Uruguayan Master

His landscapes of a single lone ombu tree, with zinc-white rinsings of the moon, his gaucho dances at dusk in orange groves or tiled patios, his dames of the epoch of Rosas gossiping in red dresses on crimson sofas in scarlet damask rooms, his nocturnes of the old market or the environs of Malvin, his two wonderful paintings of the murder of Facundo Quiroga on the diligence, and above all the strange series of Negro customs, candombe dancers, wakes, the mongrels chasing the funerals on foot, the parades and festivals are an inexhaustible pageant of a rich past, the best of which are splendidly painted.

This is a description of the work of the late great Uruguayan painter Pedro Figari, one of whose pictures was on view last week at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art. Spatially speaking, Figari was only a single small item in a splendiferous show of the Museum's 224 new acquisitions of modern, Latin American art.* No institution has a finer collection of work from south of the border.

Dominated by Mexico, the exhibition had about 246 square feet of Muralists Diego Maria Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco alone. There were also many small drawings and lithographs by younger, lesser known Mexicans who revealed at least as much imagination and power of draftsmanship as their elder, more celebrated countrymen. With their elders, they shared modern Mexican art's preoccupation with violence and deformity, both inward and outward.

Bright Corner. Outside Mexico, the Latin American art tended to be less obsessed with horror. In one remote corner was tucked the Uruguayan Figari's Creole Dance, whose mood was as joyously vivid as its virtuoso coloring.

Pedro Figari, well known in the La Plata capitals and European art circles, almost unheard-of in North America* never had any academic training. Born in Uruguay in 1861 of Italian parentage, he studied law, traveled in Europe, served in the Montevideo Parliament, in 1900 became attorney for the Bank of the Republic.

In his late 50s he was profoundly affected by a spectacular trial in which he successfully defended a boy accused on circumstantial evidence of murder. After the case, Figari abandoned law, devoted the rest of his days to painting. In 1912, aged 51, he published a work on esthetics, El Arte, la Estetica y el Ideal.

In 1921 he had his first show, in Buenos Aires. During the following nine years he held 19 exhibitions in South America, Paris, Brussels, and London. Today his work hangs in the Luxembourg. Wrote French Critic Georges Pillement: "The charm of Figari is extraordinary. [He] will certainly remain one of the most marvelous colorists who has ever lived."

Though Figari made his home in Paris from 1925 to 1934, he continued to paint Uruguay. When the 77-year-old master died in Uruguay in 1938, he left some 4,000 paintings, excluding hundreds in Argentine collections. Owned by the Figari family, they are still stored away in the painter's native land.

*Gathered by Director Alfred H. Barr, Jr.; also by Lincoln Kirstein, the museum's consultant on Latin American art, who wrote the above comment on Figari. He is now in the Engineers Replacement Training Center, Fort Belvoir, Va.

*One Figari hangs in the Houston (Tex.) Museum of Fine Arts.

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