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ARTnews, Diciembre 2003
Antonia Guzmán PRAXIS
In the preface to the catalogue for this show, titled “Migrations”. Antonia Guzmán writes about her grandfather’s migration, at the age of 14, from Italy to Argentina and the effect of this kind of move on inmigrants and their descendants. Her thoughts on such traumatic journeys inspired 36 dedicate and richly colored paintings, which often look like compositions by Paul Klee. Dreamlike visions, in a palette of aquamarine, burnt orange, and ochre, the works touchingly conveyed the agony of departure through the juxtaposition of geometric shapes, hieroglyphs, and sticklike anthropoid figures.
Guzmán’s figures run, leap, fall, or sit precariously on edges or inside of cubes. Clearly they are in trouble or in need. In I waited for you all night (2003), one of the figures flies above a pyramid of cubes, arms outstretched, while below, another croches in a square theat could be the cabiin of a ship sailing the seas. On the border is a house on its side-perhaps the unreachable other shore. Characteristically, this work looks like a stage set in its precise architectural dimensions, yet an emotional tension underlies every scene.
Unlike Guzmán’s other paintings, The One Who Leaves (2003) is not composed of cubes of various sizes but is, instead, filled with row upon row of triangular faces, whose suffering is conveyed by the three spare lines delineating their eyes and nose. ‘Three of the faces have fallen off their rows. Guzmán has taken cubism and constructivism into a new, more narrative dimension in works of intriguing beauty.
Valerie Gladstone
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