Natalie D’Arbeloff y el mural del hotel Guarani,1962
Natalie’s post SELF BUBBLE modestly links to an article about her in a Paraguan magazine. I say “modestly”: not only is it in Spanish, it doesn’t allow its text to be copied so it could be put into Google Translate. It was fun bypassing this restriction (I can tell you how, if you’re interested). Anyhow, here it is, in a translation untouched by human hand.
This beautiful note from the teacher and researcher Amalia Ruiz Díaz brings us the reunion with the artist Natalie D’Arbeloff and the story of her contributions to Paraguayan visual arts.
The mural is an artistic discipline that always refers us to a culture whose codes the artist, as a visionary, transmits, while recounting the events in the environment. And since the mural is generally made on large facades or walls, it becomes a perennial cultural link that proclaims traditions, customs and events that move, inserting itself to the core.
We know that, in addition to Asunción, the murals are displayed in various localities in the interior of our country, several of them made by renowned artists, some of whom are no longer present today, and others who continue to work on new techniques, whose work requires a special look at this primitive artistic expression.
In addition to accessing her autobiography, in which her professional life is clearly appreciated, it caused me great emotion to connect with the artist herself, receiving from the very source all the pertinent data and information, as well as her gentleness and simplicity, which allow us to feel her presence from a distance, recalling her warm memories of our red land, after an absence of more than 50 years. According to the stories that she herself chooses from her biography and sends me, in 1962 the directors of the IPS (Social Welfare Institute) of Asunción called a competition for the realization of a mural in the modern premises of the Hotel Guaraní. Next, what Natalie tells us about it is transcribed, through her digital communication.
I read details of the contest in a news item and later I visited the Hotel Guaraní to get an idea of the place and the space where the mural should be installed. My idea was to create a work in harmony with the modern architecture of the Hotel – a figurative mural would not have been suitable. I made several drawings and models, also of other ideas, and sent them. In September 1961 I received the news that I had won the award for the mural. I did the work in January and February 1962. You can see in one of the photos I have posted on Facebook that my mural was at the corner of a terrace where a circular staircase led to another floor. From that terrace you could see the pool below. The IPS must have photos of the building as it was at that time. Perhaps you could also find Asunción newspapers about the IPS contest that I won. My design was based on an abstract painting I had made, painted from life, translating an apple and the space around it into vertical blocks of color. I felt that the same design would work well in that environment on a greatly enlarged scale and in muted tones rather than the bright hues of paint. The plan was to divide the design into individual blocks to be cast into cement, colored, and then assembled one by one on site. My budget for this task was, as usual, very underrated and I hadn’t bargained for the gigantic physical effort involved, no matter the mess. With the help of Reg and a loyal friend, I cast and colored about 70 large concrete blocks in our backyard, working through December and January, the hottest time of the year at this latitude. The mural was finished and installed in early February and I was satisfied by the end, the effort involved was not obvious. It was outdoors, on a sheltered terrace by the pool, with a spiral staircase that snaked upward. Sometimes I wonder if the Hotel Guaraní still exists or if my “apple” slices have long ago bit the dust where they came from.
Asked what other murals she made during her stay in Asunción in the 1960s, Natalie responds:
In 1960, a mural in the house of Zivota and Bianca Melamed in Asunción. There is always the mural in this house, where this couple’s daughter Sandra Melamed now lives. In 1961, a mural for the office of Pan Air, a travel agency. In 1961, a screen / mural for Point IV, the American organization that was in Asunción.
(On this point, I spoke with Mr. Raúl Melamed, Sandra’s brother, who confirmed the existence of the mural. As for the mural in the Parafina building at Punto Cuatro —Point IV—, it was made in panels, which did not satisfy fully to the author). In 1961, she exhibited at the VI Bienal de Sáo Paulo, Brazil, in the General Room, the works The passenger truck and Arroyo Guazú. The Paraguayan artists who also participated in that biennial were Olga Blinder, Carlos Colombino, Laura Márquez, Guillermo Ketterer, Pedro Di Lascio, Hermann Guggiari and Edith Jiménez.
I really like Natalie’s mural! Also I’m quite keen to know how you copied uncopyable text.
OK: (1) use a snipping tool to take screenshots of the online text. (2) save as .jpg (3) open https://www.onlineocr.net/ and follow its 3 steps (4) copy the resultant text. Note that you can specify the input language, e.g. Spanish in the above case, so that the program makes intelligent guesses and preserves accents etc.