Booth walkthrough
FERNANDO MAZA
OTTO Galería (Buenos Aires)
In Spanish, without translation.
Open to the public.
Comprender una pintura a través de alguien que la conoce íntimamente —el galerista que la ha estudiado y acompañado— ofrece una forma particular de acceso. Fernando Maza construyó mundos en los que los signos siguen siendo reconocibles, pero se niegan a comportarse como esperamos: las letras dejan de formar palabras, los números abandonan la aritmética y la arquitectura no conduce a ningún lugar en particular. ESTE FOCUS es un momento para mirar de cerca, escuchar con atención y comprender las ideas detrás de la obra y el proceso que le dio forma.
CURATORIAL VISION
For Este Arte 2027, OTTO Galería presents a selection of oils on canvas and watercolors on paper that distill this universe: the impossible architecture, the alphabet without a language, the landscape that is, ultimately, an enigma that sets our questions in motion. The space housing this selection is not neutral. Curator Pablo De Monte wrote of Maza's work that "the horizon line does not merely divide sky and earth: it organizes, orders, and proposes a way of seeing." That phrase illuminated a decision: the walls of the booth are painted in two bands, the lower one sand-colored, and the upper one a blue evoking the sky of his landscapes. The line dividing them is, too, a horizon line. The booth thus becomes an extension of Fernando Maza's pictorial universe: one more landscape, built for the works to inhabit. The booth incorporates a piece of furniture designed specifically for the occasion: MEZA is a modular, interlocking system. Three volumes that assemble into a single unit, or can be arranged independently throughout the space to serve as support surfaces. Inspired by the pictorial volumes of Fernando Maza, this sculptural ceramic table, with its open-ended composition, allows the user to create a variety of configurations.
BIO
Fernando Maza (b. 1936, Buenos Aires; d. 2017, France) was born in Buenos Aires in 1936, into a family of architects —a profession he always wished to practice and one that would shape his work. Between 1949 and 1953 he trained in the studio of Raúl Podestá, and in 1959 he became the youngest founding member of the Informalist Movement, alongside Alberto Greco, Kenneth Kemble and Clorindo Testa, among others. In 1960 he traveled to New York —where he lived for thirteen years— on a Pan American Union scholarship to study printmaking at the Pratt Graphic Art Center. There, sharing a studio with César Paternosto and Luis Wells, he began incorporating the letters, numbers and shaped formats that would define his work. In 1971 he received the Guggenheim Fellowship. After a period in London (1973-1976), he settled in France, first in Paris and then in Nogent-sur-Marne, where he worked until his death in 2017, spending summers in Cala Deià, Mallorca. His work earned international recognition: an honorable mention at the VIII São Paulo Biennial (1965), participation in the Di Tella Prize, and inclusion in the Argentine delegation to the XXXVI Venice Biennale (1972). He received the First Prize of the National Painting Salon (1984), the Palanza Prize (1985) and the Grand Prize of Honor of the National Salon (1987). His work is held in the collections of the MET in New York, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes and the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires.