"Eduardo Martinez Bonati:Homecoming" at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Santiago

Written by Marcelo Herreros Saturday, 30 July 2011 21:16

Santiago, Chile.- The Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (National Museum of Fine Arts) in Santiago, Chile is showing "Eduardo Martinez Bonati: Homecoming" until May 22nd 2011. Containing oil paintings and watercolors produced during the artist's exile, this is the first major solo exhibition of Bonati's 'exile' work to be held in Chile since he returned to the country in 2005 ("Requiem" an earlier exhibtion featured his recent work). To celebrate Bonati's return from exile, a series of exhibitions are planned at the National museum of Fine Arts. This, the first one, concentrates on works created between 1978 and 1986, alongside some recent works, drawings and a video. The title of the exhibition references Bonati's pre-exile period, when he worked as a professor of engraving at the University of Chile's School of Arts on the nearby Forest Park campus, now home to the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Since his return in 2005, Bonati has exhibited his works only once. This exhibition will show for the first time, 45 oil paintings and watercolors made between 1978 and 1986. In these works the artist uses humor as a way to cope with separation from his homeland and as a testament to events happening in his homeland. As a counterpoint to these older works, the exhibition will present a series of works from 2010, inspired by the artists friendship with the psychologist Erich Fromm, these works present a very different facet. 'Homecoming' also includes the cartoon series 'Hello, hello,' which was created using notepads during telephone conversations. These will be displayed on the walls, unframed, in the manner of a collage. In addition, the exhibition presents the video 'Pácaro' created from Bonati's drawings, the online works of his son Diego Martínez Bonati and with music by Christian Perez, Ivan Aedo and Nicolas Lascar. The video's title refers to his grandmother Genoese Pierre Martini, who was unable to correctly pronounce the word "Pájaro" (bird in Spanish).





Eduardo Martínez Bonati was born in 1930 and studied at the School of Arts at the University of Chile and the State University of Iowa in the United States. In 1959 he won the Fulbright Scholarship and Guggenheim Fellowships in 1964 and 1968. In 1967 he won the First Prize in the CRAV Painting Competition. In 1955 he was appointed professor of the department of engraving at the University of Chile, a post he held until 1975. He was part of the 'Sign Group', along with Jose Balmes, Gracia Barrios, Álvaro Pérez, and Roser Bru among others. This group were representative of the social and spiritual changes experienced by the country at that time and tackled social issues in Chile head-on, through their art. In 1982 he was appointed professor of visual arts at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain, in 1983 and 1984 he was coordinator of the current art workshops at the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, where he resided from 1975. In his early work, Martínez Bonati was a figurative painter, later as a member of the 'Sign Group' he produced cubism influenced works. In the late '60s and early '70s, he worked in public art in the urban environment, including concrete works at INACAP, Nuclear Research Center in La Reina, Santiago and the Agronomy auditorium at the University of Chile, glass mosaic mural in Santa Lucía de Santiago, wooden wall plaque in the Diego Portales Building and triptych on canvas mural at the United Nations CIFCA in Madrid, Spain.

The National Museum of Fine Arts in Santiago de Chile was founded on September 18, 1880, originally under the name of the National Museum of Paintings. In 1887 the government acquired the building known as the Parthenon, and the National Museum Paintings moved to that location and was renamed the Museum of Fine Arts. In 1901, the government called for the architectural competition for the construction project of the Museum and School of Fine Arts. Chilean architect Emilio Jequier was selected to design the new building. After the construction of the Palace of Fine Arts, the museum and school were officially opened with a great International Exposition on September 21, 1910, an act embedded in the celebrations of the centenary of Chilean independence. The Palace of Fine Arts, is neoclassical, heavily reinforced with Art Nouveau details of structural and architectural touches. The glass dome that crowns the central hall of the museum was designed and built in Belgium. On December 30, 1976, the building of the Museum of Fine Arts was declared a National Monument. The permanent collection is organized around collections of Chilean painting, sculpture and prints, Spanish painting, the Dutch Golden Age, Italian paintings and drawings of the XV-XVII centuries, African sculpture and the photography collection.

Visit the museum's website at ...  www.dibam.cl/bellas_artes

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