Catálogo de la exposición - Fundación César Manrique

From the formal standpoint, the Chatarras are graphisms, writing, characters with a purely
visual value that exist in and of themselves, wanting in any meaning other than their mere
plastic presence. They are, as Mathieu would say, “gesture[s] quicker than thought”. And
they can bring to mind flourishes - those automatic scribblings that characteristically garnish
certain signatures -, that are not signs because they do not refer us to any meaning or
denote any spiritual state, life experience, feeling or thought.
Barcala - embodying one of the finest traditions of Uruguayan art - reworked, distilled these
forms, tributaries in vernacular language to the art of large cities.
(Shortly after finishing the Chatarras, Barcala, along with another fourteen Uruguayan painters,
agreed to participate in a suite of silk screens that I published in 1964. On that occasion, the
idea was not to reproduce original paintings with photomechanical techniques, but rather for
the artists to work directly with the acetates, one per colour - which meant that they had to
mentally envision the end result -, which vested them with the status of engravings. Barcala
respected the traditional order of the printing process: yellow, blue, green, red, black. The
background is reminiscent of Pollock’s drippings; the drawing governing the figures - a family
of three mannequin-like human beings - is similar to works characteristic of the CoBrA group,
the Argentinean neo-figurative artists, although it is less expressionistic and more abstract.
Seen in retrospect, it is suggestive of Basquiat avant la lettre.)
A classic artist, nonetheless
Barcala’s Chatarras series patented one of the characteristics that has defined Uruguayan art
from the outset: a sort of “classicism”, understood in the sense of a certain degree of
moderation and balance. Having developed into a deeply entrenched national trait, these
tendencies have been strong enough even to subdue influences (influences?) as eccentric as
Informalist painting. Thus, at the very height of Informalism, Barcala (and the same could be
said of Espínola Gómez), produced organised, constructed painting, attempting to impose a
rudimentary sort of formalisation on the informal, attempting, in short, to superimpose the
principle of ossification, structure, over lax painting.
Another feature that characterises Uruguayan art is the ongoing tendency of a broad swathe
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