Testimonials of Identity. Collazo Collection. At the Las Lilas Museum in San Antonio de Areco.

The architecture of the room, with bare bricks and wooden cobblestone floors, dialogues with a stripped-down and effective setting. Photography: Hilario.

Another view of the room with a close-up of whips. Photography: Hilario.

The indigenous airs are located in this sector of the room. Photography: Hilario.

And in the showcases, too, the identity cry of a silverware with special features. Photography: Hilario.

This time the museum surprises us with an original staging of the Collazo collection, formed especially by three areas of interest, all referring to silverware: viceroyalty, Creole and indigenous, including as such, the pieces used in the ethnographic complex "pampa" and the araucanas.


In the catalog that accompanies the exhibition, Oscar Collazo recounts that his “collection began with a gift my grandmother gave me: an incense burner that her great-great-grandfather had ordered to be made with Martínez [1]. This incense burner was passed from hand to hand, from generation to generation until, when I turned 50, they gave it to me as a gift. The singularity of its history is that the collection responds to a very solid aesthetic criterion, far from a plain interest of accumulation; "the differences in style make this collection -says its owner- a dialogue between the different ways of expressing an art".


We see in the museum room an important selection of pampa pieces, many collected by Alfredo Anchorena, who chose Oscar Collazo to take the testimony of his collection, alluding in this idea to said element in a relay race, where each participant hands it over to the next and so on. In the catalogue, we return to it, Oscar thanks Tina, the daughter of that collector with his field in the province of La Pampa, for having allowed him to continue in contact with that world, and he acknowledges it: «when I am in front of a piece pampa I feel that I am in the presence of the Indian who used it». In the same way, the Creole imprint between the equipment of the implement and the gaucho's clothing, place it in the natural setting of our rider.


Works of a religious nature and for civil use; spurs, stirrups, bridles, reins, bridles, sureties, whips, harrows, knives, mates, jugs... and the feminine trousseau of the native Pampas and Araucanians, are true testimonies of identity and mastery of a trade. Just over a hundred and a half pieces dialogue across time and geographic space. Some identified by their author's mark and the majority, born in those anonymous hands that were tanned with a hammer blow, replicating an inherited and jealously preserved aesthetic feeling.


The visit to the museum will also allow you to be moved by the originals by Florencio Molina Campos, painted to illustrate the famous almanacs of the Alpargatas firm, together with different personal objects that were part of his daily life. The museum's collection also includes paintings by Luis J. Medrano, the temperas that illustrated those almanacs in 1946 and 1947, and the watercolors and drawings by Jorge D. Campos, a costumbrista painter.


Located on Calle Moreno 279 in San Antonio de Areco, the museum has the following days and visiting hours: Thursday to Sunday and holidays, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Ticket cost. Adults: $1300. Groups: $1200. Students/Teachers: $1150. Retirees: $1000. Free of charge: Children under 12 years of age and people with disabilities together with a companion.


The exhibition will remain open until Sunday June 11, inclusive.


Note:

1. The “Martínez” punch is one of the oldest identified in the 19th century in Buenos Aires, on very rare occasions, applied together with the local brand, “Bs. Ace.". A habit that we have only noticed in this author and in Cándido Silva, another of the great silversmiths of the time.


* Special for Hilario. 




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