón National Schools of Fine Arts, respectively. In 1967 she finished her first 500-page book, afterwards continuing with the development of her graphisms, which continues to this day. Her works were published between 1970 and 1978 by the Center for Art and Communication, led by Jorge Glusberg. In the 70s her graphisms were published by Marc Dachy and Guy Schraenen in Antwerp and were also published in the magazines Flash art, Doc(k)s, Kontext, Ephemera and Ax. Additionally, Ulises Carrión exhibited her works in the gallery Other books and so (Amsterdam), and Roberto Altmann did the same in the Malmö Konsthall (Sweden). During this same time, she created the Workshop of Creative Actions in Buenos Aires. Starting in 2004 and together with Florent Fajole, she carried out a series of publishing devices that explore the dimensions of the installation and the printing process, highlighting different conceptual aspects of publications in the same spatial reality. Her first solo show in Buenos Aires was in the gallery The Edge. Later, she exhibited her work at the MACBA (Barcelona) and the Center Pompidou (Paris).

Urban Spaces: Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth, presents a selection of works produced by the outstanding artists from the early Eighties to nowadays.

180 pages / 45 color reproductions
CD: English Translations
Texts: Ludovico Pratesi – Armin Zweite – Valeria Gonzalez – Paolo Perulli
Interviews: Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth
ISBN 978-987-1164-05-9

Edited in collaboration with Ediciones Lariviere, the catalogue gives an intense remark on the developments of the contemporary city through the reproductions of the artworks, which create an intense dialogue with the essays selected for the occasion. Ludovico Pratesi, curator of the exhibition, and Paolo Perulli explain the complexity of the city life; the texts by Armin Zweite and Valeria González depict the path of the artists during their years in the Düsseldorf School, their work with the teachers, Bernd and Hilla Becher, and the contribution of their works in the international art context.

The edition is enhanced with special sections dedicated to each one of the artists, including unpublished interviews and biographies that exemplify the diversity, contradictions and complexity of the city theme through contemporary urban life.

This catalogue is intended as a fundamental piece for the understanding of contemporary art and its reflections in the present context.

The bilingual edition includes a Cd with the English texts.

Proa – Ediciones Lariviere

$190.-

Where to buy

Block, by Jorge Macchi

Fundación PROA presents the intervention of the artist Jorge Macchi in the PROA Library, in which he exhibits the drawings of his book Block.

In Block, Macchi offers a non-chronological panorama of the drawings he made between 1996 and 2008. So much the title of the book as its format seek to highlight the idea that the drawings were done directly on a block of blank pages. The images are shown without any background color and, in general, are placed on the center of the page.

The book is sponsored by the Embassy of Italy in Argentina, with the support of Fundación PROA.

The Block intervention, by Jorge Macchi, opens the PROA Library’s cultural program, consisting of presenting books through diverse points of view. In the case of the visual arts, many artists produce works in the format of books, also known as artist’s books. “The artist’s books is one more possibility of this creativity developed through the 20th Century, even in secret. In the archives of many artists it is common to find anywhere between notebooks to books with drawings”, explains Adriana Rosenberg, president of Fundación PROA.

In Macchi’s production, books are a space of recurring experimentation. On occasion of his participation in the Venice Biennale, Macchi abandons the traditional concept of a catalogue and presented an artist’s book.

“Presenting Block in the PROA Library is a different experience. While the book presents a sequence in the drawings, in the installation this sequence is lost, and it results in something else. Its an explosion”, explains Macchi.

Biography

Jorge Macchi

Visual artist. Born in Buenos Aires in 1963. Studied in the National School of Arts of Buenos Aires. Presented exhibitions at Blanton Museum of Austin, Texas (USA), Galician Center of Contemporary Art of Santiago de Compostela (España), University of Essex (UK), Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires (Argentina), Museum of Contemporary Art of Amberes MUHKA (Belgium). He participated in diverse exhibitions in contemporary art centers of Argentina and the world. He was part of the biennials of Havana (2000), Porto Alegre (2003), Estambul (2003), San Pablo (2004), Venecia (2005) and Porto Alegre (2007). In 2002 won the prize of the National Bank of Argentina and in 2005 won the Guggenheim scholarship. He showed his work at Ruth Benzacar gallery in Buenos Aires, Luisa Strina of San Pablo, Distrito4 of Madrid, Gallería Continua of San Gimignano and Peter Kilchmann of Zurich. Between 1994 and 2002 he made residences, invited by foundations and institutions of France, Netherlands, England, Germany and Italy. He lives and work in Buenos Aires.

Texts

The drawing
By Jorge Macchi

"For me, the drawing is a gymnastics. When I get to work, I put the drawing in the wall and beginning to imagine things… It works as a step, as a door towards other things. It is a daily activity, so much for outline some installation or painting, as to simply the format works I draw. It is the more immediate way of making concrete an image ".

"The drawing has a very primitive character: that of the white sheet. If there appears an image that needs movement or sound, then the format that I choose is the video. Or if besides the paper, I see that it has to be in the space, then I think about an installation. But in some cases, if it satisfies all the needs that this image has, then I keep the drawing ".

"I wanted to do a book that was in the limit between record and object. Then, it came the idea of doing a Block where the drawings are reproduced on every page as if they had done them directly on the white sheet. They do not have any annotation: neither title, nor year, nor nothing. Block is not a record of works but a record of images".

"I believe that Block is an artist's book because the object is the important thing. It is a Block of drawings. And it reflects something that it has to see very much with the drawing: the question of the immediacy".

A tour for the drawing
By Cecilia Rabossi

Jorge Macchi presents Block, a book of artist that brings together drawings made between 996 and 2008, in a sort of record of images that spreads in this object with Block's format of white sheets that intensifies the idea that the drawings realized directly on it. Cleared of any track of context, landscape, background, reference to the technique, year of accomplishment, measures or collection, the drawings centre on the figures and on the represented objects.

As Giorgio Guglielmino indicates in the text that comes with the book "… the background simply does not exist. The objects (real protagonists of Macchi's drawings) and the figures (as support of the objects) are suspended always in the middle of the white sheet as if they were thoughts … ".

Macchi begins from daily objects and they are changed by their function and context, or establish associations with other objects that generate a different way of perceiving the reality. For him, to draw is a daily task and to be able to summarize this production, without reference of any type, reinforces the relevancy that possesses the drawing inside his work already it is like a preparatory sketch for a painting, an installation, a video, or in an autonomous way.

In this book of artist, Macchi plays with the object and its content, and with the format of the real object - the Block - and its functionality: to be a support of images and of the represented. The book is a frequent format in the production of the artist of diverse ways. “The ascensión, Ten Drops and Buenos Aires Tour” are some examples.

Macchi proposes to dismember the book, to extract the sheets of Block and them to spread in the space of Para Library. To disarm the book, to break the established order, he allows to show the images in simultaneously, leaving the spectator the possibility of establishing different relations among them. Hereby, the intervention will allow to raise, according to the artisa, a "vision branched out of the book".

The drawing like sample of the mind
By Giorgio Guglielmo
Extract of the text included in the book Block

"The colors are vivacious, generally pure and not mixed, there are no blots or marks of brushstrokes. The use of the color and the simplicity of the drawing derive also from the need to shape the images of a clear, concise and fast way. Everything is clear(bright) and this brightness – that fits to the brilliancy of thought of the artist – contribuyes to the apparent naturalness and realism of objects and impossible situations ".

View images.

Proa in La Boca, by Facundo de Zuviría
Photography books

Proa en La Boca Fotografía: Facundo de Zuviría Gentiliza Fundación Proa

From March, 14th, 2009
Fundación PROA presents Proa en La Boca (Proa in La Boca), photographic books by Facundo de Zuviría that illustrate the relationship between the arquitecture of PROA and the neighborhood of La Boca.

The photographer Facundo de Zuviría documents PROA´s new building from certain angles rescuing the details, forms, and elements of the arquitecture, from specifical frames in wich he rescues details, shapes and elements of architecture, resulting in a number of abstract images in dialogue with the context of La Boca.

De Zuviría presents the neighborhood’s most characteristic traits: the Bridge, the Riachuelo, its houses and streets. His particular viewpoint focuses on its characteristic materials: iron, water, la chapa acanalada, and stone. With a profound wisdom he is able to put these materials in a dialogue with the construction of the new PROA, which is thus enriched by this new way of looking.

The project was set forth when Facundo de Zuviría spontaneously started this series. Fundación PROA considered that, on occasion of the exhibition on Artist’s Books, it was possible to rescue the concept of a photographic album related to the city, a recurring them in the artist’s production. De Zuviría goes back to this concept through new medias, plotter printing, and the image digitalization. The result is a novel photographic production of single copies, which show for the inter-dialogue between the city and the arquitecture, and at the same time experimenting with new forms of current photography.
“This is a project that crosses borders in the perception of images. The visitor is able to turn the pages of this book and dialogue with the photographer’s gaze. To walk through the building, and contemplate the images from the artist’s viewpoint allows for a new reflection on ways of looking. This moment of interrogation between the lecture of the building itself and the artist’s permits a reflection on the accuracy of what the eye sees, and gives the spectator the possibility to discover a new point of view”, explains Adriana Rosenberg, president of Fundación PROA.

Proa en La Boca is part of the PROA Library’s cultural program, which presents books in all of its artistic manifestations.