Eighteen years elapsed between the day a folder labeled with the name of Emilia Gutiérrez (1928–2003) came into the hands of curator Rafael Cippolini and the materialization of this extensive exhibition. The delay is understandable. As fascinating as the artist’s paintings may be, they are also difficult to digest: Indifferent alike to the twentieth century’s avant-gardes and to the social conflicts of an Argentina on the verge of dictatorship, her brand of realism does not seek the complicity of the gaze, but rather plunges into her interior world.
Gutiérrez had seven solo exhibitions during her lifetime, yet it was only in 2004, a year after her death, that a book on her work was published. She was nicknamed “La flamenca,” in reference to her obsessive study of artists such as Bosch and Van Eyck, as well as to some Flemish-leaning features of her work, including her palette, her fondness for small-format oil paintings, the incisive gestures of her characters, and the strange atmosphere that surrounds her scenes.
Gutiérrez’s is a candid, accessible type of realism, appealing to a wider sensibility despite a relatively limited set of resources. She sites her compositions on flat surfaces in subtle variations of greens, blues, and ochers, with the unwavering confidence of someone who always paints the same picture. Several of her paintings depict women in a world plagued by grotesque, dim, and at times even hostile creatures. In Loly, 1974, a faint glimmer of desire haunts the eyes of an extravagantly clothed woman seated at a bar, where, judging by her expression and posture, she seems to have at last found refuge.
Translated from Spanish by Michele Faguet.
— M.S. Dansey