Giulia Murace — Human, Natural, and Urban Landscapes of Rome at the Turn of the Twentieth Century in the Paintings of Rioplatense Artists

Between the late 19^th and the early 20^th century, many Argentine and Uruguayan artists travelled to, and settled in, Rome. There, they formed a network of strong relationships creating a Rioplatense colony that constituted an integration strategy of these peripheral artists with the rest of the Italian and international artistic community. This proposal aims to examine the Rioplatenses’ artistic production during their stays in the eternal city, in particular, artworks portraying the Roman landscape intended in a broader sense, and the connections with the production upon their return to the Río de la Plata. The landscape is understood in its natural and urban dimension, but also cultural and human. Rome and the countryside around it constituted a landscape stratified in time: the ancient ruins represented the glorious past and the inhabitants of the rural areas and their folklore were repositories of values ​​linked to classical antiquity; the virgin nature that resisted unaltered as industrialization advanced was suspended in an ahistorical time; the city in transformation was seeking to create a modern and international image and the other face of this urban transformation was the poverty and social injustices of the workers and peasants. In the Roman landscape, then, several temporalities coexist. The idea is to ask how the Argentine and Uruguayan artists faced them and how these experiences shaped their own conceptions of time and were projected in the Argentine and Uruguayan landscape painting. The goal is to reflect on how these artists from a peripheral geography positioned themselves in front of this temporal density and if that experience influenced the way of thinking the national art. In this regard, it could allow to discuss some broader concepts such as identity, modernity, nationalism, cosmopolitanism at the cross between migratory flows and artists’ journeys.

Giulia Murace is a doctoral fellow of the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Tecnológicas. She received her PhD in History at Universidad Nacional de San Martín in March 2022. Her doctoral thesis, titled “Rome from Rio de la Plata: Argentine and Uruguayan artists travelling (1890-1915)”, supervised by prof. Laura Malosetti Costa and co-supervised by Giovanna Capitelli, investigates the process of modernization of the artistic system in Buenos Aires and Montevideo and the creation of the Rioplatense colony in Rome with a decentered and transnational perspective. Previously, she studied Art History at Università della Calabria (BA 2009, MA 2011). She attended the Scuola di Specializzazione post-laurea in Beni Storico-Artistici at Università degli Studi di Siena (2012-2014). Currently, she is a coordinator in the research department of Escuela de Arte y Patrimonio (UNSAM). Since 2020, she has taught European art history (16^th to 18^th century) at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and the Universidad del Salvador. She was awarded research grants from the Argentine Ministry of Education, San Luca Academy in Rome, and the Getty Foundation. Her work has appeared in journals and books in Argentina and abroad.