Old Stones and Cellulose

With the height of the tourist season now finished and the fall weather still sunny and pleasant, we decide to take a day trip to Colonia del Sacramento, located 177 kilometers northwest of Montevideo   The bus ride takes two and a half hours, following a route that passes through a factory zone in the industrial east end of the city and gradually becomes scenic as green hills dotted with dairy farms replace billowing smokestacks.

Porton de Campo, the gate to the old town, built in 1745

At noon we arrive in Colonia del Sacramento, the oldest city in Uruguay, settled in 1680 by the Portugese governor of Rio de Janeiro, Manuel Lobo. For the early inhabitants, this area represented a strategic bit of coastline on the Rio de la Plata, located near the mouth of the Parana River and directly opposite the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires.  Prosperous Colonia, an active port and center of contraband trading, changed hands many times in the course of history, in military disputes between the Portugese and Spanish. The Spanish eventually succeeding in making claim to the area following a siege in 1777.

Today, the Barrio Historico is classified as a UNESCO World Heritage site.  Once you cross the wooden drawbridge and go through the massive stone Porton de Campo, the rough cobblestone streets lead to a central plaza surrounded by a living architectural museum that's often compared to old Lisbon.

Cobblestone street next to the ramparts lead to the waterfront

Early Portugese colonial house on Calle de los Suspiros

Patina on a stucco wall

Ruins of the 17th c. convent of San Francisco, and the lighthouse, completed in 1857

View of Rio de la Plata from Colonia

Fishing on the rocky shore

We visit several museums in Colonia - the Portugese Museum, the Tile Museum, the Indigenous Museum - all within walking distance of the Plaza Mayor.  The collections are small with precious groupings of ceramics, weaponry, furniture and maps displayed in buildings that were once private houses.   Wandering around the old town, we find a sharp contrast between Montevideo streets (dirty, noisy, full of traffic and graffiti) and those in Colonia del Sacramento (clean, quiet, well-maintained, pedestrian-friendly.)  

At the top of De Portugal, the Basilica de Sanctisimo  Sacramento, 1808

The church interior - stark white, undecorated

Virgen de Treinte y Tres displayed inside the church

Just opposite the old church, we stop at a restaurant  that has tables set out on the sidewalk.  With roasted chicken and green salad, we enjoy a glass of G Sauvignon Gris, a wine from Casa Filgueira bodega.  

Uruguayan Sauvignon Gris - a crisp patio wine 

Waiter at the Viejo Barrio restaurant

Ceramics in an antique shop

1717 Fine Arts Cafe features black and white photography

The beautiful terrace and courtyard at 1717 provide a relaxing spot for ...

espresso coffee!

Typical streetscape in Colonia, with stone construction

 On the way back to Montevideo, we notice that almost every farm in the area surrounding Colonia is marked with a "For Sale" sign.   A friend who owns a small apple farm offers an explanation as to what is happening in rural communities.   The government approval of a cellulose plant, a project funded by a conglomerate of Chilean, Finnish and Swedish companies operating as Montes del Plata de Uruguay, has caused the sudden glut of farms offered for sale.  At 1.9 billion U.S. dollars, this is the largest foreign investment that the country has ever seen. The plant and industrial port will be located at Punta Pereira near Conchillas, within a free trade zone on the bank of Rio de la Plata, just north of Colonia del Sacramento.  To provide enough trees for continuous production of pulp and paper, Montes del Plata is intent on acquiring property for planting forests - in fact, they already own 250,000 hectares of land in Uruguay!  And they're not alone: UPM-Kymmene from Finland owns 225,000 hectares, and the U.S. company Weyerhauser owns 140,000 hectares.    The large-scale foreign ownership of prime land will mean that smaller food producers are squeezed out of operation, just like our apple orchard friend, who is seriously considering a forestry company's attractive offer to purchase.  Goodbye to his annual harvest of Granny Smith, hello to fast-growing eucalyptus and pine.

Ad running in the national newspaper, "El Pais"

One hopes that the heritage sites in Uruguay will be preserved, with each stone intact for future generations to appreciate.  One hopes that industrial growth will not destroy the sustainable, small-scale farms that feed the population. One hopes that the environment will remain pristine, that water resources will be protected, that soil quality will be maintained, that the air will stay clean.  One hopes that Uruguay, with its rich human history and natural resources, will remain distinctly Uruguayan.

Saez and Sprezzatura

Carlos Federico Saez, "Retrato de Juan Carlos Munoz" 1899, oil on canvas

 The portrait shows a male figure seated in an armchair, relaxed, leaning back, totally at ease with himself and the world, but nevertheless alert, exuding the quiet confidence of a refined gentleman.  When I saw this painting the word "sprezzatura" came to mind.  It's an Italian term that I learned while studying Renaissance art history at university, one word in the argot of academics that I hadn't thought about for a long time.   First used by Baldassare Castiglione in the "Book of the Courtier" published in 1528, sprezzatura is defined by the author as "a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought."

Detail of the subject

The studied carelessness of the sitter is matched by the artist's style in this work.  At close range, the brushwork is loose and uneven, and in some places, patches of canvas have been left blank. The back of the chair tends to dissolve into the scumbled background, while the two carved finials act as bold parentheses for the subject's head.  The off-centre composition allows blank space to surround the figure, an openness that breathes and glows, creating an aura of afternoon repose. The way the man's right hand has been merely suggested, rather than defined, demonstrates the bravura of an artist who is leaning towards abstraction.  A casual squiggly line along the armrest is enough; we can see a foreshortened hand that's moving ever so slightly.

Detail of the right hand

The portrait  was painted by Carlos Federico Saez, and is part of an exhibition celebrating the Bicentennial of Uruguay at Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales near Parque Rodo.   I had never seen work by Saez before, but the row of seven paintings on display at the gallery reveals a virtuoso; an artist capable of capturing character with graceful drawing and economical, painterly means. His approach to portraiture recalls canvases of the same era by John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler, and Edgar Degas.

Carlos Federico Saez

The biography of Saez is as sketchy and loosely rendered as the artist's own drawings.  He was born in 1878 in Mercedes, Uruguay.  At the age of 14 he earned a scholarship to study art in Italy, under the direction of Daniel Munoz, a writer and politician employed as Uruguayan ambassador in Rome.  Saez stayed in Europe for seven years and worked with the Macchaioli painters, a group who practised plein air painting in the Tuscan countryside.   The end of his artistic career came too soon - in 1900 Saez became ill and returned to Uruguay.  He died in Montevideo in 1901, age 22,  with an oeuvre of 100 drawings and 70 canvases as his legacy.

To see more works by Carlos Federico Saez, visit this site.  

Installation,  Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales

Around Parque Rodo

The holiday season has been full of events and we've been busy enjoying the city's diverse offerings. Here's a sampling of some of the interesting things we've seen in our neighbourhood during the month of December.

Prior to Christmas, the Teatro Verano presented an evening of "Ballet under the Stars" featuring the Ballet Nacional Sodre directed by Julio Bocca.  The outdoor venue is a fully-equipped bandshell style stage with stadium seating carved into a hill in Parque Rodo.  The evening's program included Act II of Swan Lake, the Pas de Deux of the Black Swan, both beautifully performed with classical precision.  The breeze ruffled white feathers on the dancers' tutus as a storm blew over, but a minor rainshower did nothing to dampen the spirits of the audience.  I love the fact that this type of casual plein air venue and the reasonable ticket price (130 pesos) attract viewersto a performance that they might never take in at the more formal Teatro Solis or Sodre. The acceptable behaviour code is more relaxed for an audience seated in a large amphitheatre, a setting where it's perfectly okay to leave your seat to go and buy a Coke at the concession partway through the performance.  There were lots of families in attendance, teenagers, seniors and babies, too.  Everyone had a great time and by the end of the evening the sponsors had raised a considerable amount of money for a good cause, to benefit Montevideo's pediatric hospital Pereira Rossell.

Bird by Oiva Toikka

Another highlight of this star-studded season was an exhibition called "Northern Stars: 20th century Finnish Design" presented at the Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales located at the south end of the park at the corner of Av. Tomas Giribaldi.  This show, curated by the Museum of Design in Helsinki,  included stunning textiles, ceramics, glass and furniture, objects marked by the ultra-sleek styling, nature-inspired forms and bright colours of the Nordic aesthetic.  The installation featured large swaths of vivid Marimekko fabrics hung as room dividers in a stark white gallery, framing small groupings of exquisite clothing, chairs and kitchenware.  If you avoided looking out the windows at the palm trees in the park, you had the sensation of being in a Scandinavian interior.  I coveted the bird designed by Oiva Toikka, which cleverly suggested feathers by incorporating undulating veins of coloured glass.

Fabric design by Sanna Annukka 2008, Marimekko

Outside the hushed atmosphere of the art museum a bustling Christmas Market was going on in Parque Rodo, with stalls showcasing the work of Uruguayan artisans.  Jewellery, candles, silk scarves, fine wool sweaters, leather work and wooden objects were displayed and sold.  Often this type of show has low-level, homemade goods, but the quality of the work was excellent, as this craft fair was a juried show.

 I bought a beautiful Jugart wooden box for 360 pesos, secured with a  puzzle piece locking system in the shape of a bird.  This petite treasure chest has a pleasing smooth surface and exudes a sweet sandalwood fragrance when opened.

On Sunday afternoons during the summer months, Parque Rodo is a non-stop fiesta, throbbing with the resounding heartbeat of Montevideo - candombe drumming.  A form of music that originated in Africa, candombe was introduced by the black male population (read slaves) in Uruguay and appropriated by whites who made the art popular.  Read more about the history of drumming here. Today the troupes are mixed, with both black and white, male and female participants.  

The audience joins in as the hypnotic beat goes on for hours, alternating tempo and rhythm.  Women get up and dance a form of samba with fast, fancy footwork.  This is street ballet, with no strict rules or choreography, just a spontaneous celebration of joy.  As the sun goes down, the party continues....