The Juan Carlos Castagnino Municipal Museum of Art is a museum of fine arts in

Mar del Plata Mar del Plata is a city on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. It is the seat of General Pueyrredón district. Mar del Plata is the second largest city in Buenos Aires Province. The name "Mar del Plata" is a s ...

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

. Its building, the Ortiz Basualdo

Villa A villa is a type of house that was originally an ancient Roman upper class country house. Since its origins in the Roman villa, the idea and function of a villa have evolved considerably. After the fall of the Roman Republic, villas became s ...

, is a National Monument of Argentina.

Overview

Commissioned by the Ortíz Basualdo family of

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...

, the villa on Mar del Plata's Stella Maris Hill was built in 1909 as a summer residence. Designed by Luis Dubois and Pablo Pater, the eclecticist, the

art nouveau Art Nouveau (; ) is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. The style is known by different names in different languages: in German, in Italian, in Catalan, and also known as the Modern ...

villa followed a picturesque movement in

French architecture French architecture consists of numerous architectural styles that either originated in France or elsewhere and were developed within the territories of France. History Gallo-Roman The architecture of Ancient Rome at first adopted the exter ...

common to new, upscale residences in both France and Argentina, at the time (the exterior's

half-timber Timber framing (german: Holzfachwerk) and "post-and-beam" construction are traditional methods of building with heavy timbers, creating structures using squared-off and carefully fitted and joined timbers with joints secured by large wooden ...

motif, accordingly, was painted on). The structure, predominantly in stone, was capped by zinc

mansard A mansard or mansard roof (also called a French roof or curb roof) is a four-sided gambrel-style hip roof characterised by two slopes on each of its sides, with the lower slope, punctured by dormer windows, at a steeper angle than the upper. The ...

roofing.Patrimonio Marplatense: Villa Ortiz Basualdo
/ref> The oceanfront city was given its first municipal museum of fine art in 1938, when the facility was inaugurated in the Mar del Plata City Hall. The museum gathered a collection of mainly

modern art Modern art includes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the styles and philosophies of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the tradi ...

in subsequent decades, and in particular works by local realist painter and

muralist A mural is any piece of graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage. Word mural in art The word ''mural'' is a Spanish ...

Juan Carlos Castagnino Juan Carlos Castagnino (November 18, 1908April 21, 1972) was an Argentina, Argentine painter, architect, muralist and sketch artist. Born in the rural village of Camet, near the city of Mar del Plata, he studied in the ''Escuela de Bellas Artes'' ...

.Welcome Argentina: Museo Castagnino
/ref> The donation of the villa by the Ortíz Basualdo family resulted in the museum's relocation, and the institution was re-inaugurated therein on July 9, 1980. The family's donation included a large selection of furniture acquired between 1909 and the villa's remodel in 1918. The collection, designed by Belgian architect and cabinetmaker

Gustave Serrurier-Bovy Gustave Serrurier-Bovy (1858–1910) was a Belgian architect and furniture designer. He is credited (along with Paul Hankar, Victor Horta and Henry van de Velde) with creating the Art Nouveau style, coined as a style in Paris by art dealer S ...

, is widely considered among the world's finest of its type, and was incorporated into the museum's exhibits. The museum's collections feature nearly 600 paintings, sculptures, lithographs, photographs and other works, including those by Argentine artists

Antonio Berni Delesio Antonio Berni (14 May 1905 – 13 October 1981) was an Argentine figurative artist. He is associated with the movement known as ''Nuevo Realismo'' ("New Realism"), an Argentine extension of social realism. His work, including a serie ...

, Alberto Bruzzone,

Prilidiano Pueyrredón Prilidiano Pueyrredón (January 24, 1823 – November 3, 1870) was an Argentine painter, architect and engineer. One of the country's first prominent painters, he was known for his costumbrist sensibility and preference for everyday themes. ...

Luis Seoane Luis is a given name. It is the Spanish form of the originally Germanic name or . Other Iberian Romance languages have comparable forms: (with an accent mark on the i) in Portuguese and Galician, in Aragonese and Catalan, while is archaic ...

Raúl Soldi Raúl Soldi (27 March 1905 – 21 April 1994) was an Argentine painter and production designer whose work treated various subjects, including landscapes, portraits, the theater and the circus, and nature. His theatrical figures are renowned for ...

, and Juan Carlos Castagnino, for whom the museum was renamed in 1982, and of whom the museum houses 138 works. Across the street from the Mar del Plata Museum of the Sea, the villa, an exhibit in itself, was declared Cultural Patrimony of the City of Mar del Plata in 1995. In December 2020, the Ortiz Basualdo Villa was declared National Monument of Argentina.

References and external links

External links

{{authority control Tourist attractions in Mar del Plata Art museums and galleries in Argentina Houses completed in 1909 Buildings and structures in Mar del Plata Art museums established in 1938 1938 establishments in Argentina Museums in Buenos Aires Province Art Nouveau architecture in Argentina Art Nouveau houses Houses in Argentina