Jenny Eagle gives her post-impression of Museo de Bellas Artes
More than just a collection of wonderful artwork, the Museo de Ballas Artes has a fascinating history belonging to a rich Argentine family in the 19th Century.
Emiliano Guinazu and his wife, Narciza Araujo bought, what was then, a derelict mansion, surrounded by 95 hectares of vineyards and fruit trees, in the province of Lujan de Cuyo in 1889.On the outside, the summer house is not particularly aesthetically pleasing, but the gardens are beautiful with old trees, roses, sculptures and cascading vines.
At the time, the building was empty and in need of repair so the family set about reconstructing the house and added a small swimming pool inside one of the rooms. They hired an artist to paint two murals inside the hallway and in the room that housed the indoor pool. That artist was Fernando Fader, the inspiration for the museum.Originally born in France, Fader is considered Argentine because his family relocated to Mendoza in 1884 when he was three. After studying art in Germany and Holland, Fader returned to Mendoza in 1905. His father, Carlos Fader was a German naval engineer and his mother was the French viscountess Celia de Bonneval. Carlos was an important power industrialist in Mendoza because his company installed the first gas pipeline and pipeline to the city. Thanks to the social status of the two families at the time, Guiñazú met Fernando and invited him to work for him.
It was whilst painting the walls of this retreat between 1906 and 1915 that Fernando fell in love with Guiñazú’s daughter, Adela, and the couple married with a lavish garden party at the grounds of the house. Unfortunately, when Faders own father passed away in 1905 he was left with the burden of settling all the company debts which he could not afford to do and so he and his family claimed bankruptcy.
Fader was known as a Post-impressionist painter at a time when local critics were still partial to Impressionism. In 1906 at Costa Salon in Buenos Aires Fader finally got a break. Here his work was exhibited for the first time and received massive success. Following his good fortune, he and his family moved to Buenos Aires and Fader spent the next ten years painting, drawing and touring art galleries through Spain and Germany.
However in 1916, at the age of 33, Fader was diagnosed with tuberculosis and his whirlwind life came to a halt. To aid his heath the Faders moved to Ischilín in Cordoba for a drier climate. During this time, his work centred on more Impressionistic paintings, many of which romantically portrayed farm life; but by 1921 his condition deteriorated with chronic asthma. On Fader's 50 th birthday, the Buenos Aires community of art galleries organized a 1932 retrospective of 119 works in his honor but he was too ill to attend.Two years later Fader died in Cordoba in 1935. He had three children with Adela, two boys, Raul and Caesar, and a daughter, Adelita.
After Guinazu's death in 1945, his widow donated the Mendoza building to the local government who turned it into a Fine Arts Museum and it opened to the public in 1951. The museum houses four collections belonging to foreign artists, Argentine painters, local artists and the Fernando Fader Collection. It exhibits 1,100 works of local and national authors. Works created by Fader include 43 paintings and drawings, seven murals and two sculptures.
Museum Information
The museum is open Tuesday to Friday 9am-6.30pm and Saturday to Sunday from 3pm-7.30pm. The easiest way to get to Lujan de Cuyo by bus is to catch the Number 1/19 from Avenue Rioja near Garibaldi. The journey takes about 25 minutes.
