The Cafe of the Arts: the unpredictability of Pintor
Sometimes - when we are interested in the life and works of some
great character who maybe is no longer and who has left to posterity tangible signs of his existence, handing down
works of great value, whether they are
poems, novels, paintings, sculptures, inventions and more - we happen to ask ourselves a question.
We wonder, in fact, what and
how many other characters in the art sector who for
mere misfortune or various vicissitudes have not risen to the
notoriety and fortunes that they would have amply deserved, and this despite having sown their existence of extraordinary works, maybe you are lost or destroyed.
We really believe, indeed, that
there are more artists, perhaps of sublime greatness, who have created extraordinary works, but who had to wait
to die to be discovered.
Well
among these - among those that posterity could or wanted to rediscover after their departure -
there is certainly a character, great painter and great friend of the cafe of the arts, that deserves to be remembered in this our modest work. In reality he is a painter who even in life, and at least in some moments and in some limited environments, has benefited from some recognition and a certain notoriety.
However, his art - at least
until his death - has been somewhat thwarted by his
contradictory character to the impossible.
Fickle to the unimaginable, now
meek and soon
irascible, he was
able to work weeks and weeks on a project or a painting and then ruin everything from one moment to the next thus contributing to
the world of "coffee of the arts".
The life of the artist of the Cafe of the Arts
This painter,
Italian by birth and Brazilian by existence, born in
Genoa and died fifty, had the complete and triumphal recognition almost a hundred years later and precisely in the
summer of 1997.
In fact, more than one hundred and twenty magnificent paintings of this great and poorly valued artist - named
Giovanni Battista Castagneto - were exhibited at the
Pinakotheke Cultural Center of Rio de Janeiro, a few meters from the hospital where he
died miserably in 1900, contributing in an extraordinary way to the heritage of the "cafe of the arts" in the Brazilian art scene.
The charm of the origins
The Castagneto immediately fascinated us when a few months ago we had the opportunity to read in a newspaper a beautiful article, signed by Oliviero Pluviano, entitled:
"It is a Genoese the Brazilian Gauguin, supporter of the artistic movement known as the "cafe of the arts".
The falsification of the Cafe of the Arts
Giovanni Battista Castagneto - surely called
Giambattista or perhaps even more simply Gian, as it happens in Liguria - our fellow citizen, born under the
Lantern in 1851, son of a sailor from Rapallo, came to follow him to Rio de Janeiro in his early twenties. The story says that he falsified his birth certificate to enter the
Academy of Fine Arts in Rio because in all probability the admission to it was reserved for Brazilian subjects. It was in this academy that he developed the artistic language of the "
caffe delle arti".
If you want to experience the thrill of Pintor’s art coffee, read our recipe for
sailor’s coffee.
The professor of the Cafe of the Arts
The fact is that five years later, literally burning the stages, he became a
professor of drawing. But not only, because his ability was such that he quickly became a "court" painter in the last years of the government of the last
emperor Pedro II, before the Republic.
It was evidently a man of great professionalism and great charm, as well as high artistic ability. Because the Castagneto managed to penetrate a large number of doors.
Even his physique of a
thin, tall man, with a few reddish hair in great contrast to his extraordinarily blue eyes, helped him very much whenever he decided to open one of those doors; especially if there was a damsel beyond.
Pintor slowly began to become a vibrant and meaningful symbol in the wider context of the "Cafe of the Arts".
The first hints of the Cafe of the Arts
The Castagneto attracted by
a very personal expression, in which a
haughty nobility, obviously connatural because it could not derive from
his father’s seafaring past, was mixed with the
most spontaneous simplicity. It was immediately understood that this mixture was his. In short, in a few years
this man had managed to create large spaces in Brazilian artistic circles, and was destined to rise to summits.
In fact,
the rich Fazendeiros, coffee producers, disputed it with rich prebends so that it painted the beautiful facades of the "home" of their Fazende, the sumptuous internal halls and private chapels.
Giambattista left
wonderful signs of his interventions in the oldest and most famous Fazende. His "
Pintures Mural" still appears today - as can be seen from a splendid volume, the "
Solares de Regiao Cafeira do Brazil Imperial" - in the Fazenda Regate, the Fazenda Paraiso, the Fazenda Oriente and the Fazenda Secretario and others.
Here, in these "
Templi del Coffè", the Castagneto
perfected the deepest knowledge with the coffee plant, with this fascinating and wonderful plant that ended up
conditioning - like the sea and the sea - his painting.
The artistic sensibility of Giambattista had been affected. The
intense green of the leaves but even more the
white and fragrant flowers with a very short life, but that when they sprout appear as many small evanescent clouds, are not things that the eye of the painter easily forgets. Then, the splendid
bright red color, which with maturation assume the
cherries that contain the two grains, is truly a spectacle of nature.
Since then
there has not been (or, if there have been, there have been very few) a painting of the Castagneto - whether it was a still life, a panorama or a portrait - in which in some corner was not
placed in evidence a flowering coffee plant, or a bunch of beans, or a smoking cup, thus giving the "cafe of the arts" a prominent role in his career.
Coffee had
entered his mind and his art with arrogance.
The recklessness of the artist
However, we said, our "
coffee painter", despite having successfully entered the
artistic intelligentsia of the country, had remained a difficult character, a subject all genius and wildness, able to change mood and ideas in a flash.
In fact, she was
able to ruin everything overnight.
The Court of Emperor Pedro II, the rich Fazendeiros and also the many female friendships he had won.He bought a
small boat, with which he
began to turn with his easel the deserted islands of the great Bay of Guanabara. In fact, it was because of his main characteristic, that of having a
mind in continuous change, that nowadays it is
difficult to have a widespread awareness of the artistic movement of the coffee of the arts.
A Brazilian critic,
Luiz Gonzaga Estrada, wrote about him in 1888:"Castagneto is an original. Son of a sea wolf, he was born an artist and was born a sailor. From his father he inherited his love for the mysterious sea, and from his beloved Italy, the warm breath of artistic impressionability. As the sea its temperament is rebellious. It loves and hates. It is meek and irascible. One day he thought that academic study, instead of making him progress, prevented him from stepping; and he tore, from one moment to the next, the reasons that tied him to the Academy. As an artist he can feel, in a very original way, all the enchantments, all the poetry of the voids. The tormenting voice of the waters, the crazy sobbing of the waves, the cyclopean struggles of the Ocean, make vibrate inside him strange strings of a sentimentality that nature has not given to anyone anymore..."
The Cafe of the Arts and the oppression of freedom
So, we said, the Baptist began the
wandering and lonely life that would lead him to an untimely end. On the other hand,
the only form of life that his rebellious spirit allowed him to lead, forcing him to send to hell the comforts and also the wealth derived from the movement of the coffee of the arts that he had somehow created in recent years.
He was in fact oppressed by a kind of
thirst for freedom, by a desire for escape that gave him no escape. For this reason he was
compared to Gauguin. On the other hand, he had
befriended the great French painter, meeting him and
meeting him in Paris during a study trip to France in 1890. Gauguin had fascinated him not so much for the pictorial art that was very different from his style, but especially for the complex personality.
Moreover, the two painters were practically the same age,
being born one, French, in 1848 and the other in 1851.
Both had been sailors in their youth and both had led a foolish life, spending much of their time between a dive and the other, to fuel alcoholism and syphilis.
However, when they devoted themselves to painting, both were able to create masterpieces: with a few strokes of yellow and red lit the French, with quick strokes of dry brush the Castagneto.
Even
death caught them almost simultaneously. Gauguin died in 1903 in Atuana, on the island of Hiva Oa, in Polynesia; the Castagneto, which had preceded him three years before, closed his eyes in a hospital for the poor in front of the Bay of Botafogo, opposite the beautiful island-Paquetà’s garden, where he had long retired to a friend’s house.
The pintor do cafè: the essence of the Cafe of the Arts
It is therefore not by chance that Castagneto has been defined as the Brazilian Gauguin, as the artist, our compatriot, went down in history as the "
singer of coffee".
In fact, the "Pintor do cafè".In fact, as we have already had occasion to say,
coffee - either as a plant or as a beverage - had such an influence on the painter that it became a sort of signature or trademark in his paintings. Indeed, there is no picture, among those painted from a certain period on, in which there does not appear - in some way, in some form, now a cup, now in plant form - a meaning of the art of coffee.
Castagneto signed this way, that’s why it became the "
Pintor do cafè". Unfortunately, many of his paintings ended up in the hands of humble fishermen or in those of Fazendeiros coffee, perhaps exchanged for a bottle of "cachaca" or with the few pesos to buy it.
Other times,
real masterpieces, maybe painted on jute bags or wooden cigar boxes or on makeshift materials, ended up in the hands of some cheerful little woman in exchange for favors. A dispersed heritage, as partially dispersed was the ability of this great fan of coffee.Today, however, as we said, in Brazil there was the rediscovery of the artist, and we believe that the exhibition in Rio will be followed by others, equally important on the founder of the coffee movement of the arts.
It is right that the Pintor do Cafè should be given at least some of the recognition it deserves.If you liked this story about Pintor, read our article on
literary coffee where you will find other stories of famous authors, such as
Karen Blixen, lovers of this unique drink, coffee.
If you just want a good coffee, visit our
SHOP, where I would find varieties of coffee with a unique flavor and unmistakable, produced with love and professionalism by Caffe Roen.
Source: "Caffè ancora cose semplici... e sportive", Franco Puzzo Editore, Agostino & Simona Narizzano.
