Fernando Fader

Fernando Fader working outdoors in Córdoba in 1917.

Horses (1904), work of Fernando Fader.

Fernando Fader (Bordeaux, France, April 11, 1882-Loza Corral, Córdoba, Argentina, February 28, 1935) was an Argentine painter and draftsman born in France, the main follower of of German Impressionism in his country.

Biography

Fernando Fader was born on April 11, 1882, in Bordeaux, France. In 1898 he made his first pictorial works, among which the oil painting The lousy old man stands out. He completed primary studies in France and secondary studies in Germany, at the Realschule du Rhine Palatinate. There he also studied painting with Heinrich von Zügel (1850-1941), a supporter of plein-air painting, whose thematic axes were animals and the naturalistic conception of the landscape, derived from the Barbizon school. In 1900 he won a gold medal for his painting 'Behind the Rainbow'. In 1904 he returned to the country and in 1906 he held his first show in Argentina, which was unsuccessful. & # 39; He participated in the Nexus group - with a local and technical theme that vacillated between impressionism and academicism - with Collivadino, Ripamonte, Bernaldo de Quirós and, marginally, Emilio Caraffa. Nexus presented three exhibitions that paved the way for the Spring Salon of 1911. Driven by his other passion, engineering, he invested his entire fortune in a hydraulic company that bankrupted him. This hard economic moment coincided with the first symptoms of tuberculosis, which led him to seek the mild climate of the mountains (of Córdoba) in 1917 (there is another version that places this move in 1916). He painted in the Sierras de Achala and Ischilín, in towns such as Candelaria, La Higuera, Pocho, San Pedro Norte and San Francisco del Chañar.'3' & # 34;

Among his many portraits, oil paintings and watercolors, the most noteworthy are La mantilla, La madre and La liga azul, the latter exhibited at the V National Salon of 1915, as well as The Life of a Day, a series of eight (80x100 cm) canvases in which the same landscape is represented with its variations of light throughout the day, painted during 1917. This series is exhibited at the Rosario Municipal Museum of Fine Arts "Juan B. Castagnino".

In his painting, different emotional periods can be appreciated, such as the period of dark interiors with a predominance of ocher and brown colors and his other moment of more luminosity, where artificial light falls on the objects, relating the color-light with the object -light. & # 34; His mountain landscapes of him are one of the culminating moments in the history of painting in Córdoba. His last work is from 1931 & # 39; His works can be seen among other places in:

• The National Museum of Fine Arts of Buenos Aires
• The Provincial Museum of Fine Arts "Emiliano Guiñazú". Fader House, Mendoza
• Municipal Museum of Fine Arts of Rosario "Juan B. Castagnino"

In 1914, after his bankruptcy, he settled in Buenos Aires and presented two works at the Salón Nacional. With "La mantilla" shares the Acquisition prize with Ernesto de La Cárcova. At the California International Exposition he wins first prize with & # 34; The Food of the Pigs & # 34;