primitive paintings: connections to realism and constructivism

Leonardo

Primitive Paintings: Connections to Realism and ConstructivismAuthor(s): Gorki BollarSource: Leonardo, Vol. 17, No. 1 (1984), pp. 17-19Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1574851 .

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Leonardo, Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 17-19, 1984. Printed in Great Britain.

0024-094X/84 $3.00+0.00 Pergamon Press Ltd.

PRIMITIVE PAINTINGS: CONNECTIONS TO REALISM AND CONSTRUCTIVISM

Gorki Bollar* Abstract-In the last 20 years, the author has searchedfor a synthesis between the abstract and the natural in his work. He summarizes his conclusions on the subject of primitive and naive expression and how they relate to realism and constructivism.

I began to paint in 1960, while living in my birthplace, Montevideo, Uruguay. My first efforts were prompted by a visit to a museum of constructivist art.

The influence of constructivism in the culture of Uruguay embraces at least two generations. It is based mainly on the teachings of the Uruguayan artist Joaquin Torres-Garcia [1]. Since his death in 1948, his ideas continue to be diffused through the Taller-Torres-Garcia, the school of art that he founded. As a student there, I met the painter Jose Gurvich, who became my teacher.

From the beginning my work had similarities to the art of the modern primitives, artists who work outside the mainstream of art and for this reason are often classified as naives. But there is an essential difference between naives and primitives [2]. Naive painters are usually individuals who take up painting without a formal training in art. Their work is an attempt to achieve a 'fair copy' of reality, rather than a dynamic transfiguration of it. The naives tend to look outwards, through the naive peephole. In contrast, the primitive might be described as one who turns an innocent eye inward, to the world of imagined forms, what Andre Breton called "le modele interieur" [3]. According to Dubuffet [4], 'primitive art' connotes vitalism: instinct, passion, caprice, violence, delirium. Primitives express themselves directly, unburdened by academic notions. For example, one of the most remarkable modern primitives is Adolf Wolfli [5] (1864-1930), a Swiss artist who created his visionary works in an asylum. His creative output was devoted to the circumstances of his early childhood, in drawings and writings that constitute an autobiography.

The primitive aspect of my work is apparent in the form of its expression: I believe I must make a statement through my paintings, a statement that refers to my own personal experience of the reality. I try to depict the world of imagined things, the interior model that informs every primitive. My painting 'Story of Fire' (Fig. 1) represents a symbolic struggle between good and evil. The characters, a rider, his horse, Eve and the angels, move in an ideal, geometric landscape. The grass in the lower part of the painting was created using a pointillist technique that I have used in my work ever since.

At the school of Torres-Garcia, my work acquired constructivist undertones: I began to use geometry consciously, to perceive the cube, the circle and the square within real forms. In order to emphasize structure, I would use the technique of deforming. For instance, a human figure might be represented by a simple linear drawing, the different elements measured and related to each other according to mathematical proportion, in a way similar to that found in cubist art.

The ideology of constructivism may not seem compatible with the primitive aspect of my art. But I found that I could

*Painter, 1017 DS Amsterdam, Keizersgracht 607, The Netherlands.

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Fig. 1. 'Story of Fire', oil on board, 60 x 42 cm, 1970. Taking as a departure a story of fire in a forest, the painter has recorded his visual

memories in a 'life landscape' (photo: Martin Chaffer).

express myself through the geometric principles of the constructivist school without loss of spontaneity. Applying constructivist principles lent greater strength and solidity to my painting. The basis of constructivism lies in discovering and using a structure in which the parts relate to the whole.

The work of an artist is similar to that of an architect or a builder; it involves measurements and a feeling for balance and harmony. This sense of structure was of great importance in my later development. I consider a painting as a space to be dealt with harmonically, using color in the way a musician uses notes, to relate the parts to the whole. I try to express a painter's

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Gorki Bollar

Fig. 2. 'Joseph and His Brothers', oil on canvas, 46 50 cm, 1979. A rendering of a biblical story provides a chance for a greater emphasis on the human figure (photo: Paul Hartland).

relationship with reality through the use of many auto- biographical elements. I believe that the term that most accurately describes my work is 'realism'; and this is what connects it with much Latin American art. In 'Joseph and His Brothers' (Fig. 2) I depict a passage of the Bible using present- day elements, trying to integrate my own memories and experiences with the anecdote.

Most Latin American art is closely related to everyday reality. Even artists who profess abstract creeds or who work with pure geometry express a realistic content in some way. Angel Kalenberg compared this tendency in modern Latin American art to modern European art: "For a cultured European, that plastic attitude [Kalenberg refers here specifically to the work of Argentine artist Sbernini] has wild, savage echoes, because it contrasts with a period which has almost reached symbolic sublimation [in Europe], almost no content whatsoever survives in European abstract art. But this is the strength of Latin American art, whose shoulders are unburdened by the weight of the classical-Renaissance tradition. Not by chance, Torres-

Garcia called his posthumous (and perhaps his most significant) book: The Recuperation of the Object" [6].

This grounding in everyday reality might explain the influence of primitive art in a school based on highly intellectual premises. In the Taller Torres-Garcia I found other artists working like myself within primitive lines, while making use of constructivist concepts to impart stucture and balance to their work. Among artists who inspire me are: Paolo Ucello [7], for his use of linear perspective, the English painter Anthony Green [8] and the Colombian Fernando Botero [9]. Like many of these artists, I try to depict the private geography of my own reality, based on recollections from the past, dream images, and impressions from my surroundings. In 'Italian Gardens' (Fig. 3), I have tried to express the mystery of life. This life goes on in a geometrical maze, and expanses of foliage partially cover a distant land perhaps once visited.

More recently, I have produced a series of drawings that focus on the subject of the human couple, often in portraits of an allegorical nature and often referring to the myth of Ulysses. For

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Primitive Paintings

Fig. 3. 'Italian Gardens', acrylics on board, 50 X 48 cm, 1978. In this painting the artist seeks to represent life and its mystery: a geometrical labyrinth covers with expanses of foliage a distant land perhaps once

visited (photo: Paul Hartland).

instance, in 'The Fruits of the Earth', (see Color plate No. 4), a Dutch poet and his wife are portrayed surrounded by elements coming both from his everyday life and his poems.

REFERENCES

1. Ruth Brandon, The Documents of Twentieth Century Art: The Tradition of Constructivism, ed. Stephen Bann, (London: Thames & Hudson, 1974) p. 89. "Joaquin Torres-Garcia was born in Montevideo (Uruguay), in 1874, of a Catalan father and a

Uruguayan mother. He already had made a reputation as an artist before the first World War, and in 1930 he undertook the general administration of the 'Cercle at Carre' group and its magazine, together with Seuphor. He was later influential in carrying constructivist art to Spain, although he returned to his native Uruguay to exhibit and publish on a wide scale. In his manifesto ('The Abstract Rule'), dated February 1946, he looked forward to the birth of a 'virgin and powerful art' in the New World, away from the 'Babel of Europe'. The remarkable development of concrete and kinetic art in South America, which can be traced to such groups as Arturo, Arte Concreto, and Madi in postwar Argentina, owes a great deal to his example. He died in Montevideo in 1948."

2. Roger Cardinal, Outsider Art, (London: Studio Vista, 1972) p. 35. 3. Ibid., p. 74. 4. Ibid., p. 36. 5. Ibid., p. 55. 6. Angel Kalenberg, Journal, Southern California Art Magazine, 25, 15

(November 1979). 7. E. H. Gombrich, Norm andForm, (London: Phaidon Press, 1966) p.

130. On Paolo Ucello: "It is instructive to compare the hunting scenes from Apollonio di Giovanni with Ucello's 'Hunt'. Apollonio, with his graceful silhouettes of stags in flight and dogs in pursuit, completely preserves the tapestry character of International Gothic, while Ucello is visibly intent on translating the same formulae into the idiom of the new three-dimensional style. It is this new three- dimensional character which distinguished Ucello's lively hunters ... Ucello turns his figures away from the beholder and lets them chase their game into the depth of the forest."

8. Bryan Robertson, Catalogue to Anthony Green's Exhibition at the Royal Academy, (London: John Bentley, 1977) p. 5. "Anthony Green plays a few formal games with perspective and with asymmetrically shaped canvases, but he is mostly intent upon chronicling-rather than recording-his domestic life. Green's paintings are certainly not theatrical in any rhetorical sense, but he does contrive active situations rather than passive states of being."

9. German Arciniegas, Fernando Botero (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1970) p. 24. "I create my subjects somehow visualizing them in my style. I start as a poet, put the colors and the composition down on canvas, as a painter, but finish my work as a sculptor, taking delight in caressing the forms." (Fernando Botero in interview with Wibke von Bonin.)

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No. 1. Top left. Frances Valesco. 'Pisciculture *1', 22 x 30 inches, etching, silkscreen, xerox, and collage, 1984. (See page 31)

No. 2. Top right. Qiao Shi-guang. 'Suzhou', 60 x 60cm, 1963 (See page 25)

No. 3. Bottom left. Milton Komisar. 'Scrambling Space', 58x 40x. 18 feet, computer-controlled light sculpture, 1984. (See page 33)

No. 4. Bottom right. Gorki Bollar. 'The Fruits of the Earth', oil on board, 37x 40cm, 1981 (Photo: Paul Hartland). (See page 19)













