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01/09/2006: "ARGENTINE RAILWAY ARTIST, CARLOS REGAZZONI" by Veronica Caminos
Twenty some years ago, Argentine Carlos Regazzoni worked peddling kerosene from a street cart. Living at that time in proximity to rail yards, he awoke late one night to loud metallic clanging: a crew of rail workers with heavy machinery changing the track rails. “Someone has to paint this,” he thought. And thus began his 20-plus year laborious love affair with “railway art”.Regazzoni’s railway paintings, with their loose broad linear strokes and intense colors, number in the thousands. Through the passage of time, the paintings gave way to large welded metal sculptures, produced by the artist with rail yard scraps and abandoned train car parts.
The sculptures include dozens of airplanes, enormous scrap iron dinosaurs, armies of metallic insects, and even life-sized figures of the Virgin Mary, welded out of dozens of old type writers patinated with a film of warm, reddish rust. In visiting El Gato Viejo, Regazzoni’s atelier/art gallery/beer tavern/alternative theatre space housed within a series of adjoining train sheds in Buenos Aires’ Retiro Train station, one can meet the artist and view his creations. One can even catch a glimpse of Regazzoni baking huge round loaves of homemade bread in two large wood burning ovens fashioned out of old train engine parts… his large robust figure, wild halo of hair, and blackened hands reminiscent of the roman god Vulcan toiling away at a glowing-hot forge.
A few years ago, the City of Buenos Aires was impressed enough with the artist’s painting and sculpture work to grant him official use of several of the city’s train sheds and yards. Regazzoni’s atelier began to attract dozens of daily visitors and eventually attracted the attention of the France’s SNCF and Railways Authority, who proceeded to lure the artist to Europe by granting him use of a train warehouse in Paris, a 3,000 square meter shed designed by Gustave Eiffel, now home to over 2,500 metal sculptures and paintings. The artist now spends half the year in Buenos Aires, and the other half in Paris.
The Buenos Aires atelier, and its Friday and Saturday night tavern shows, are well worth a visit for the art-curious: El Gato Viejo, Avenida Del Libertador, at the corner of Suipacha – train galpones (sheds) 1 to 5. The pizza, baked by Regazzoni himself in his train-ovens, is delicious.
