Eugenio Cutica: "An artist is a child who has survived"

Eugenio Cutica always wears black.High, gray, with light and deep eyes, with dark clothes its bearing is even more imposing.

Does this predilection obey the color is for the work?The answer is immediate: “No, this is my uniform.When one gives to work completely, he tries to simplify things in daily life ”.Thus, Cutica buys your black shirts on the Internet, three or four dozen at a time.However, there is a moment of creation that breaks with that dynamic.When the picture is about to end, in the last layer, he puts on a suit.Black too, but formal and elegant.“In the last ten percent of the work, the difference between something alive and something dead is made.At that moment I dress in a suit, because it is a party, ”he says.You can say many things from Eugenio Cutica.But there must be few who so faithfully illustrate their way of living art.

Although installed in New York since 1996, its passion usually takes it through different points of the globe.And these days, his commitment brought him to Buenos Aires for a few months.Here he has just presented four murals for the new subway station of Flores, San Pedrito, where he recreated the figures of Alfonsina Storni, Florencio Escardó, Hugo del Carril and Baldomero Fernández Moreno.“It is a great joy that artists are included in urban projects.I like the idea of giving synergy to the subway route, the concept of going down to the underground and emerging again, ”he says, in his huge workshop in the central Park de Barracas building.

News: officially lives in the United States, but in Buenos Aires your workshop is very armed ...

Eugenio Cotica: I don't know where I live.Art is an activity that takes you to other dimensions, and that is why you have to train in the power of detachment.I don't remember what poet he said it, but when one enters that path, all rivers, mountains, houses and palaces are one.I live a little like that, nothing and everything belongs to me at the same time.

News: He had the epiphany that he was going to be an artist at age seven.How was your childhood from then on?

Cuttica: I was a bit autistic.I didn't want to communicate with anyone because I was in the best world.But they forced me to play with other boys, who were very loud, I didn't like and preferred my silence;I felt comfortable and friend of myself.And I promised not to leave that place for the rest of my life.

News: The world usually plots against that bubble your own, how much did it cost to maintain that decision?

Cuttica: A lot.Everything is against that mental state.That's why I think an artist is a child who has survived.They are all artists, but at some point on the way they resign themselves to stop being.And I had to fight with everyone.My life was that of a warrior with a brush in one hand and a sword in the other.

News: When did you start painting seriously?

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Cuttica: My first method of methodical painting was at age 14.But before I was early and virtuous in the drawing.At 16 he probably drew as entry (n.From R: French painter Dominique Ento).Then I had to learn to do it wrong, because virtue is misleading, and the skilled can take you by a frivolous path.The skilled thing belongs to the ego zone.

News: But is not talent?

Cuttica: the Greeks used a currency called like this.The sophists were paid, some philosophers who defended people in the trials, talented.So a person who had talent had a lot of money.That is strong, and I think that somehow persists today.You have to differentiate the skill of the mastery.To be an artist, study, work and mastery is required.But ability is something else.One can have the ability to play the guitar putting it on the back, and that does not make better music.

News: If he knew so clearly that he wanted to be an artist, why did he first studied architecture?

Cutics: Architecture gave me a way of thought, a methodology.He taught me to find the meaning of what I do, not to paint just because I like it, but to find the purpose and message.

News: And if you don't look just for pleasure, why is a picture of yours then?

Cuttica: An American writer argues that the gods are sent to the gods.They are flying, already painted, looking for a painter where to perch.And if one is not attentive, waiting for them to come, the paintings pass and find another.I am in that attitude of permanent alert, then I only have to copy what enters and go through me.

News: having that deep connection, can it happen anyway that a picture ends and is not what I wanted?

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Cuttica: I passed me at the beginning.Now the effectiveness is one hundred percent.But it's 40 years to try to be a professional.

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News: In this experience that the picture is the one who chooses it, how do you find paintings on commission, like Alejandro Gravier and Valeria Mazza?

Cuttica: I do them with a lot of love and affection.They are two lovely people.But it was a great challenge to make their portraits, because I told them that they should be like a work more.And now I am working on the inner look, so the idea was to frame them there.There is a way in which the world sees them, and a different one, which is really.That's why it was difficult.Achieving the resemblance in another attitude induced to be felt that they were not the same people.I finally think I did it.For now, Alejandro was delighted.

News: Is it very demanding with yourself?

Cuttica: Yes, totally rushed and strict.That brings me many problems with others, because sometimes they transfer those demands to others.But art does not come from friendism or being compassionate.Comes from a very big demand and never satisfied.I know that it is very heavy for others, I apologize for that ...

News: He has mentioned that his father was equally demanding and for him nothing was enough.

Cuttica: He was worse ... I told my mother to give me kisses when I slept so that I don't realize.I never praised me about something I painted.But when he died, I met his friends who told me that I lived talking about how well I painted.If one survives that, then you can endure anything.Today I think that everything I did was thanks to him, because art is very hard, it is not for soft people.

News: still, enjoy what it does?

Cuttica: one does not dedicate this because it gives happiness, but because it has no alternative.This comes with incredible moments of joy, yes, because that existential loneliness that everyone feels palpia through art, and it is a blessing.But a series of miseries are rigged from which one cannot take away.Making art is jumping to the abyss.Like someone who walks on a steel cable and knows that the slightest error can fall and die.And keep walking the same.It is very special, but at the same time very difficult.There comes a time when the only place of happiness is the workshop, the rest is absolutely bland.

News: And how does your environment take it?

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Cuttica: It's hard ... I have the same woman 31 years ago, Ruth.He is divine, but he has suffered a lot, because artists are complex beings.And above today my two children are artists: Lautaro is a painter and Franco sculptor.

News: When could you really live in your art?

Cuttica: only after 45 years.Now I am doing very well, but first I had a clothing company, an ice cream chain in New York ... although I never stopped painting.I read that an artist has to do double task, because he must do everything a normal person does and, in addition, his artist's job.I assumed that.

News: Why did I live in New York?

Cuttica: Argentina is a controversial country, very strange.I was angry at Menem's time.But now the country is miming me and seduced again.It is incredible what I receive from the Argentines.I know that many colleagues are having bad times, but I am inside a miracle.I don't like how the country is general, because I can't forget malnutrition in the country of food.I can't abstract from that idea, it's as if there were no clocks in Switzerland ... but a very interesting artistic awareness is being awakened.

News: Do you buy art from other artists?

Cuttica: Always.I believe in recirculating energy.So I separate ten percent of the money from what I sell and buy young art.It's a bit of appreciating.

News: In your work there are two very marked periods, which you called "Scream" and "Silence".And in the last there is a lot of peace.So, that art that takes it completely still, despite that placidity?

Cuttica: What happens is that before the "shout" dominated me, and now I dominate it.I evolved: now silence is always with me.As much as it is surrounded by noise, inside I keep an axis of stillness.

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News: Is there life outside the atelier?

Cuttica: Yes.Like another fanaticism, for example, I really like ancient cars.But I think that collecting has a lot to do with art.Because it is an act of love, all car collectors lose money, and they still do it.It's love of beauty.And that is art.

By Vicky Guazzone

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