Uruguayos (L) - Ruben Bello [Pintura, técnicas mixtas / Painting, Mixed media]

Ruben Bello Traverso was born in Montevideo, Uruguay on May 5, 1960.

After studying architecture and taking classes with Professor Lincoln Presno Hargain, and working with various techniques in the workshop of Gustavo Fernández Cabrera, he lived and worked in Venezuela from 1981 to 1994, later moving to the United States until 2017, when he returned to Uruguay.

The language of his work has been defined as a neo-constructivism of the School of the South, created by the master Torres-García.

It can be said that his work is a continuous search to get closer to the original, to the primitive, to the simple, to the absolute abstract and to a personal symbolism inherited from old continental cultures, without falling into the rupestrian.

He expresses what he feels, what he imagines and what he reasons, taking art as an element of denunciation and convinced that the artist must be committed to his time and to humanity.

After a trip to the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, where he takes notes and studies the Mayan symbology and writing (Tulum and Chichen Itza), he complements in part that personal search that is reflected in the subsequent plastic work.

Shirley Rebuffo: How was your first approach to art?

Ruben Bello: I have been drawing since I was 5 years old, but concretely, at the age of 14 I learned Papier Mache (all its techniques) and cartapesta (*). Since then I have been working on them.

SR: On the one hand, you state that you don't believe in the traditional schools of painting, but on the other hand you express yourself, in several of your works, with the language of the School of the South. Can you explain this apparent dichotomy?

RB: In fact, the School of the South was not a traditional school of art. It is enough to read Torres-Garcia's book "Structure" to understand how it sought to move away from the European schools. In my case, in painting and sculpture I am self-taught, marginal, outsider, whatever you call it, and although I had the opportunity to join workshops, I decided to remain free of direct manipulation. My approach to Constructive Universalism is coincidentally inevitable, first, because I have always been a restless observer of Montevideo, which led me to read a lot about the Constructive Universalism. In addition, as a high school student, life offered me the honor of visiting Manolita Piña, Torres-García's widow, at her home in Punta Gorda and also to meet some direct students of Taller, such as Jonio Montiel.

SR: The word as a journalist, the image as a visual artist. What can you express in one that you can't in the other?

RB: As a journalist I only worked in radio and only when I grew up. One of the programs dealt with important analytical issues and the other was a cultural program, where we disseminated and revived the work of continental cultural makers, many of whom we tried to relegate to collective oblivion. The difference is that, in journalism, all analysis is conditioned to a concrete, objective reality, while in creation, in this case painting, I believe that the subjective must prevail over the craft.

SR: You have chosen the School of the South palette to express yourself in your series "Oil in Bolivarian Venezuela". Does this have any symbolic connotation?

RB: The palette of the School of the South, which coincides, probably in a thoughtful, intentional way, with the so-called Original Colors, besides being my palette, has the weight of the ancestral colors of the Abya Yala (*). That was the idea, to reinforce the affinity of the ideals of the Revolutionary Process of Venezuela with the whole continent.

SR: Your palette is limited. Is there any intentional emotional or symbolic search in the choice of your color palette?

RB: Yes, there is. I only work with the four ancestral colors, the colors of the four cardinal points, the four colors of corn, the color of the underworld, of the four races.

SR: Your works can be read as "approximations to life", without being life. I read this when I see the material, maybe paper pulp (cellulose), maybe wood (cellulose). What is it like for you to work with the material?

RB: It has a lot to do with having been initiated in the form, in the molding and kneading of paper or sawdust.

SR: Your drawings have a disturbing aura with sensory paths, what is the reason for this sensation you generate?

RB: I work for myself, to express myself as a creator. Then, there are probably people who grasp or read correctly what I wanted to express. The vast majority of my works are related to what happens in our time, in the place where I was born and where I live at the moment of conception.

SR: What have your travels left you with?

RB: Traveling opens everything, head, spirit, tolerance, senses. Living in other different cultures is always a teaching, beyond the nostalgia you may or may not have. There was one trip in particular that was a total turning point: the first time I visited Mexico.

SR: The pandemic has broken exhibition plans, it has shaken the art sector in a silent earthquake. Anyway, you've done quite a bit of work. Tell me about this new series, what prompted you to do it?

RB: No doubt this took us all by surprise, and culture is perhaps the sector that has suffered the most. Something paradoxical, because it would be much more difficult for people to go through this pandemic without culture, be it music, cinema, reading, etc.

At the same time, we creators have had more time to think, rethink, feel, absorb everything, experiment, create, beyond the tragedy that the pandemic itself represents and what it meant for cultural workers economically, I believe that the creative act always knew how to bring light out of the shadows.

The Quarantine Series is about how human miseries can sprout in extreme situations, because we are educated under dark stigmas that encourage fear rather than reason, and individualism rather than the collective.

I am preparing a collective exhibition called "Encountering them", to be held at the end of 2021, that is, there are always spaces to express.

SR: Do you think this will lead to a change in the perception of the world, and with it, contemporary creation?

RB: The world has been a dangerous place for a long time, because it is in the wrong hands. We are constantly bombarded with references and models that destroy us as a society. The pandemic brought out the lows of many, but luckily, the wonders of so many others and many creators are being part of the good side of history, once again....

SR: What other projects do you have in the future?

RB: As far as my work is concerned, to give classes in plastic creation.