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Emilio Pettoruti
(La Plata, Buenos Aires 1892 - París 1971)

From 1913 to 1924 Emilio Pettoruti - born to a family of Italian immigrants- lived in Italy.Specifically, he centred his work in Florence.He spent periods in Rome, where he joined with Balla, De Chirico, Bragaglia and Prampolini; in Milan, warmly welcomed by Marusig, Mario Sironi, Adolfo Wildt, Dino Campana, Acchile Funi and Fortunato Depero; in Berlin, associating himself with Der Sutrm and exhibiting with them, with a catalogue prefaced by Carrá; and in Paris, where he came into contact with Picasso, Juan Gris, Manuel Ángeles Ortiz and others.

Even though Pettoruti was away from Buenos Aires, he did not lose touch with the art scene of his native country.He continued to send work that indicated his art would be a new look on what the critics in 1916 had read as “merely geometrical”. In the meanwhile, he and his work took part in inaugural ceremonies highly recognized within the art world, such as the addition of young modern artists to the XII Bienale Internazionale di Venezia in 1920.He also shared rejection with his colleagues.The same year of the Venice Biennial, Pettoruti is eliminated, along with Marusig, from the Biennale di Brera.Therefore, he exhibits at the Famiglia Artistica in Milan and received great attention from the press.In 1920, according to Risorgimento, a Milanese magazine, “the artists rejected by the Biennale di Brera were eliminated by the judging panel with no plausible reason based on art or visible to the mortal eye. On exhibit in the large room of the Famiglia Artistica are two of the rejected works of Pettoruti which display strong artistic force and seriousness”.

In the meanwhile, in Europe, Pettoruti was imagining his return to Buenos Aires.He planned it carefully. He designed his re-entry tactic using various resources: he placed announcement articles in the print media of the city; he proclaimed his self-prophecy, declaring that he knew that his return “would not be understood”; he re-established bonds with his peers on the other side of the ocean; and he inserted himself (together with his friend Xul Solar and the sculptor Pablo Curatella Manes) into the groups of young artists of the “new sensibility”, also members of Martín Fierro, the magazine that brought the group together. In addition, he programmed an important exhibit, consisting of 86 works that he presented in October of 1924, three months after returning to Argentina, at the prestigious Witcomb Gallery.Simultaneously, he attacked on the front of official sites by sending work to the National Salon.

All of this had an intense impact and achieved the desired result. His re-entry was a hit and would go down in the canons of art history as the most important event in the process of the first emerging vanguard in Argentina.Xul Solar’s words in Martín Fierro, the new generation’s magazine, anticipated what would come to be seen: a “clear and solid architecture”, “broad, new perspectives”, the “serious efforts of Pettoruti -a dissident at last”, which would provide “relief and liberation”.“The bravery of this painter will set an example”, he ruled. He emphasized that it was “falling to an Argentine to have the courage to begin the tiring crusade on behalf of new art forms.” A year later another critic would recall how “the news that a futurist was exhibiting his work on Florida Street hit the city’s nerves like lightning. . . . Everyone was excited to go laugh their heads off.

As with all historical processes, no event occurs in isolation.Pettoruti’s presentation had fallen on fertile ground. New art was being announced from various positions and Pettoruti’s multiple presentation, backed by the collective of artists, poets and intellectuals of the “new sensibility”, did nothing less than reignite the flames of the debate on modernism in Argentina, which would never be put out .

The legendary Pettoruti took pleasure again and again through not only imitating critics of his successive exhibits throughout his lengthy career, but also through his own written accounts.Beginning in the late 1920’s, he worked regularly with the newspaper Crítica and with other periodicals.He would write about various contemporary Italian artists, fulfilling a double mission –on the one hand, presenting and updating information about modern artists that would have an important presence in Argentina’s visual arts; and on the other, through the biographies he prepared, he sketched out paragraphs about his own art .These articles show him repeatedly in dialogue with Marusig, Dudrevill, Prampolini and other Italians.He positions them and himself within an account of modern art that is international in tone.

This clever operation continues in Pettoruti’s autobiography.In it, he presents a rich account that captures his childhood through to his seventies.It consists of the following:his first impressions as a new arrival to Europe on his first trip; his relationships with other artists, with work, money, the atmosphere, the wars, politics, institutions; the need to establish avenues for developing modern art in Argentina; and his own art work, both in Argentina and internationally.Written as a retrospective and summary, the narrative he builds recreates his life, stressing the image of a powerful combative artist, a militant of modernism, both in Europe and on the American continent. This account helped to delineate the interpretation of Pettoruti that would come later in history.

Diana Wechsler.

(1) Regarding the work, Armonías, in the decorative arts section of “El Salón Nacional”,La Nación, Buenos Aires, September 22, 1916.

(2) C.F. Risorgimento, Milan, October 14, 1920, cited in: Emilio Pettoruti catalogue of the exhibit done at the National Exhibit Rooms, Buenos Aires, Secretary of Culture for the Nation, June/July, 1995.

(3) " Atlántida en Europa. Argentinos en Berlín. El Pintor Emilio Pettoruti”. Emilio Pettoruti in an interview withJulio de la Paz, Atlántida, Buenos Aires, Februrary 8, 1924.

(4) XUL SOLAR, "Pettoruti" in Martín Fierro, Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, September/October, 1924.

(5) BLAKE, PEDRO, "Pettoruti" in Martín Fierro, Buenos Aires, November 20, 1924.

(6) Estarico, Leonardo, “Emilio Pettoruti” in Crítica, Buenos Aires, July 1, 1925.

(7) Cfr. Wechsler, Diana B. “Buenos Aires 1924: Trayectoria pública de la doble presentación de Emilio Pettoruti”, in: El arte entre lo público y lo privado, Buenos Aires, CAIA, 1995.