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The Palacio de Hacienda had the privilege of hosting her works on the occasion of the placement of the Bust of Eva Duarte in the Exhibition Hall on the second floor of the Ministry. For this reason, her works have embellished this space with the inauguration of the “Homage to Eva” exhibition, generating a synergy between all those present and her works through her palette and nuances, generating an atmosphere of high visual commitment worthy of the artist’s hand

1-Hello Maurice! How are you? Tell me a little about your beginnings, which artistic activity was born first in you since your first distinctions were in the field of goldsmithing.

He was like any boy who likes to draw and paint and do things with his hands, accompanied by family encouragement in a home of musicians and actors. An aunt tells that particular anecdote: “she was no more than 5 or 6 years old and she came home laden with gifts, she arrived by surprise, it was Christmas and the little tree had gifts for everyone, except her because no one was expecting her. To everyone’s excitement and surprise at this situation, she says I let go of his hands and after a while came back with a drawing. It was a Christmas tree with a big red package at her feet.

– THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE DRAWING!! LOOK EVERYONE, (exclaimed) MAURO HAS MADE A DRAWING!…
. – NO… NO… (I hastened to answer pulling a fold of her skirt) THE DRAWING IS NOT THE GIFT, THE GIFT IS INSIDE THE RED PACKAGE IN THE DRAWING!!…”
Perhaps this is how the construction of those who choose to build stories and say through images takes shape,

2- How was your artistic training? Where did you study? What teachers have you had?

I cannot say that there is only one place or reference, many important masters mark the influence of my work, you see something of those masters in them, in their first steps with drawing and drawing at the Raggio school studying goldsmithing. The most important leap was the entrance to the Prilidiano Pueyrredón art school, on the other hand and in parallel, I was first influenced by the surrealists, the classics and figurative, the ones we learned from the European colonizing history, shortly after the excellent masters and friends in and out of art schools, also for the effervescence of my generation, a reunion with our cultures and when the agony of dictatorship came, other previously forbidden approaches began. In rebellion against that classicist and academic discourse, there is an approach to other aesthetics and to Latin American and Argentine artists, some of the great masters I got to know personally.

By maturing that aesthetic broth, it is completed with the idea of ​​cultural and identity emancipation without denying the past, that formation and the influence of migrants.

3-How does your inspiration flow in front of the frame when you face a new job? Do you have facilities?

My work is essentially figurative, I became interested in a trend that in the 60s and 70s was called “NEW FIGURATION”, or in some cases “SYNTHETIC FIGURATION” (alluding to a process of image synthesis, to say with little) but my training as a goldsmith has meant that the decorative elements are in my work, they always appear in one way or another, these elements give character, matter, constitute directions and spatial references within the planes and directions that are in the work, although they are not evident, and refer to an abstract space where the figure plays, a human figure that will be present throughout the course of my work.

Once, in an exhibition I do in Santa Rosa, La Pampa. I had an encounter with Miguel de la Cruz, an “impressive” writer with his existentialist vision of the world, born literally in the middle of the Pampas desert, where he inhabits only the dividing line between dry land and open sky. That time we talked a lot about aesthetics and in the end he said to me: “Of course, we have two different spatial views and we compose our stories from those views, … my horizon is circular” I returned to Bs.As. With that sentence stuck in my head, realizing that I was facing something that I hadn’t seen yet, already at home, looking out the window, I could understand something from those words, and what I was doing almost automatically, I understood that the my horizon is not circular, that my horizon was composed of a multiplicity of planes, juxtaposed, superimposed, interpenetrating each other, that this was my universe, my true landscape, from a Buenos Aires where it is impossible to see a continuous horizon, where the clippings of partition walls and facades combine with minimal pieces of sky in orthogonals and construction lines. That is my work and without knowing it I represented it in my drawings and paintings, instead Miguel was the center of the compass that stopped to draw that solitude of the Pampiano desert with words.

The possibility of seeing these differences brings us closer to maturing without prejudice to the artistic productions of other territories, with other landscapes and other plastic solutions according to that landscape.

4-Your drawings are out of the traditional with respect to the interposed surface, tell me a bit about how you develop your technique on those rigid plates you work on.

I like playing with materials, I’ve tried many different ones, I get along very well with charcoal on the plate, it allows me to tell the stories that interest me, ink and colored pencils on paper allow me another ease and always the materiality of the painting, in my case the acrylic satisfies the restlessness and the relative immediacy in the solution of a job.

In the case of these charcoal drawings, I intervene on a wooden plate, with four or five coats of synthetic white undercoat for wood, then I work on successive layers of charcoal, fixing the work in each layer, which are usually six or seven depending on the job or whatever the image asks me to do. I’m a bit obsessive, with the sandpaper I sharpen the charcoals over and over again working flat or with the edge of these… with the powder I give flat touches and reinforcements, I redraw and if necessary I resort to sgraffito.

5-You have had the opportunity to exhibit your works a lot, in various places. What experience do you take away from all that movement?

He has sometimes been selected or awarded in different art competitions since he was in school and as an art student. This is how I have had experiences of exhibiting and exchanging with other artists and their works, regardless of all this, when you exhibit your work you expose yourself and it is always a challenge, not only to try to give the best in terms of quality and presentation, in visual details of an exhibition and of each work, also to build a story as a whole. It’s extremely important for artists to show their work, to have that exchange with the viewer that doesn’t just mean selling a work. There is no success or failure in that journey, it is about learning, (from the creator and the observer) growth that is felt long after finishing a champion.

6-How do you feel about your teaching activity?

Being a teacher means growing with others, it’s a beautiful task, but it requires a lot of commitment, especially if you want to be part of building a new and better subject and society. I retired three years ago as a teacher and director of a very large school, with the conviction that teaching always takes place inside and outside the classroom, one cannot separate from that, with the image, the plastic productions and cultural management there is also a didactic task that I hope to continue.

We look forward to seeing you in the next episode to continue exploring this wonderful artistic career…
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