Chaos
Poverty, lack of resources, lack of time for art, lack of recognition. . . how does this affect an artist’s creativity? At what point do years of anonymity discourage one? And take away the will and drive to create?
If there is no one to appreciate and receive a man’s artistic message, how long does it take this man to stop valuing himself? Could a solitary and shipwrecked man be an artist?
How resilient is the human soul when faced with annulation?
Rebellious artists and young people tend to argue that marginalization is “productive,” that a true artist should be rebellious and unknown. But does this hold true with the passage of time?
Is it possible to remain rebellious, after twenty years of working ten hour shifts pumping fuel?
In my father’s case, I think marginalization affected him in two contrasting ways:
On the one hand, his works seemed to dismember. From 1990 onwards, my father stopped caring. He stopped signing his works, and only painted without thinking of the fate of these paintings. He painted canvases on both sides, which obviously anticipated rapid deterioration, he drew thousands and thousands of sketches, one after another, generally small ones. . . something he could finish in a few hours. He ripped his own canvases with a knife, sometimes burned them. As if the works weren’t “works,” the creativity spilled without form. . . dissipated in the air.
At the same time, as if his own talent resisted the imminence of disappearance, he painted much more. . . He painted at all times. He painted, excitedly and obsessively.
While he fulfilled his work obligations at the gas station, he made thousands and thousands of sketches using colored pencils, fibers, ink . . .
As it happens to species on the verge of extinction, his works reproduced and multiplied.
This passionate internal struggle fueled the rage. My father was fired from the gas station when he was 56 years old, at the time when massive lay-offs were common. His rage against capitalism’s abuse and exploitation were not merely a political idea in his case.
They were a physical sensation.
The Automóvil Club Argentino, the company which employed my father for years. . . had exploited him for an infinite number of hours. . .and now, as with many others, it discarded him.
During the last years of his life, my father almost went crazy from feeling powerless and discouraged. At the same time, he created his most extensive and beautiful work.
Creation and destruction: the two great human impulses. Equally powerful and terrible.
I’ve always felt it was rage that killed my father. He died of a stroke. Maybe, as a consequence of unrest. Just as his work dismembered and disarticulated, destruction overtook his body and soul.
But beauty sprung from the ripped canvases. . . The purest and happiest colors emerged whimsically, in the most unexpected corners were my father drew.
It was as if creativity were a strange fever.
A mysterious wish drove him beyond himself, to keep painting until the last day of his life.
