Art Events
Sacred Argentinian Art I
At the dawn of humanity, a man conscious of his finiteness felt the need to leave evidence of his fleeting time on Earth. The stamp of his hands on the roughness of the walls of his habitat, as well as the elemental and beautiful imagery of other surrounding men and animals, assaulted him, fed him and sheltered him. It was not only his legacy to the future but also represented an invocation to a sacred dimension, maybe just intuited but not less effective.
In more advanced forms of social organization, pre-Christian cults claimed its artists that they represent idols and deities, and in this instance fit both tribal clusters and the top of the classical cultures.
The arrival of Christianity and the preaching of the Gospel provided the fullness of doctrine and spirituality, and required a vast imagery that could best serve the transmission of the message of God. The slow passing of time witnessed the growing ties that united art and its performers, responding to the spiritual needs of a world in transit to higher forms of life.
The spaces for devotion used stone as a support of the architectural language of the Romanesque and the Gothic. The Church consolidated with its orders the summits that art reached during the Renaissance. Reaching these highest levels of creativity did not crystallize the close link between artists and issues concerning the sacred, but this union was maintained throughout the ongoing process of evolution of the arts.
When in 1947, in a world devastated by the tragic epic of war, His Holiness Pius XII sanctioned the encyclical Mediator Dei, set very clear guidelines for the assimilation of modern art in the liturgy. In quick response to the papal mandate, that same year an association of artists was created in Buenos Aires, having the same name of the ecclesial letter. "Mediator Dei" -says one of its preliminary documents- is an institution founded to restore the art in Church, bringing contemporary artists and trying to preserve the pieces that constitute its heritage ".
Estudio Garrido Abogados, in this last exhibition of 2012, has brought together many of those Argentine artists who embodied with their works the spirit of the encyclical, as well as others who preceded them and others who today continue in this noble task. It has also established as a guideline for selecting the pieces a strict concept of Sacred Art, exclusively understood as that which could be subject to the devotion of the faithful, and not the simple manifestation of that devotion.
In that sense, scenes from the life of Christ, images of the Virgin Mary and some of the saints venerated by the Church, techniques and diverse forms and of expression, conform this exhibition in which, among others, include artists such as Fray Guillermo Butler, Aquiles Badi, Horacio Butler, Eugenio Daneri, Stephen Koek Koek, Jorge Larco, Mariette Lydis, José Luis Menghi and Francisco Vidal. Among contemporary sculptors we mention Walter Gavito and Antonio Pujía.
After speaking at various times of the "via pulchritudinis" (way of beauty), Pope Benedict summed up his thoughts in a catechesis of August 2011: "Art is able to express and make visible the need for man to go beyond what is seen, it reveals the thirst and the quest of infinity. Moreover, it is like an open door towards infinity, to a beauty and a truth that goes beyond the ordinary. A piece of art can open the eyes of the mind and heart, prompting them upward". And he concluded encouraging: "Dear friends, I invite you to rediscover the importance of this pathway also for prayer, for our living relationship with God."
May this exhibition we celebrate today, sort of timeless response to the Pope's claim, help us put Light into the shadows that linger.
Adrian Gualdoni Basualdo
November 2012
In more advanced forms of social organization, pre-Christian cults claimed its artists that they represent idols and deities, and in this instance fit both tribal clusters and the top of the classical cultures.
The arrival of Christianity and the preaching of the Gospel provided the fullness of doctrine and spirituality, and required a vast imagery that could best serve the transmission of the message of God. The slow passing of time witnessed the growing ties that united art and its performers, responding to the spiritual needs of a world in transit to higher forms of life.
The spaces for devotion used stone as a support of the architectural language of the Romanesque and the Gothic. The Church consolidated with its orders the summits that art reached during the Renaissance. Reaching these highest levels of creativity did not crystallize the close link between artists and issues concerning the sacred, but this union was maintained throughout the ongoing process of evolution of the arts.
When in 1947, in a world devastated by the tragic epic of war, His Holiness Pius XII sanctioned the encyclical Mediator Dei, set very clear guidelines for the assimilation of modern art in the liturgy. In quick response to the papal mandate, that same year an association of artists was created in Buenos Aires, having the same name of the ecclesial letter. "Mediator Dei" -says one of its preliminary documents- is an institution founded to restore the art in Church, bringing contemporary artists and trying to preserve the pieces that constitute its heritage ".
Estudio Garrido Abogados, in this last exhibition of 2012, has brought together many of those Argentine artists who embodied with their works the spirit of the encyclical, as well as others who preceded them and others who today continue in this noble task. It has also established as a guideline for selecting the pieces a strict concept of Sacred Art, exclusively understood as that which could be subject to the devotion of the faithful, and not the simple manifestation of that devotion.
In that sense, scenes from the life of Christ, images of the Virgin Mary and some of the saints venerated by the Church, techniques and diverse forms and of expression, conform this exhibition in which, among others, include artists such as Fray Guillermo Butler, Aquiles Badi, Horacio Butler, Eugenio Daneri, Stephen Koek Koek, Jorge Larco, Mariette Lydis, José Luis Menghi and Francisco Vidal. Among contemporary sculptors we mention Walter Gavito and Antonio Pujía.
After speaking at various times of the "via pulchritudinis" (way of beauty), Pope Benedict summed up his thoughts in a catechesis of August 2011: "Art is able to express and make visible the need for man to go beyond what is seen, it reveals the thirst and the quest of infinity. Moreover, it is like an open door towards infinity, to a beauty and a truth that goes beyond the ordinary. A piece of art can open the eyes of the mind and heart, prompting them upward". And he concluded encouraging: "Dear friends, I invite you to rediscover the importance of this pathway also for prayer, for our living relationship with God."
May this exhibition we celebrate today, sort of timeless response to the Pope's claim, help us put Light into the shadows that linger.
Adrian Gualdoni Basualdo
November 2012
