You are in the temporary exhibition Destino Argentina (“Destination Argentina”). This part of the audio tour is dedicated to one of the exhibition’s main artists, the Austrian artist Gertrudis Chale.

Chale was born in Vienna in 1898. Austrian by birth, nomad in spirit, Argentine at heart, from her arrival in Argentina in 1934 she was welcomed as a painter of the Andean world and in Latin American artistic and cultural movements.

Before her time in Argentina, life and the need to flee took her from Vienna to Munich and from there to Geneva. She later lived for some years in Paris and Spain.

After a classical training, she was initially attracted to the cubism movement, which she encountered in Paris, but it was to be in Spain where she decided to focus entirely on painting and started developing her own language. In the work she produced in the Balearic Islands, her language was based on pastel colours contrasting with strong primary colours, and on scenes and landscapes full of elements referring to the culture and the surroundings. Her attraction to the rural world, its inhabitants and original customs also began here. She would later develop these interests in greater depth in Latin America.

Upon her arrival in Buenos Aires, Chale mixed with members of the Argentine capital’s art scene, forming particularly close links to movements outside of the city, especially those from north-west Argentina.

Chale was deeply concerned about inequality and the marginalisation of decentralised communities and avant-garde movements. She therefore directed her gaze to the centre of the country, far from the cities and progressive classes, to look at an Argentina inhabited by indigenous descendants of the pre-Hispanic world, and at their customs, environments, and ways of life.

Her language moved away from narrative and anecdotal elements. She used a palette with predominantly primary colours, ochres and shades of grey, which became more austere as she explored the Andean altiplano. This can be seen in works like Paisaje con figuras (“Landscape with Figures”) and Figuras (“Figures”), both from 1945.

Chale also took part in the growing muralist movement that emerged in Buenos Aires between 1940 and 1950, led by Spilimbergo and Castagnino. One of her last works was a mural at the Santa Fe Gallery in Buenos Aires in 1954, entitled Mercado y fiesta (“Market and Festivity”). We can see the preparatory drawing for this work in Figuras (“Figures”), which is part of this exhibition.

Gertrudis Chale died at a young age in a plane crash on the 23rd of April 1954, as she was flying from Mendoza to Buenos Aires.

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  Paisaje con figuras, 1946

  Landscape with Figures
  Gertrudis Chale
  Oil on wood
  55 x 40 cm

  Ralli Gestión

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  Figuras, 1945

  Figures
  Gertrudis Chale
  Tempera on cardboard
  62 x 40 cm

  Ralli Gestión

Silvia Sánchez Ruiz
Curator