Alberto Trabucco: The mysterious life of the painter who never sold a work and returns in an exhibition

Has anyone ever seen Alberto Trabucco ? Some residents of Quinta Trabucco , in Vicente López , claim to have seen him or received a work by the artist as payment for some work on the beautiful property we visited one rainy day. However, the truth is that almost no one knows what led him to live like a recluse and not sell a single work of art during his lifetime.

"I am an artist, I was born an artist, I live as an artist, and I will die as an artist. I am a born impressionist ; I don't paint what I see, but what I feel," he told a newspaper in 1988, in the only interview he ever gave.

The Alberto Trabucco exhibition returns to the Quinta , on the aforementioned property, until October 4th and is unmissable . Not only for the paintings on display, which are in the custody of the National Academy of Fine Arts, but because it is always fascinating to delve into an unknown collection , to observe the strokes, motifs and materials of an artist, and try to understand what led him to live as he chose and what he sought to convey with his art. Trabucco did not participate in artistic soirees, had no relationships with other creators of his generation and lived far from the cultural movement of his time.

The exhibition is also being shown to commemorate the 120th anniversary of the municipality of Vicente López , and at the initiative of the Founders and Pioneers Association of that Buenos Aires district, adjacent to the City of Buenos Aires, together with the municipal Secretariat of Culture.

The eighteen works on display engage in dialogue with the environment in which they were created . The enigmatic Trabucco rarely strayed from the central setting of his paintings: the quinta, the house where he lived with his family and which was later donated to the municipality of Vicente López. Today, Quinta Trabucco is an iconic space for local residents, hosting cultural programs.

When Alberto Trabucco's 100th birthday was celebrated in 1999, Clarín published an article highlighting a unique anecdote about the artist's personality: “One day, at a gathering of artists, the art critic and historian José León Pagano asked if anyone knew the artist everyone was talking about but no one had ever seen. There was no response. Recounted time and again by Pagano himself, the anecdote became an essential biographical and bibliographical reference .”

The article added that in the decisive 1930s, Trabucco emerged as a harbinger of modernity along with Emilio Pettoruti, Lino Enea Spilimbergo, Antonio Berni, Alfredo Guttero, Eugenio Daneri, and Horacio Butler, often participating in group exhibitions that marked innovative and controversial directions in Argentine art. His paintings won recognition, such as the Cecilia Grierson Prize in 1934. But the artist continued to live in ostracism. It was Pagano who also glimpsed Trabucco's original work early on, as reflected in his 1940 treatise, *The Art of Argentines* . "A work that seems to have sought, like the symbolic poets, not the thing in itself (the finished work), but its mystery," he concluded.

This is how we can understand the importance of nature in the artist's paintings. We have to go back in time to understand that in Trabucco's most prolific years (between the 1930s and 1970s; he died in the early 1990s), there was no Pan-American Highway or fast-track vehicle access, nor had the Vicente López district expanded significantly in terms of buildings. Florida, where Quinta Trabucco is located, was almost countryside, pure nature , with many trees, which in smaller numbers continue to exist today amidst so much concrete. At the end of the 1950s, the artist settled permanently at Quinta Trabucco.

Although he was born in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of San Nicolás, Alberto Trabucco had his studio on the family estate in Vicente López, which retains the atmosphere of a bygone era. He kept his paintings in the basement of the mansion, next to the house's pantry. There is romanticism and nostalgia in the colors and strokes of the paintings on display.

An example of the mystery he sought and wrapped his life in is that he never held solo exhibitions, but he did participate in national salons and competitions for five decades . His sensitivity for the arts was nurtured by his mother. He was only 20 years old when he first entered the National Salon of Fine Arts.

In addition to the Grierson Prize, he won the Premio Estímulo del Salón Nacional in 1930, 1931, and 1935, and the Grand Prize of the Sesquicentennial of Independence in 1966. Between 1955 and 1958, he participated in exhibitions in Barcelona, ​​the United States, São Paulo, and Brussels.

In the exhibition's introductory text, Sergio Baur, president of the National Academy of Fine Arts, expresses his gratitude for the legacy of "a unique artist and generous patron , whose vision and generosity continue to enrich our institutional and cultural work. The Foundation that bears his name, created in 1991 from his will, constitutes one of the noblest expressions of commitment to Argentine art." Despite having a life partner who managed his artistic endeavors, Trabucco decided to bequeath his work to the Academy.

After emphasizing the artist's decision not to exhibit his works individually, "privileging an intimate dialogue with creation over the circuits of consecration," Baur points out the permanence of his artistic presence thanks to the close connection between the Trabucco Foundation and the Academy.

The national body has promoted contemporary art through various initiatives, such as the National Scholarship for research projects in the visual arts, especially the Alberto J. Trabucco Acquisition Award, established in 1993 as a continuation of the historic Palanza Award.

Recognition is highly valued in a country whose cultural and artistic circles have seen their resources dwindle, given that each year artists are recognized in various disciplines, such as painting, engraving, sculpture, drawing, and other media , whose works are then donated to public museums. This is no small feat, considering that all the efforts of the associations of friends are insufficient in a market priced in dollars.

When contacted, a collector who preferred not to be named told us that " Trabucco's work occasionally appears at auction, but it doesn't have a constant market value . There are collectors who seek him out because they admire him as an artist. He wasn't an Impressionist in the absolute sense, but he did have very diverse influences and a very personal style."

And here we come to his paintings, which engage in a dialogue with the nature that served as his backdrop. In shades of green and pastel, sometimes gray like the sky that hung over Quinta Trabucco on the day of our visit, the paintings are as lively as they are melancholic. One could even say that the nostalgia that emerges in some of them is like an anticipation that everything he enjoyed in his mansion, with time and progress, would be destined to disappear.

There are human and animal figures that are both evident and transparent, and the small monkeys seen in one or another painting were not a product of his imagination, but actually existed on that wonderful estate, which even had its own little forest.

“It's rare for works to appear at auction,” the Founders and Pioneers Association tells us. “When we were preparing the exhibition , very elderly neighbors would show up who had works by Trabucco, gifts from him. The work wasn't sold either during his lifetime or after his death,” they recall. Only one of them knew someone who was a follower of the artist and bought one of his works. But it's generally speculated that the artist used to pay those who carried out maintenance work on the Vicente López mansion with his work.

Adriano Dell'Orco, a local scholar of Trabucco's work and biography, tells Clarín : "His paintings present us with characters from a lost era. Children, women, and animals, some in idyllic form; others, part of the flora and fauna that accompanied him. The reason for Alberto's ostracism is not explicit, but inferred. He was the youngest and only son, with two older sisters. An absent father, dedicated to business, and a strong-willed mother and grandmother who moved the entire family. Furthermore, he did not want to follow the family's lead or dedicate himself to business. He wanted to paint."

A year ago, Dell'Orco began researching Trabucco's history to highlight its value , because the artist's family was also instrumental in the construction of Florida, in the Vicente López district, and the rebel artist bequeathed to the Argentines the National Prize awarded by the Academy.

We asked the researcher about the market value the artist's work might have today: "Its market value was relative then and now, depending on the painting. One of his award-winning paintings is worth several tens of thousands of dollars, while most of them don't fetch high sums. His true value lies in his self-taught work, his experimentation, a pioneering explorer of paths and techniques. Alberto lived in a time halfway between the classical and the avant-garde . Many of his works must have been a source of inspiration for others we consider great artists today."

Trabucco always declared himself an Impressionist, but he wasn't . "His figurative painting was an excuse. His most elaborate works feature explorations with sand, burlap, stone, earth, fabric, and eggshell, where the subject and figures are barely rendered, almost out of necessity," Dell'Orco notes, "but they are wrapped in backgrounds and draperies that are almost abstract paintings in themselves."

And he adds that "in his evolution, painting, materials, color, and textures gave him back much more than what he saw. He used to repeat that he painted what he felt. Despite having rebelled against the family to which he belonged, he never rebelled against the context, the time in which he lived. He couldn't, he didn't want to, he didn't know how to let go of the figures, and when that time came, he was already old."

The exhibition was curated and staged by Mariana Castagnino, Mariana Gallegos del Santo, and Victoria Lopresto, and produced by the Vicente López Department of Culture. Guided tours are available on Fridays and Saturdays. Only two weekends remain.

Alberto Trabucco returns to the country house, until October 4th at Quinta Trabucco (Carlos Francisco Melo 3050), from Tuesday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.