Birth, facts and some pieces of the puzzle of an unusual life, year by year to the present.
2001
Mapa de la destrucción (Map of the Destruction, 2001)
oil, oil pastel, colored felt-tip pens, ink and brush on canvas · 130 x 150 cm
Impressed by Gustavo Charif literature, the great Argentinian poet Hugo Padeletti praises his work as writer. After visit him, gives him an edition of his complete poetry works with the following dedication: “To Gustavo Charif, with still the illusion that he like my works so much as I like his works“.
From Hugo Padeletti to Gustavo Charif
In April, he’s invited by the Fondo Nacional de las Artes (National Endowment for the Arts) to be part of the exhibition La real irrealidad at arteBA, a selection that includes Roberto Aizenberg (1928-1996), Juan Batlle Planas (1911-1966), Zdravko Dučmelić (1923-1989), Raquel Forner (1902-1988), Guillermo Roux (1929) and Jorge de la Vega (1930-1971) among other great Argentinean masters, being Charif the youngest.
Soon after, invited by museologist, poet and art critic Guillermo Whitelow, he takes part in 20 x 20, a biennial exhibition organized by Praxis International, where shown his canvas Decrepitud de los sauces (“Decrepitude of the Willow Tree”).
Please, click on thumbnails to enlarge
In the same year, Fernando Arrabal praises Charif’s literary and visual work and introduces it to members and “satraps” of the Collège de ‘Pataphysique (such as Edoardo Sanguinetti, Camilo José Cela, Umberto Eco and the Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo).
The eccentric film director Jorge Polaco (1945-2014) commissions him the poster for the feature film Viaje por el cuerpo (Journey Through the Body), and Charif makes it in the Victorio Lenz style.
Poster by Gustavo Charif for Jorge Polaco’s feature film
2002
“Reality is richer than any interpretation. The number of glial cells is five to ten times higher than the number of neurons.” -Gustavo Charif.-
Fernando Arrabal praises Charif’s literary work in diverse articles. “The Argentinean quadriga of the Good Fortune is made up by Jorge Luis Borges, Macedonio Fernández, Xul Solar y Gustavo Charif”, writes Arrabal in El Mundo newspaper (Madrid) and in L’Express magazine (Paris). To read the full text in Spanish please, click here.
Arrabal text about Charif in El Mundo (Spain)
Shortly later Arrabal and Milan Kundera invite him to illustrate the first artist’s book that brings them together, Dos cartas (Two Letters). For Kundera it is also his first artist’s book (a limited edition of very few copies, published by Menú, Cuenca, Spain, and given mostly for the writters friends).
Please, click on thumbnails to enlarge
Charif makes a series of portraits of his friend Estefanía Pigazzi, mixing the classic portrait to a universe where all his informalist aesthetic resources are merged.
In May, a rare and extensive interview appears in Estímulo (Argentine magazine specialized in art). To read the interview in Spanish please, click here.
Gustavo Charif in the cover of Estímulo magazine
(May, 2002)
In July 2002, Daniel Maman Fine Art presents Profane Alchemy, the big individual exibition which was visited by 5,000 people. For the night opening Charif organizes a procession with diverse personalities (mostly poets, scientists and chess players) that follow the instruction of inventing their own personal religion and dress according with it. They group started from writer Macedonio Fernandez’s house where he lived with his son (the remembered Adolfo de Obieta, friend of Charif and recently passed away), ending at the gallery with the canonisation of Fernando Arrabal as San Fando.
A video with some images from Daniel Maman Fine Art (procession, opening exhibition, conference) is available here. The exhibition, exclusively conformed with big size canvases, included the triptychs Exposición argentina (Argentine Exhibition, 160 x 380 cm) and Crucifixión del chihuahua flanqueado por el estudio genético de sus padres originales (The Chihuahua’s Crucifixion Flanked by the Genetic Study of Their Biological Parents, 150 x 290 cm).
Here these triptychs (please, click on thumbnails to enlarge)
The catalogue-book (Alquimia Profana / Profane Alchemy, Nexos, Bs. As.-New York) includes an original text in French by Fernando Arrabal about Charif (Dialogue avec Satan), a letter form Milan Kundera, and Introduction by Guillermo Whitelow and, by Charif, the Manifiesto Encarnado (Incarnated Manifesto, available in this site in the MANIFESTOS sub-section into FINE ARTS section).
Catalogue-book Alquimia Profana (Profane Alchemy)
Arrabal travels to Buenos Aires especially for the event and share with Charif a dialogue-conference, attended among others by the great chess player Miguel Ángel Quinteros and the grandgaughter of Macedonio Fernández, Maite de Obieta.
Alejandro Jodorowsky and Héctor Yanover, among others, write to him with admiration. And young poet Florencia Abadi writes the poem To Gustavo Charif.
Charif, Arrabal and chess grandmaster Miguel Ángel Quinteros (2002)
On the same month he founds, under pseudonyme of Victorio Lenz, the Ovo Nero group together with Andrés Onna, Emiliano Mora and other artists. In November the group shown in Zamora Gallery in Buenos Aires and Charif, signing his paintings and collages as Lenz, arrives from Paris to Buenos Aires for two weeks, to attend the exhibition.
Charif as Victorio Lenz in Zamora gallery
The TV show Trazos transmits through Canal (à) an episode dedicated entirely to Charif, as they had done before with Spanish Antoni Tàpies and Mexican José Luis Cuevas. To see the full interview (Spanish without subtitles) please click here.
In October and November he makes a double exposition with his alter ego Lenz at Espace Accattone in Paris invited by Polish writer Kazik Hentchel, vicepresident of the Societé des Amis de Roland Topor (society to which artists like Pierre Alechinsky, Jean-Claude Carrière, Raoul Ruiz, Jerôme Savary, Volker Schlöndorf and Daniel Spoerri belonged). Julie Delpy, Arrabal, Hentchel, Emmanuelle Riva and many other friends attends in the opening night.
Poster of Viande (Meat), “double” exhibition of Lenz & Charif
During the same year, in Paris, shares with Fernando Arrabal a conference-action presenting the Mishima’s film Yûkoku (a.k.a. The Rite of Love and Death). Soon later make AstroBoy, a series of photographic interventions with Aoi, a young Japanese friend, at the FIAC (International Fair of Contemporary Art, Paris, France).
Aoi and Charif in the FIAC (Paris, October, 2002)
On December 15, 2002, Charif canonizes Luce Moreau-Arrabal at the front doors of Notre-Dame, giving her the title of Saint Lis in front of 2,000 people, among them the President of the Republic of Frioul, the Collège de ‘Pataphysique, the Dream Team Cinématographique, Adjani, Aoi, Nehle Balkausen, Christine Burrus, Marc Brenner, Jean-Marc Debenedetti, Albert Delpy, Julie Delpy, Thieri Foulc (Provéditeur-Éditeur Général du Collège de ’Pataphysique), Ante Glibota, Maxime Godard, Harold, Laurence Imbert, Grégoire Lacroix, Bernard Léonard (a.k.a. Léo Léonard), Gabriel Matzneff, Olivier O. Olivier, Anitra Seawright, Christophe Styczynski, Michael Thalheimer, and a group of, according Fernando Arrabal words, “incarnated artists, Italian alchemists, people of arts, insects, Japanese students, French editors, Brazilian attorneys, young collectors, chess players, scientists and mystic policemen”.
Luce Moreau-Arrabal (Sainte Lis) pronounced a memorable grateful speach, that you can read partially in Spanish in the article by Fernando Arrabal (San Fando) published in El Mundo newspaper. (You can read the full article here, in arrabal.org website, or here).
Among the messages sending by who could not attend the ceremony were the words from Spanish journalist and writer David Barbero (“…I start immediately a fasting period and spiritual exercises as mind preparation for the canonization”) and writer Michel Houellebecq (“…in holiness, the merit is the most important”).
Danièle Noël, Bernard Léonard, Luce Moreau-Arrabal, Laurence Imbert, Anouk Ferjac, Fernando Arrabal and Gustavo Charif (2002)
2003
Grafía de vida en mi amigo africano (Graph of Life in My African Friend) by Gustavo Charif, appears in the numbers 6/7 of Almunia, Spanish magazine specialized in literature and philosophy.
In October, Daniel Maman Fine Art presents an Individual exhibition in Expotrastiendas (international art fair of Buenos Aires), without the presence of Charif.
Charif in Paris (January 4, 2003)
Charif comes to Buenos Aires to exhibits with Ovo Nero group at the Eduardo Sívori Museum, having a great response from the public and the specialized critic of the most important media in Argentina. There he shows the first portrait to Estefanía Pigazzi and a series of oil on canvases in big dimensions, among them a work highly critical against Peronism movement titled Ellos, con uno de nosotros (Them With One of Us).
Please, click on thumbnails to enlarge
Ten years after than Gustavo Charif wrote in collaboration with Luis Felipe Noé the script Recontrapoder (based in Noé’s novel), is published a comic book adapting the same novel (this time by Noé in collaboration with the young cartoonist Nahuel Rando).
Cover of the comic Recontrapoder (by Luis Felipe Noé and Nahuel Rando)
and dedication by Noé in a copy gifted to Charif (2003)
“Con Gustavo Charif (escritor, cineasta, director de teatro y pintor), escribimos la adaptación cinematográfica para la película que él deseaba dirigir y que aún espero que algún día pueda concretarse. Esa adaptación fue un punto de partida en el proyecto de esta historieta pues tenían en común la referencia a una realidad que el libro, al estar inspirado en códigos sagrados, no incluía.”
-Luis Felipe Noé: Prólogo a Las aventuras de Recontrapoder.-
“With Gustavo Charif (writer, filmmaker, theatre director and painter), we wrote the script for the movie that he wanted directing and that I hope someday we can do. That adaptation was the starting point in the project to the comic book, because both had a reality’s reference that the original book (inspired by codex or sacred texts) did not include.”
-Luis Felipe Noé: Prologue to the Adventures of Recontrapoder.-
“Yuyo” Noé and Charif in an exhibition of their common friend León Ferrari (in the picture, with an Italian disciple of Noé)
Charif · 沙里夫 · 