The empty head of the chamber of deputies of the Santa Fe legislature was always ready for the painting by Antonio Alice (1886 – 1943), “The Constituents of 53”, a work that could never be in the place for which it was intended and finished. in 1934 [1]. Alice's painting is very important for the people of Santa Fe, as Professor Juan Bautista Walpen wrote in the newspaper El Litoral: «The image of the work "The Constituents of 53", by the painter Antonio Alice, is a symbolic anchor for those of us who live in this city. to our past. It affirms our idiosyncrasy as a city state, ... and has even unleashed arduous debates (and myths) around its place of belonging and location. From wherever we approach it, we feel that part of its memory, of its identity belongs to us” an identity, by the way, built over more than 400 years with many difficulties. In fact, the collection of the Provincial Museum contains forty-eight oil sketches and preparatory drawings of the Alice painting.
The painter's relationship with our city began when he attended the inauguration of the Provincial Museum of Fine Arts in 1922, also participating in the First Salon of Santa Fe, and will continue over time. So important is her figure for her work closely linked to the identity of Santa Fe, that the remains of Alice, who died in 1943, were transferred and buried in the church of San Francisco in the provincial capital in 1999. The negotiations for the work to be sent to Santa Fe failed over time, with the exception of the brief presence in 1973 when the Constitution was shown in the city on the occasion of the one hundred and twenty years of its proclamation and swearing in. A long absence that was always in force and that gave rise to the possibility of coming into possession of Guillermo Roux's wonderful work “The Constitution guiding the people.”
The enormous painting of the Chamber of Deputies of Santa Fe that gives rise to this text begins its story when its president, Deputy Eduardo Di Pollina, calls me. He was then director by competition of the Rosa Galisteo de Rodríguez Provincial Museum of Fine Arts, whose building is located in front of the Legislature. I crossed over to the interview where Di Pollina asked me who could make a copy of Alice's painting from The Constituents. I asked him if he didn't think it would be better to commission a different work. He asked me who could do it and I answered Guillermo Roux. He asked me for the contact and to anticipate his call. That was the beginning.
Roux arrived in Santa Fe in the midst of tractor-trailers along the 125 [2] that thundered through the old southern neighborhood and was received by Governor Hermes Binner; He toured the Legislature, the House and accepted the challenge. I remember some moments, such as the visits that Roux made to Santa Fe to verify measurements and enter the premises to, surely, perceive his work and his relationship with the space. Alice's painting measures 360 x 542 cm and was conceived to fit perfectly into the plane surrounded by a thick and elaborate molding that is located behind the presidency of the enclosure. But Master Roux was initially working on a larger work, measuring 358 by 652 cm, and it was necessary to modify the aforementioned plan, remove the box and do it again.
And again they consulted me in the Presidency of the Legislature, at that time about who could do the work of eliminating and creating new moldings without altering anything in its design. Stephan Descours, I proposed, a Frenchman living in Paraná, graduated from the School of Arts and Crafts in Paris, who had already worked in the Old Cathedral. It took a couple of years, an anxious wait that ended with the solemn discovery of the work. In the meantime, Roux was the guest of honor at the 2010 Santa Fe Salon, where the sketch of Canto a Buenos Aires that he hung in his house was exhibited.
Although I knew Guillermo Roux by protocol, I began to deal with him personally in October 2002 when the architect Silvina Irurraspe, a professor at the Catholic University of Santa Fe, successfully managed a master class by the master, which she gave at the university headquarters in Guadalupe. , neighborhood of the capital of Santa Fe. It was a total success; Before a packed classroom, he worked with a living model and with great results. We had dinner in Paraná where Roux displayed his friendliness, his charm, revealing that he was not only an exceptional artist, but that he was also a close, brilliant person. Then came sharing some trips, like in 2004 to Jujuy, to El Calafate in 2005; San Juan in 2006, Chaco in 2007 and Mendoza in 2008. Meetings followed at the National Academy of Fine Arts [Editor's note], with anecdotes that he told with grace, such as his relationship with Cesáreo Bernaldo de Quirós. Quirós knew his father and, showing him some drawings of his son, he asked the teacher if he could teach him. Quirós, proud and distant, agreed to receive him on Saturdays at his house in Vicente López. On the first visit, Roux said, Quirós was wrapped in a burgundy robe; He assisted him in his atelier where he worked on a still life whose model was a deer hanging from a beam. Another of his unforgettable anecdotes occurred on a trip to Rome when he went with Franca, his wife, to visit her paternal house, located in an elegant neighborhood and which they abandoned in dark times to go first to Sicily and then to Mendoza. The house then belonged to a congregation of nuns who welcomed visitors and were amazed by the history. They invited them to stay with them and every time they passed through Rome they were splendidly received. I imagine Franca's emotion, recovering the past, and happy, visiting her childhood home again, her parents'.
Exhibition of the sketches and other studies that gave rise to the work The Constitution guiding the people. In the image, from left to right, the author of this article, Guillermo Roux, his assistant, and Franca, his wife.
Along with the delivery of the work on April 6, 2011, the Museum presented the exhibition of more than a hundred sketches, studies and models, which would be shown again in October of that year at the Emilio Caraffa Museum in Córdoba. The unfolding of the preparatory sketches revealed Roux's ideas. A beautiful woman, raising in her hands the colors of Santa Fe and the Nation, while in the background the sky-river stirs, the blue and white of the Nation uniting and sheltering; the green and the sunflowers of Santa Fe prosperity, and its flags; that of the Invincible Province, carried by the followers. One day the teacher calls me and takes me to a room where the sketches of some characters from the first line were, he points to one and tells me: there you are, it's yours. I will never forget the deep emotion for the generous and complicit gesture that few people know about because I preferred to keep it quiet. He made the drawing appealing to his memory, of past encounters, it is how Roux estimated it was, that is how he remembered me.
Thank you Hilario for bringing it back to my memories.
Notes:
1. His masterpiece is exhibited in the Hall of Lost Steps of the National Congress, in the city of Buenos Aires.
2. Resolution 125 was an initiative of the current senator Martín Lousteau, then Minister of Economy in the government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, in 2008. It proposed a scheme of mobile withholdings on agricultural exports and provoked an immediate reaction from the rural area with protests that spread throughout the country. The measure was finally repealed in the Senate after a historic session.
Editor's note: Guillermo Roux was named full academic of this House in 1990, and the author of this article, in 1999 he received the designation of Academic delegate for the province of Entre Ríos.
* Special for Hilario. Arts Letters Trades