2023-09-24 08:40:00
Nap times were always complicated hours in Patagonia. If it wasn’t because of the cold or heat, it was because of the wind. The thing was that they didn’t go out into the street. Because in addition to the cold, the heat, the wind or whatever was happening out there, at that time our old people were sleeping. And what could you do then during those handful of hours without cable, computer, cell phone or internet? In the mid-70s, in a house in upper Neuquén with a fence on the threshold, Martín chose to draw.
Year 2023, not far from that house, Martín continues drawing, although he no longer needs those mysterious hours of the nap to do so. Excitedly, he says that he is about to travel to Buenos Aires to paint a building that is about to be inaugurated. He will print his colorful graphic universe, the same one that for years has beautified the city where he grew up.
Asterix, the Normans and the Neuquén fence
Martín Villalba (Cipolletti, 1972) is a trained artist, “a gallery creature who (has) won the street,” he will say of himself in an extensive dialogue with Río Negro. A seasoned artist, here, there and beyond too. And, why not put it this way, also a consecrated artist, in one of the meanings of the term: dedicating something with great efficiency and ardour to a certain purpose. But art is for Martín an end, a means, everything.
From school 125 in Alto Neuquén to the ENET and from there to the Graphic Design degree at the UBA, but only for a while because when he discovered -literally- the Prilidiano Pueyrredón National School of Fine Arts he knew that everything he was looking for was there. When he finished, he went to London where he attended a bronze sculpture seminar at Central Saint Martins, the art school from which Stella McCartney (yes, Paul’s daughter), the musician Jarvis Cocker and the designer John Galliano graduated. However, Martín Villalba is considered a secret project of his aunt Ali.
I am the result of a little talent and enormous effort. “I am the result of my aunt and naps.”
Martin Villalba
Aunt Alicia lived in a central mansion in the city of Cipolletti that, like almost all central mansions, no longer exists. There, at 5 or 6 years old, Martín discovered art: Picasso, Dalí and Miró, also Goya and Velázquez, Soldi, Castagnino, Berni, Spilimbergo and the New Argentine Figuration. All that was in that house. “I wasn’t trained but I was very curious. He traveled a lot, especially to Mexico, and he brought me colors, a lot of turquoise, which always fascinated me, that’s why I use it a lot. There weren’t those colors here.”
“I always had a lot of knowledge of art. My aunt had Bauhaus style furniture, she explained all that to me. It was a luxury, really. She didn’t do art, but she liked it a lot. She told me about her travels and what she saw, about having gone to Florence and having seen a Michelangelo… it turns out that I was the only one who listened to her (laughs). She trained me a lot. I was a street kid like everyone else at that time, I played ball all the time, but I had that extra thing that was my aunt Ali, her house and all the art that was there. I am the result of a little talent and enormous effort. “I am the result of my aunt and naps.” (laughs)
“I create characters that exist in my universe, I am sketching my characters all the time. The Tipit@s, who have gained so much empathy in the public, I had relegated them.
Martin Villalba
“At naptime, since they didn’t let us go out to play because my mother wanted to rest, I drew,” Martín recalls. “There I began to draw some lines that continue to this day, I began by making a half-potato-faced man like the one in the Pink Panther, I copied Patoruzú, Asterix… My father had given me ‘Asterix and the Normans’ and when I saw the first painting I said Wow! It is a divine painting, it shows the entire village, the postman with the marble letters, it is very good. And I spent my naps copying and drawing.”
Martín discovered that there was a career called Graphic Design by chance, when he saw an English classmate draw a rabbit. How did you do it? he asked her. “I’m a graphic designer,” he replied. That’s what he told his parents that he wanted to be or at least study. His engineer father was convinced that his son would be one too, but no. In 1991 he traveled to Buenos Aires to study Graphic Design at the UBA. A couple of years later, in the room of a friend’s girlfriend, he discovered that there was something called Fine Arts.
One afternoon, Martín accompanied his friend to his girlfriend’s house. When they entered the girl’s room, he saw the place all overtaken and was fascinated. What do you do? He asked her. I study Fine Arts, she replied. “No one had told me it existed, not even my aunt Ali,” Martín laughs.
I love being working there live, people pass by and see you work, there is a very nice dialogue with the passerby that the atelier or an art gallery does not have.”
Martin Villalba
In the mid-90s, he moved to Prilidiano Pueyrredón, today the National University of the Arts, and completed his training. There he began to create his creative and aesthetic universe that he continued in London until, in the early 2000s, he returned to Buenos Aires first and then to Neuquén. Returning to the city where he grew up and with a son on the way, Martín Villalba reinvented himself.
By then, he was already a prolific artist who had learned to make a living from art. “I’m good at managing,” he admits. His work circulates around the world, especially after his stay in London. But the artist as we know him began here, in Neuquén. His work is made up of characters that inhabit graphic universes displayed throughout the city of Neuquén, in public and private spaces, businesses and private homes, on public roads, schools, hospitals, libraries and health centers. Also in cities of the Alto Valle, San Martín de los Andes, Zapala, Cutral Co, Bahía Blanca, City of Buenos Aires and cities in the province of Buenos Aires.
The creatures of the Villalba Universe
“I create characters that exist in my universe, I am sketching my characters all the time. The Tipit@s, who have gained so much empathy in the public, I had relegated them. There are many who are born and fight from the bottom until they earn a place, often because of the public who discovers them and begins to ask for it. But I dialogue a lot with my characters.” Those universes he refers to are usually murals, his favorite space. There, multiple characters coexist, some bigger, some smaller, that’s what he means when he says that some fight it from the bottom.
The Outlaw Rabbit, Harlequino, the already famous Tipit@s, Sombrerudo, Zorriperricone, Tirao, Detonado, Centauro, Herr Pinocchio, Pop Superheroes and the Sun Birds are some of the characters that inhabit their universes, which are not always two-dimensional. They also gained three dimensions in the form of sculptures and stuffed animals. He also works on a line of clothing, accessories and sneakers, paints cars and anything they ask of him, for example, helmets for a hockey team.
The preferred flat medium for his art is the street, maintains Martín. “I do street art, I don’t do graffiti. They call me to beautify walls and I have been on the street for seven or eight years. It takes me less time to make a mural than a painting. It’s another level of detail. I also love to be working there live, people pass by and see you work, there is a very nice dialogue with the passerby that the atelier or an art gallery does not have.”
A while ago, not long ago, Martín assumed that he had a problem that needed to be urgently addressed: alcohol. “I had a very strange fuse with alcohol and I went to the hospital,” he says. “I let my guard down, I notified my sponsors, my children and I was hospitalized for four months. It was very important for me. It wasn’t that I lived drinking all day, but it was a fuse that was activated in me. It was fine, I was doing well with what I was doing, but I kind of didn’t know how to celebrate it and I went that way, that was very crazy. Today I can tell it more freely, but it made me panic. It was super necessary, I am very grateful to the place and to those who work there. I will stay forever connected to them. Today I am still linked to the workshop that I give every Tuesday and I stay for the group talks. It is the place that made me reborn. Let’s see… I could live like this because I am an artist and it is expected that an artist would wear it (laughs), it is among the canons of acceptance. But being off axis made me not be Martín, not be a dad, not be a good artist. It made me not be me. And I could die, that’s the point too. I could understand it, I continue working on it, I found tools. It’s not easy, but it’s very nice, I’m happy.”
During his hospitalization, he wrote many ideas and texts in a log that his son, the oldest of the three, had given him. He wrote a lot and when he asked if he could paint they told him a little and only during nap time. The adult Martin found himself drawing again at nap time like that childhood Martin on the margins of the fence. Last April, when he left rehabilitation, he organized the “Rock Art Roll” exhibition in tribute to his rock heroes in which yellow predominated: “I let out a lot with that exhibition. “I felt more Villalba than ever.”
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