We have inaugurated the UC Art Gallery, an open and free space in the Casa Central Extension Center, which brings to fruition a work focused on promoting art and culture and highlighting our national artistic heritage.
As is known, in recent times, the UC has promoted cultural development and heritage preservation. This approach has become a central axis of our institutional work, which responds to our mission of strengthening the creation and transfer of knowledge, enhancing the comprehensive training of people and contributing to national culture.
Along these lines, the University’s artistic and heritage collection plays a fundamental role in enriching university life and strengthening institutional identity. This is because these initiatives promote comprehensive training and research, foster innovation and creativity, allow for the development of outreach initiatives and enable the dissemination of culture, enabling the connection between the university and society through exhibitions, cultural activities and inter-institutional collaborations.
Thus, at our university we have built a heritage that today belongs to society as a whole, consisting of a great cultural heritage that includes heritage contributions in the fields of art, music, literature, theatre, history, among others.
We are convinced that art and culture cannot be seen as an optional addition to the education of our students, but rather are an essential part of their educational paths. This is how we understand it and that is why we have wanted to actively make this heritage visible in our university community and project it from our institution to society.
With these guidelines, the initiative to create a Pinacoteca arose with the aim of enriching the ecosystem of Chilean visual arts by forming a collection of Chilean republican painting from the period between 1820-1970.
This complements other collections and spaces already in operation within our university, such as the MAVI UC Foundation collection – with more than 900 works – focused on contemporary art; the Gandarillas Collection Room, with American colonial viceregal art; the Art Gallery of the Extension Center where temporary exhibitions of prominent artists have been exhibited – currently Claudio di Girolamo -, Eduardo Chillida, Antoni Tàpies, among others; and the Macchina Gallery, run by the School of Art, located on the Oriente Campus.
This new project, the Pinacoteca UC, stands out for its orientation towards characteristic periods and styles, as it is mainly focused on Chilean republican painting. Although there are many collectors of Chilean painting from this period in our country, there is no large and extensive permanent exhibition of these works available to the public.
At present, the UC has more than 20 works from this period, which are exhibited in different facilities, mainly on the Casa Central campus. Thus, we can find works by Pedro Lira, Onofre Jarpa, Benito Rebolledo, Fray Pedro Subercaseaux, among many others.
This week, the UC Pinacoteca Gallery opens an exhibition entitled “Juan Francisco González: Painter in the Open Air”, which aims to highlight the work of this renowned Chilean artist, considered one of the four most outstanding masters of national painting. This exhibition begins with the donation, by María Angélica Roa, the artist’s granddaughter, of a unique work, called “Landscape”, painted in watercolor on the front and with a charcoal drawing on the back.
It also includes the collaboration of 17 collectors who have loaned 82 paintings by Juan Francisco González and 2 sculptures by Domingo García Huidobro. The entire exhibition can be seen in the style of the presentations of the time, with walls full of works with landscapes, flowers, fruit and scenes of national life. The colour and beauty are exceptional.
With this exhibition we also wanted to highlight the fundamental role played by private collectors in the conservation and dissemination of pictorial heritage, who deserve our recognition. I would like to thank the generosity of all the collectors who have collaborated in a fundamental way in this exhibition and who will also donate some of these works for the future cultural heritage of the Pinacoteca UC.
Their collaboration and joint work allows significant works to be appreciated by the public, thus contributing to the cultural enrichment of our society. The construction of this Art Gallery projects national art to future generations and ensures its permanence and projection over time, which is great news for the country.
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