New territories at the end of the 19th century. Augusto Ballerini at the Museo de La Plata

Abstract

This work studies one of the works created by the artist Augusto Ballerini for the Museo de La Plata: the mural Selva misionera. It begins with a brief biography of the author and goes on to analyze and interpret his painting. Ballerini (1857-1902) was a multifaceted artist who worked as a teacher, illustrator, decorator, manager and visual artist. He executed several commissions in La Plata city for different government agencies, and he painted three large murals in the Museo de La Plata: Salvajes provocando fuego (1887), Vista de los Andes (1887) –both in the rotunda at the entrance to the Museum– and Selva misionera (n.d.), on the upper floor of this rotunda. Only the last of these murals is preserved today. Like many artists at a time when the matter of landscape was in full debate, and with the explicit intention of capturing different geographies of the country, Ballerini traveled through Patagonia, the Northwest, Mesopotamia, the Gran Chaco and the mountain regions in pursuit of the inclusion of national art within the iconography of the emerging Nation.