More Painty Fingers, More Fileteados

31 January 2020

On Sunday, I went on a tour of the San Telmo area, one of the oldest parts of Buenos Aires.  This neighborhood also has tons of fileteado signs, as well as a church full of fileteado saints!  So it made for fascinating walking.


Our very small group (another traveller, our guide, and me) met at what is THE oldest bar in all of BA.  Café Tortoni is billed as such, but this other place, El Federal, is actually older.  It was originally more of a grocery or supply store with a bar, but it has become only a bar/café over the years.  We had the usual Argentinian breakfast of two medialunas (the slightly glazed small croissants) and café con leche.  El Federal has really good medialunas - a little lighter and more crispy than our hotels have had!
 
One of the very cool things about El Federal is that every menu has a cover that is individually painted with a fileteado design!  They may be a bit worn, but they are all lovely! 

So after our introductions and brekkie - sorry, wrong country, desayunos - we had a little time to look around El Federal.  In the back room they had a gorgeous hutch or built in cupboard or something, with fileteado all along the top edge, and full of bottles of whatever.  And of course a portrait of Che Guevara, one of the most famous Argentinians and revered hero of the revolution.  (Well, maybe more of revered revolutionary hero, since he really didn't lead a revolution in Argentina.)  Anyway, his picture is everywhere, and he seems to be more beloved than Peron, who had questionable ties to Nazi Germany, I've been told.

So, we headed off on our tour.  I of course lagged behind, taking photos of every gorgeous sign painted in the fileteado style.

Our first stop, though, was outside the home of Martiniano Arce, one of the most famous current fileteadores in Buenos Aires.  His sign even says that his is THE fileteadore of Buenos Aires.  Our guide, Georgina, told us that people often knock on his door and want to meet him, which he does not appreciate.  So he now has a reputation as a grumpy old man.  He probably isn't, he most likely just doesn't like random strangers knocking on his door all the time.  I can't blame him for that!  So we were polite, admired his sign, and wandered onward.

We passed a lovely pink house, rather narrow, with a fileteado decorated door.  The number above the door, 1887, is not the address but rather the year the house was built.  And my photo shows only about 3/4 of the door, because I wanted a close up of this design.  Love it!!!  And remember the three flowers in the center, they will appear again later.  They seem to be a common design or symbol in fileteado.

We walked on to the Church of San Telmo.  (San Telmo was a renowned preacher in Spain in the 12-13th centuries.  His full name was Pedro Gonzalez Telmo, and he focused his work on sailors.  So he eventually became the saint of sailors in Spain and Portugal.  And in English, he'd be Saint Elmo.)

Our friend Martiniano Arce, THE fileteadore of Buenos Aires, painted several fileteadore for the Church of San Telmo.  One of the most recent features the current pope, Papa Francisco as he is called here.  (And HE is probably the current most well-known Argentinian.)  I think you can really see how fabulous Arce's style and technique actually is when you look at this image - wonderful shading, beautifully symmetrical curves, and the banner with the Pope's name looks like it's unfurling off the panel!!!  Just incredible work!!!  As one of my friends commented, it looks as if the paint is really thick.  In reality, it's just the trick of the painter, using strong shading and highlights, which makes the paint look as if it's lifting off the background.  It's all in the skill of the artist!

There were several other beautiful fileteado paintings in the church, and I think Arce painted all of them.  I believe he painted the Lady of Guadelupe, because the swans on the bottom look like the birds on the bottom of the Pope's picture.  He definitely painted the Madonna and Child, you can see his signature in the lower right corner.

The church itself was interesting, but it was Sunday morning and a few people were in church.  So I took a photo from the entrance, just to get a broad view.
 

One of the things I noticed as we began our walk is that many of the streets in the San Telmo barrio (neighbor-hood) are stone bricks!  Each one seemed to be a different color or different kind of rock, and they were all roughly carved into brick shapes and laid in a curving pattern, almost like the interlocking curves of a clamshell quilt!  It made for rough rides in cars, and rather uneven walking when crossing the streets, but it really was fascinating to see these really really old roads!

As we walked, Georgina told us about the history of fileteado.  No one knows for sure, but the best anyone remembers is that a few recent Italian immigrants, just teenagers, were hired to help with the donkey and oxcarts that were used to deliver goods to various stores around the city.  These adolescents decided to decorate a few of the carts one night, and the owner was very angry about this.  But people around town and at the different businesses that received the goods were very complimentary about the decorated carts, and the owner changed his mind and had all his carts painted by these teens.  Soon, other cart owners had their carts painted because they also wanted happy customers, and fileteado was born.  (The word for a cultural form or tradition that develops in a location is autochthonous, I found out - who knew?  It means an art form, could be music or visual art or whatever, that grew up in a location.  It wasn't an art brought by immigrants, and it didn't originate with the indigenous people living there.  It just spontaneously happened.  I haven't been able to find out of jazz would be considered autochthonous, or if perhaps jazz is considered a hybrid of various musical styles that then became a music all its own.  Anyway, I digress.)

Some people say that fileteado can be seen as a visual art representation of tango.  We talked a bit about that, and no one is really sure.  I was thinking that some of the sweeping curves and curls might trace the path of tango dancers, who dance in almost a figure eight pattern.  Or perhaps the link is that the man is almost at the center, controlling the direction of the dance, while the woman adds flourishes and creates the beauty of tango, similar to the curls and twirls of the fileteado.  No one knows for sure, just as no one is absolutely sure who started the fileteado tradition.  But it's interesting to speculate.

We saw what is probably the oldest house still standing in San Telmo and maybe all of Buenos Aires.  It was built around 1670-something, I don't remember exactly.  It's painted a dusty pink, though a prettier pink than Casa Rosada, and the front door was open so we could peek inside.  Georgina talked with the man who is living there.  He isn't the owner, more of a tenant and caretaker.  

One house was incredible, with amazing fileteado.  The door is obvious.  But then, what looks like architectural details around the door and windows isn't really carved stone or cement at all - it's painted!  Trompe l'oeil, to use the French term - literally, "deceive the eye."  Wow, I'm just blown away by this whole façade - and yes, using that word with both its meanings!

We walked through both the street market and then the building of the Mercado de San Telmo.  The street market is only on Sundays, but the mercado is open every day.  Again, great fileteado.

Our next destination was the Asociacion de Fileteadores, where I had been on Wednesday.  Yes, we had time to paint another fileteado.  Our instructor, Cristian, explained a bit about the designs used in fileteado (mostly in Spanish with a little English, so the other traveller who spoke English very well did some translating for me). 

Fileteado designs begin with circles - the flowers are circular, the curves and flourishes are circular or semi-circular.  And then he sketched on the board the design that we'd be painting that day.

Again, he draw on the small wooden boards painted with acrylic paint.  He drew in chalk, because he said the white pencil can sometimes resist the paint as we work.  Cristian explained how to use the brush, since Paola, the other person in our group, had never painted fileteado.  (Not that Georgina nor I were experts by any means!)

So, we happily painted our little fileteados.

You can see the three flower cluster at the top, a very traditional part of fileteado design.  Below, we have two curling partial circles, almost but not quite forming a figure eight.  And one of the flourishes has a bit if the acanthus leaf in it.  All the components of fileteado.  

Cristian had us begin with the center of the flowers - not where I personally would begin as an artist, but oh well, why not.  We then painted the flower petals, vaguely heart-shaped.  (Como un corazon.)  

Next the curls and leaves, and then we worked on the shading and highlights.  And, well, Cristian explained that the light is at a 45 degree angle at the upper right corner, so that the shadows and shading would be on the opposite side, or from a 45 degree angle off the upper left corner.  His example and suggestions felt off to me, having learned a slightly different way of painting the flowers with José.  I played with the shadow and light, and Cristian said to just have fun with it.  Which to me meant okay, you aren't doing it right but do whatever you want.  Teacher speak.

We moved on to a border, and that actually went fairly well with the single brush stroke and using the flat shape of the brush to form the points and curves.  More shadow and highlights, and then it was done.  Cristian asked if we wanted him to do the intricate green curlicues in the empty space, and all of us liked that.

But I wasn't satisfied with my flowers, especially the red flower in the center.  What can I say, I'm an artist and a perfectionist, and that flower really was bothering me.  I came back to the hotel and looked at it again.  I thought about it in the wee hours of the night when I woke up.  And I knew I just had to fix it.  It got to the point where I couldn't wait until I had paint and brushes, it had to be done before we left BA.  (Yeah, just a little compulsive.)

I walked down to the studio on Monday, but it was closed.  Had a little correspondence with the association via Facebook (using Google translate), and it was settled I should go back on Wednesday at 6 PM, when Cristian was supposed to be there.

Instead, I found my friend José, and C.C., the apprentice who had been working at the studio on my first visit/lesson.  They greeted me like old friends, and I explained to José that I didn't like my flowers.  I showed him, and he agreed that they weren't good and needed help.  So he set me up with paint, letting me do my own mixing because we artists are fussy about colors.  I did some of the repairs, but tried leaving the lavender flowers as they were.  Nope, not good enough for José who apparently is as much or more of a perfectionist than I am!  And he added his signature tiny dots of pollen to the center of the flowers.

SO much happier with my repaired fileteado, and I like the fact that it ended up being a collaboration between myself and my two instructors!  I even have a few of José's fingerprints in there because like all true artists, he does a bit of blending with his fingers.  I guess he also feels better with paint on those fingers!

I have two lovely paintings and many wonderful memories as souvenirs of our month in Buenos Aires.  

We currently are packed and waiting to head over to the cruise ship dock, to board our ship.  We're heading to parts south, all the way to Antarctica!  Penguins!!!!

We most likely won't have wifi on our cruise, but I'll write blogs and add photos as we travel.  Once we are back on land again, I'll post everything.

So there will be a three week lag, and then a deluge of blog posts!

More photos, and then we're out.