THE REALISM IN WHICH I BELIEVEStatement-Manifesto of 1976 by Hector Giuffré | ||||||||||||||
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When we talk about the art of our generation, I can see that those who talk try, in some way to define it. And they don't find any other concept but "young" to cover our multiplicity of action. That is not completely wrong, given that youth is visually an attribute which identifies an elevated art. But it is not absolutely precise, because it does not adjust to the diversity of attitudes which painters adopt facing what they are trying to define. It would be more useful for the public if we could try a serious and not prejudiced analysis with an explanation of the process rather than treating artists as a group because they created art in the same years or in the same geographic locations. Analyzing and explaining a creative process does not mean defining it. All intent to define in this field would be the same as trying to bottle a river: the contents would always overflow the container. I will take advantage of this space, then, to give some general concepts to guide the actual stage of my painting, which does not define it, but that could be useful for the public to grab their own definition through the parallel process of contemplation. Before anything else, let's make clear what it is not: not HyperRealist, not Surrealist, nor any other "ism" which might be handy to hang on it. To simply say that the attitude is Realist is not saying too much. Every painting is, at last, Realist. The painter believes in the reality which paints. Closing the concept of "Realism" to the creation of images "such as seen by the eye" is also false. No painting can be done "as the eye sees." Try it and you will achieve the worst failure. The vision system does I not have a strictly objective perception of exterior reality, nor depends, we might say, on the subjective in an exclusive way. Every creative act is in a middle point between man (subject) and nature (objective), between painter and his model. A painting always affirms something, but whatever it might be, it must include man and its exterior reality, exterior to man for him to reassure himself. I believe in a realism which, merging from the encounter of man with reality, will not mean the alienation of the subject to the objective structure. My painting does not represent a portion of the objective world, but appears as a new portion which joins objective reality as the creation of a subject. Its internal laws are those of nature; its conventions are human. I have tried to avoid not only the pure content but also the pure form, searching for a maximum value of truth within a maximum of formal perfection. Hector Giuffré, Buenos Aires, "Pluma y Pincel", May 3,1976 |
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