Inés García Zuberbühler
Inés García Zuberbühler
By Abel Posse
Inés García Zuberbühler has devoted years to her art. She studied technique and theory in England, Florence, Belgium and Greece. However, her individual character and her openness to creative cosmopolitanism make her intensely Argentinean. Her spirit, her passion, synthesize apparent opposites in a way similar to that of the great poet Saint-John Perse; the sky and the sea of his Caribbean childhood integrate with the culture of Europe; like the poet, the artist unites two, and perhaps more, worlds.
Art is always about valour. In a decadent society and time, the artist enrolls in the universe of art as a final statement, and "takes orders” in an open religion with no orthodoxy other than surrender. Beyond sound, shape, words or colours, artists surrender to their art. They opt for the supreme in difficult times (as Borges rightly said, in truth all times are bad to be alive in) and achieve renewal.
Inés García Zuberbühler is able to express her dramatic vision in her series of charcoal drawings of the ¨gomeros¨, those gigantic trees of Buenos Aires, in which Severo Sarduy thought he found gods that ¨porteños¨, the people of Buenos Aires, could not see. These huge trees, which are together strong and weak, have their roots in the soil, but, as Rilke says, their arms reaching to the skies. The drawing and the strong use of light and shade, create a powerful, transcendent image. Her charcoals enhance the vibrant tragedy of the visual theme. Ines’s "gomeros" recall those colossal roots which dominate, surround and embrace, without devouring them, the Buddhist temples of Angkor in Cambodia; a perpetual symbiosis of life and death; perhaps the triumph of Nature over the illusion of carved stone.
This aesthetic vision is true and deep; form, colour and matter are harmoniously and joyfully joined together. The artist tells us that it is in the brilliant light of Greece that she prepares her chalk; she throws it with a rhythmic, dancing movement onto the paper. This is then fixed, somewhat by accident and by the laws of physics. Then it is the turn of watercolour and even gold, which combined with the fluidity of water conveys happiness and fullness of colour, which is another aspect of the artist’s being. A splendid and harmonious result is achieved in "Symphonies" and "Seasons".
As a writer, it gives me pleasure to affirm that Inés comes close to the word in her calligraphy. Plato, Gibran, Rilke and Vieira da Silva. Strange and unusual interdisciplinary solution, which breaks down meaningless artistic barriers, thanks to the essential concept of art as a spiritual expression of the human condition.
