HERMENEGILDO SÁBAT: Master of Portraiture
Curators: Hugo Pontoriero & Cristina Santa Cruz
National Museum of Decorative Art, Buenos Aires, Argentina
From Thursday, April 4 to the end of July, 2024
OPENING: Thursday, April 4, 6:00 p.m.
Wednesday to Sunday, from 1:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. (last entry to the Museum at 6:30 p.m.)
Free entry
Guided tours and special activities (check calendar)
accompany this exhibition
Declared of Cultural Interest by the Chamber of Deputies of the Nation.
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Declarado de Interés Cultural por la Legislatura de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires.
This is a Carbon Neutral Plus event that contributes to the mitigation of climate change and
manages and offsets its carbon footprint through certified carbon credits.
SÁBADO 20/JUL
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MIÉRCOLES 24/JUL
VIERNES 26/JUL
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Past events
Ministry of Human Capital
Secretary of Culture
National Museums
National Museum of Decorative Art
Chamber of Deputies of the Argentine Nation
Legislature of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires
Civil Association Support to the MNAD
French Embassy in Argentina
French Institute
Uruguayan Embassy
Generalitat of Catalonia Delegation of the Government to the Con Sud
Matta Cultural Center Embassy of Chile in Argentina
CAMBRAS Argentine-Brazilian Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Services
Argentine Academy of Letters
National Academy of Journalism
ADEPA Association of Argentine Journalistic Entities
ZINK creative industries
Clarion
Bus
The nation
Saint Felicien
Croque Madame
Soulbird Graphic Design
Pampa Studio
Postcard
Grace Grisolía PR
Feldman-Santa Cruz Productions
Juan Marketing
VB Valeria Balbi
The Borgeans
South Moldings
CarbonNeutral+
Agradecemos a los auspiciantes, instituciones, organizaciones y colaboradores acompañantes de la exhibición:
Lo bello y lo sublime, lo esencial
Por Julio María Sanguinetti
Immanuel Kant, muchos años antes de su monumental “Crítica de la razón pura”, escribió un pequeño ensayo dedicado a analizar cómo las cosas pueden recibirse de modo distinto según la sensibilidad de cada uno. Parte de la base de que, por ejemplo, la descripción de una tempestad en el mar o la representación pictórica del infierno por Milton, son sin duda sobrecogedoras, pero solo si se tiene sensibilidad para lo sublime, para aquello que, aunque hasta nos pueda atemorizar, nos impresiona por su grandeza, nobleza o profundidad. Bien distinto es observar un hermoso arroyuelo serpenteando un valle florido o la pintura del cinturón de Venus en Homero, para disfrutar de lo cual hay que poseer el sentimiento de lo bello, de lo agradable a los sentidos. La noche es sublime dice Kant, el día es bello. Lo sublime conmueve; lo bello complace.
¿Es bella la imagen de Louis Armstrong que emblematiza esta muestra? Nadie lo diría, pero ese rostro, esa sonrisa, esa boca, están en lo esencial del personaje. Quien lo escuchó alguna vez lo vuelve a oír, con su ronca voz aguardentosa; quienes tuvimos, además, la suerte de poder verlo, retornamos a su irrepetible imagen y a su torrencial simpatía.
In the case of this exhibition, we also care about the author, his personality. Not only because of our old friendship but because his status as a portrait painter also defines his imagination. The artist's gaze loads the model with the parameters of his own self. Nobody is there by chance. Jazz players like tango players are defined by their authenticity, not by simple popularity. The artists and musicians are the ones who provoke him. The poets, those who have felt closest to his life, such as Jorge Luis Borges or Oliverio Girondo, inevitable references of his Buenos Aires life. In his political view, there are not those he did not want but those he respected, José de San Martín and the endearing Raúl Alfonsín, whom he also considered a hero. He had to caricature the others, but no more.
His status as a journalist often confronted him with the intolerance of the intolerant. To the threat. He continued forward, exercising his incorruptible freedom. We emphasize this concept: he never responded to influences or commands, only to that conviction that moved him to both indignation and benevolence. It was his character. I wouldn't say "furious", as Onetti said, but steely, behind an attitude of certain shyness, which always kept him away from easy applause.
Our friendship was born in the Montevideo newspaper ACCION, which was directed by a great democrat, Luis Batlle Berres. Journalistically it was led by a formidable man of Argentine journalism, Pancho Llano, historical editor-in-chief of Crítica and the first Clarín, who had ended up in Uruguay in the many vicissitudes of Argentine life. It was not a rich company, but the writing was a luxury, with Ángel Rama as a theater critic, María Freire (today at the Pompidou) commenting on art, the already mentioned Onetti -doing whatever he wanted- or our cartoonists, the "Galician" Leopoldo Novoa, formidable painter and not to mention Menchi, at that time a young man who was making his way.
Son of a typical family of the legendary educated middle class of Uruguay in the first half of the 20th century, with a grandfather (Hermenegildo also) an eminent professor and a father who filled a formidable stage in Uruguayan cultural life: eminent literature professor, historical director of educational institutes, lecturer, who for a good hour a street in Montevideo reminds him of. His mother, Matilde Garibaldi, Argentine, genealogist historian, also accompanied him in his crusades for the great international causes of freedom. So our artist was not what he was by chance but like a flow of notable tributaries.
It had its place in the newspaper. It was emblematic. In a huge newsroom, his work table was behind a column, next to a window that overlooked the eponymous river, called the sea by the Montevideans. He worked there, oblivious to everything. His place has also remained in Clarín, fixed in the memory of his colleagues.
After ACCION he went to El País in Montevideo and one day he left the leadership of that great newspaper, so as not to become a “bureaucrat.” Thus he went to Buenos Aires, to make his way, until he arrived at CLARIN and built, in four long decades, a masterpiece of journalism and art.
Luckily we continued to see each other, in Montevideo, every time he stopped, with Blanca, in his hometown. Art and freedom were our themes. Without forgetting Peñarol, a cult that we shared with him, Marta my wife and the architect Enrique Benech, a friend of his also from the distant times of ACCION.
Nostalgia is ambivalent. It includes the painful sensation of absence, but also the unavoidable warmth of pleasant memories and the immense gratitude of having enjoyed the friendship of a great person. A great man who truly was, without intending to. Almost despite himself.
Julio María Sanguinetti
© Julio María Sanguinetti, for Hermenegildo Sábat: Essential Portraits at ZINK Salón Privé,
ZINK creative industries. Reproduced with permission.
Montevideo, Uruguay. August, 2022
Not to mention that there is nothing beautiful in the look of Picasso's portrait, the resounding eye of a genius who is easier to admire than to love... Rigor, demand, penetration, in the look of a Torres García, geometry and classicism... There is no lack the dramatic reflection in an Edgar Allan Poe or in a humorist like Buster Keaton.
And Gardel? It is another thing: the image is beautiful, which can sometimes be compatible with the sublime. In the case, in the deep look, the image defines a historical time, from the borsalino to the silk scarf. It's an icon. Its essentiality is historical. Like Marilyn, in that beauty moves because it is sublimated by sensuality, which was her glory and her torment. When Onetti saw the first version of the portrait of the actress, he told Menchi: “starve, but don't sell it,” and in good time he survived for many years and the painting is, where Onetti also, in 1964, prophesied: the National Museum of Visual Arts of Montevideo.
Sábat sometimes shows beautiful images, such as that of Mary Casatt, Bessie Smith or Amedeo Modigliani, but that beauty is natural, not sought after, which is the trap that can lead to frivolity.
These portraits have a caricaturist behind them, that very noble art that Annibale Carracci illuminated and Daumier elevated to the greatest height of drawing, along with Delacroix and Ingres in Baudelaire's opinion. However, the height of the profession of the journalist who describes, exalts or condemns with the image, a historian of the instantaneous that forever freezes a moment or an episode, has not always been understood. Menchi did it all his life, with affection at times, with acidity at others, but with that look that illuminates the characteristic detail, the defining gesture. We say that it is behind because these portraits taken to artistic excellence suppose the plastic value of the line, at the same time that they emerge from a mirror that behind the physiognomic identity of the face, reveal a psychology, define a character, like Velázquez's Innocent or the Federico de Montefeltro by Piero de la Francesca. That's a portrait. Those are portraits. Essential, as they say. More sublime than beautiful in the sharp Kantian definition.
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About the artist and his work
HERMENEGILDO SATURDAY
Hermenegildo Sábat (Montevideo 1933 – Buenos Aires 2018) was one of the most striking personalities in the culture of the Southern Cone. Resident in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina since 1966 and Argentine citizen since 1980, for 45 years his journalistic comments in the form of cartoons were published in the main Buenos Aires morning newspaper Clarín, becoming especially in periods in which freedom of expression was seriously viewed. limited, in one of the most prestigious voices.
Plastic artist and teacher, he published twenty books about his passions: painting, music, literature, Argentine and international news. His career was distinguished with several important awards, including Emeritus Personality of Argentine Culture (Secretaría de Cultura de la Nación 1997), the María Moors Cabot Award (Journalism, Columbia University, New York 1988) and the Pedro Figari National Prize for Painting. (Montevideo 1997). In 2005 he received the Tribute Award from the New Ibero-American Journalism Foundation directed by Gabriel García Márquez.
He held numerous exhibitions of drawing, painting and photography in Argentina and abroad, the most notable being his retrospectives at the National Museum of Fine Arts (Buenos Aires 1997), the National Museum of Visual Arts (Montevideo l998), the Museum of Art of São Paulo (1984) and the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro (1997).
His works were published in several of the main journalistic and graphic media in the world: The New York Times , L'Express , American Heritage , Punch , O Globo , etc. For six years he published and edited the Visual Arts magazine Servicio Aurea, winner of several design awards, including that of the Art Director's Club of New York .
In 1997 he was named Illustrious Citizen of Buenos Aires . In 2003 he was awarded the title of Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Montevideo , Uruguay. He directed the Visual Arts Foundation from 1986 until his death.
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