Lot Essay
Pettoruti was barely 23 when he arrived in Florence with a scholarship from the province of Buenos Aires. With the young artist just settled in that city, chance had it that he became associated with Futurism. In 1913 he spent time with Martinetti, Boccioni, Carra and Russolo, and he also met Balla, the friendship with whom proved to be long-lasting.
In these years Pettoruti learned from the Cubists that form was not a fixed characteristic of the object, defined all at once and forever. The artist understood that everything is less visual than conceptual. He was convinced that the painter's mind is what imposes its own categories of space and time on perceived phenomena. This is manifest in Pensierosa (Pensive Woman, 1920), a canvas related to Cubism, where the displacements of forms and the disharmonies of some parts, hidden by the multiple perspective, indicate the search for simultaneity.
But the most intimate purpose of Pettoruti was to "make a solid art like that sought by Czanne". He found similar ideals in the Florentine masters of the Quattrocento whom he admired and studied, often times copying them with infinite patience. This orientation is explicit. On one occasion the artist wrote that "he did not see that Futurism made any of my aspirations its own". Painting, according to his viewpoint "was and continues to be construction and color".
El Morocho Maula is a painting that interprets the saga of the harlequins that Pettoruti depicted since the 1920's. In 1926 he had already completed the Joven arlequn (Young Harlequin), and a year later he signed the remarkable Arlequn that belonged to Alberto M. Candiotti. A decade later the artist worked on El Improvisador (The Improvisor, 1937), the great canvas with three masked Harlequins, a paradigmatic example of Argentine art, housed in the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires.
The interest in this iconographic motif persisted. In 1953 Pettoruti painted the small study, in half body, for the morocho and subsequently worked on the definitive canvas, in full body, of this enigmatic personage, El Morocho Maula representing his last harlequin.
The harlequin, the Arlecchino of the commedia dell'arte, is an icon repeated in XX century art: Picasso, Braque, Gris, and Derain have portrayed this figure on numerous occasions, in very varied scenes and attitudes. Pettoruti depicts them as wanderers and improvising musicians-perhaps payadores (the typical Argentine troubadors) who execute their melodies with accordion, guitar, mandolin or banjo.
El Morocho Maula's title evokes a character of the Ro de la Plata gaucho literature. The word maula is typical of the improvised poetry of the payadores. But the instrument that the musician plays is not a Creole guitar, but rather a banjo (or similar instrument). The mask does not cover his face, but is detached from one of its sides. The iconographic enigmas are many, and no doubt contribute to the richness of the sense of the work.
Jorge Lpez Anaya
Buenos Aires, March 1998
Translated by Dr. Wayne H. Finke
In these years Pettoruti learned from the Cubists that form was not a fixed characteristic of the object, defined all at once and forever. The artist understood that everything is less visual than conceptual. He was convinced that the painter's mind is what imposes its own categories of space and time on perceived phenomena. This is manifest in Pensierosa (Pensive Woman, 1920), a canvas related to Cubism, where the displacements of forms and the disharmonies of some parts, hidden by the multiple perspective, indicate the search for simultaneity.
But the most intimate purpose of Pettoruti was to "make a solid art like that sought by Czanne". He found similar ideals in the Florentine masters of the Quattrocento whom he admired and studied, often times copying them with infinite patience. This orientation is explicit. On one occasion the artist wrote that "he did not see that Futurism made any of my aspirations its own". Painting, according to his viewpoint "was and continues to be construction and color".
El Morocho Maula is a painting that interprets the saga of the harlequins that Pettoruti depicted since the 1920's. In 1926 he had already completed the Joven arlequn (Young Harlequin), and a year later he signed the remarkable Arlequn that belonged to Alberto M. Candiotti. A decade later the artist worked on El Improvisador (The Improvisor, 1937), the great canvas with three masked Harlequins, a paradigmatic example of Argentine art, housed in the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires.
The interest in this iconographic motif persisted. In 1953 Pettoruti painted the small study, in half body, for the morocho and subsequently worked on the definitive canvas, in full body, of this enigmatic personage, El Morocho Maula representing his last harlequin.
The harlequin, the Arlecchino of the commedia dell'arte, is an icon repeated in XX century art: Picasso, Braque, Gris, and Derain have portrayed this figure on numerous occasions, in very varied scenes and attitudes. Pettoruti depicts them as wanderers and improvising musicians-perhaps payadores (the typical Argentine troubadors) who execute their melodies with accordion, guitar, mandolin or banjo.
El Morocho Maula's title evokes a character of the Ro de la Plata gaucho literature. The word maula is typical of the improvised poetry of the payadores. But the instrument that the musician plays is not a Creole guitar, but rather a banjo (or similar instrument). The mask does not cover his face, but is detached from one of its sides. The iconographic enigmas are many, and no doubt contribute to the richness of the sense of the work.
Jorge Lpez Anaya
Buenos Aires, March 1998
Translated by Dr. Wayne H. Finke