Lot 66: Torre

Roberto Aizenberg (Argentinian 1928-1996)
Torre
signed and dated 'R. Aizenberg, Paris 1981' inscribed and dated again 'TARQUINIA 1982' (on the reverse)
oil on canvas laid down on wood
35½ x 22 1/8 in. (90.2 x 56 cm.)
Painted in 1981-82.

Indianapolis, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Art of the Fantastic-Latin America 1920-1987 , June-September 1987, p. 127 (illustrated in color). This exhibition later traveled to New York, The Queens Museum, October-December, 1987; Miami, Center for the Fine Arts, January-March, 1988; Mexico City, Centro Cultural de Arte Contemporáneo, March-May, 1988.

Galería Vermeer, Buenos Aires.
Anon. sale, Christie's, New York, May 18-19, 1992, lot 205 (illustrated in color).
Acquired from the above by the present owner.

In 1950, at the age of 22, the Argentine artist Roberto Aizenberg left the study of architecture to take up painting. Those very studies about the construction of towers, buildings and edifices--would serve him well years later when he would obsessively take up the many stark but magical solitary structures, starting in the early 1950s and to the end of his life. These edifices resemble both sculptures and monuments and defy explanation and mystify us. His titles such as, Tower Destined for Meticulous Observations , 1963/1964 and others, such as Torre , 1982, hint at a psychological meaning and cultural symbolism. Partly influenced by the ideas of his teacher Juan Batlle Planas and the work of the Surrealists but also Pablo Picasso and Giorgio de Chirico, these compositions are sublime studies in geometry and abstraction as well.

Aizenberg once remarked: "To be a surrealist is to be born with a gift, to deeply feel--the impact of one's existence--to develop visionary virtues and through a long and patient labor of love, a constant questioning of our human existence." Indeed the artist found in geometry, a means to delve into the metaphysical--to finally arrive at a language of symbols that could express the spiritual.