Title: Un horizonte vertical
Description: "Cities, like dreams, are built of desires and fears," wrote Ítalo Calvino. The metamorphoses of a city have always been at the center of cultural,  political and ideological debates and discussions. Buenos Aires was not the exception. At the beginning of the 20th century, its changes could be read in terms of evolution and progress or as destabilizing elements of the current systems and values. Towards the Centennial, its urban landscape was the theme chosen by various artists. So, nationalism and cosmopolitanism were the terms that marked the artistic tensions of the time. The position of the nationalists yearned to preserve certain traditions by reversing the passage of time and adopting the "types and customs" of the countryside, and this was represented by names such as Fernando Fader, Cesáreo B. de Quirós and writers such as Manuel Gálvez and Leopoldo Lugones. Another was the intention of figures such as Emilio Pettorutti, Alfredo Guttero, Horacio Butler, Alberto Prebisch or Jorge Luis Borges, who considered that to modernize art the fundamental condition was the existence of an avant-garde in accordance with the image of a modern and cosmopolitan Buenos Aires. While some celebrated the transformations and progress of the incipient industrialization, others denounced the social problems caused by the rapid growth of the metropolis. The problem was the construction of a tradition and the revision of a historical past that legitimized the two terms of this duality. These convictions took their toll on a wide spectrum of intellectuals, from Martin Malharro's utopian anarchism to Ricardo Rojas' Hispano-indigenousism, because the challenge lay in finding in the speed of change the stable characters of a nation that was just beginning to consolidate itself. The researcher Catalina Fara, Doctor in History and Theory of the Arts, faces this fascinating tale of mutations and disputes to weave in A vertical horizon that plot of fears and desires that somehow built the landscape of the Buenos Aires we know.
Subjects: Landscapes in art, Cities and towns in art, Argentine Art, Pictorial works, In art
Places: Argentina, Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires (Argentina)
Time periods: 20th century