Born in 1979, Sergio Moscona lives and works in Buenos Aires, Argentina. His pieces feature in numerous private and museum collections in Argentina but also in France, England, Ecuador, the United States, Brazil, Paraguay and Mexico. Sergio Moscona’s work illustrates with an unequalled graphic intensity the tragicomedy of the human condition. His highly developed expressionist drawings capture the violence in the world around us and deliver an absurd vision through a varied yet extremely consistent body of work, including acrylic paintings, collages, watercolours and graphite. He is considered to be one of the upcoming artists on the European and global contemporary art scene.
Sergio Moscona, how would you define your work?
I am a figurative painter from Argentina. My work is based on a highly structured design that one could call expressionist, and on a narrative where the theme is often social or political. I also tend to produce my work in series.
What is your background?
I attended the Fine Arts school in Buenos Aires. Actually, I started around the age of 10 or 12 working in the studios of various artists. As a child I didn’t go out much, but stayed at home drawing. I was not yet painting. I only learned to paint once I was at the Fine Arts school where I also studied engraving. But I am always learning. When a work takes hold of me, then there is a great deal to pick up and learn.
What themes do you tackle in your paintings?
One of my series is called La Couleur de la musique. It’s arranged around musicians and a conductor and is a metaphor for life. The conductor is the one who has the power and leads the others. You can’t transmit that idea except through a highly developed construction. Another series is called Les Architectes de la parole with the tower of Babel as the theme. The characters climb over each other to compete with God. In these two series you also always find an animal: a dog, a cat or sometimes a bird. It symbolises innocent life, naïve, but also Man’s bestiality.
How do you choose your themes?
I am inspired by things which affect and move me, like for example the dictatorship in Argentina. So I produced a series, Nos noms, which represents people brandishing portraits of those who have disappeared. The title remains in white to signify that we have taken the names of the disappeared and through them it is our own which has disappeared. If we forget them we are nothing. This concerns me not only as an Argentine but also as a human being. I also produced a series of paintings entitled La Maison du Général which was on show in Vichy in 2008. This created a parallel between the dictatorship in Argentina and the French Vichy State. I enjoy mixing history up a little to question and share thoughts on similar situations.
Does history play an important role in your work?
I was born in 1979, in the middle of the dictatorship. I didn’t suffer personally but I live in a country marked by this period and the memory of it is still very present. We need to work on the memories and to talk about our history. The social aspect is also very important in my work. However the paintings should not be at the service of a political situation. They can however serve to clarify an often very complex reality.
The crisis is also the theme of a series where you use collage. Can you tell us about that?
Yes, it’s a series where I had to use pages from books! After 2001, it was very difficult to find Arches paper which I often use. I therefore had to resort to second-hand books which have good quality paper where I put the pages end to end and then could paint. That gave me a starting point for the narrative which is not insignificant: a page from a book is already information; it has a history and a particular colour. You have to enter into a dialogue with the page. I love that aspect.
You pick up on history of art themes like you did with the “Free interpretation of Guernica” – why that painting?
I wanted to work the way Picasso did with Velasquez’ Las Meninas: he takes Velasquez’ paradigm, the painter’s most famous painting, and revisits it. And as a result it also became Picasso’s Las Meninas. I wanted to do the same thing with [Picasso’s] Guernica and to give it a topical interpretation. I worked on it for two years from 2005 to 2007, and produced more than 150 works from Guernica.
What or who have been your other influences?
The German Expressionists like Kollowitz or Grosz, but also lesser known artists, particularly Lajos Szalay, a Hungarian painter who taught in Argentina from 1949 to 1960 – he was the professor of my professor and even though I didn’t take a course with him I learned about expressionism through him. I also love Art Brut or the new figurative art. In fact I appreciate lots of things, provided that the image speaks to me. The truth of the work must prevail.
How do you put together the sketches and the colour in your work?
The two overlap and merge through a kind of transparency which is very important in my research. Some characters, often an animal, are drawn in detail but are entangled with the figures in the second or third layer. Another fundamental element is movement. Paper or canvas requires the situation to be fixed. To introduce movement, it’s necessary to multiply the motif on several staggered layers which introduces a temporal dimension. That’s why you may find a character with four hands or three heads!
What techniques do you use?
I use ink a great deal but also Rapidograph when I draw outside, in the street or a café which I love doing. That means I’m sketching in a small format. It is a source of inspiration and a very strong graphic resource. For colours, I now work with acrylic as it dries very quickly and perfectly matches my work rhythm.
How long does it take you to complete a painting?
It varies a lot. It takes the time required and depends also on the series. In general I finish one picture before starting the next. But sometimes I find myself working on three at the same time. At a certain point, there is nothing to add or take away, even though I love leaving an impression of “incompleteness” in my pieces. When a painting is finished, it is obvious, and often opens the door to a new piece in the series. What is most important is the truth of the painting: it must have an inner necessity. It is also what interests me with other artists.
What are you working on at the moment?
On a series that is an extension of the work by the Argentine painter Antonio Berni around the character of Juanito Laguna, a street child. That dates back to 1961, but it is still a very topical subject. I imagined that 50 years later Juanito was still on the street but had a child: Paquito Laguna. Picasso like Berni is a genius. Their work is still very much alive for me and inspires me. We need to know how to draw on these genii without copying them!
Mathias Leboeuf
