Fernando Fader

Fernando Fader (born August 11, 1882 in Loza Corral, Córdoba, Argentina, February 28, 1935) was a French-born Argentine painter and draftsman of the Post-impressionist school. the main follower of German Impressionism in his country.

His painting shows different emotional periods, such as the stage of dark interiors with predominance of ocher and brown colors and his other moment of more luminosity, where artificial light falls on objects relating light-color to light-object. "His serranos landscapes are one of the culminating moments of the history of the painting in Cordova.

Among her many portraits, oils and watercolors are La Mantilla, La Madre and La liga azul, the latter exhibited in the V National Salon of 1915, as well as La vida de un dia, a series of eight fabrics (80x100 cm) in the Which represents the same landscape with its variants of light throughout the day, painted during 1917. This series is exhibited at the Municipal Museum of Fine Arts of Rosario "Juan B. Castagnino."

Fernando Fader was born in Bordeaux, France in 1882. His father, of Prussian descent, relocated the family to Argentina in 1884, settling in the western city of Mendoza before returning to France a few years later. Graduating from secondary school, Fader returned to Mendoza in 1898, where he first practiced his skill as an artist painting urban landscapes. Fader relocated to Munich in 1900, where he enrolled at a local vocational school. This training allowed him enrollment at the prestigious Munich Academy of Fine Arts, where he was mentored by Heinrich von Zügel, prominent in Europe's Naturalist Barbizon School.

He returned briefly to Buenos Aires, where his work was first exhibited at the Costa Salon in 1906. His landscapes quickly established him as a Post-impressionist painter at a time when local critics were still partial to Impressionism, however, and this motivated Fader to join other artists similarly out of favor with conservative Argentine audiences, such as Cesáreo Bernaldo de Quirós, the sculptor Rogelio Yrurtia and Martín Malharro (whose earlier, Impressionist work had - ironically - established the genre locally in 1902).

Their Nexus group struggled until around 1910, when Malharro's atelier became the most influential in Argentina shortly before his sudden passing. Fader settled in Buenos Aires in 1914, where he obtained a first prize at the Fourth National Art Bienale. He toured art galleries in Spain and Germany and earned a gold medal at the Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, in 1915. An onset of tuberculosis, however, forced him to relocate to the drier climates of the Argentine Andes foothills.

His stay in Córdoba refocused his work along more Impressionistic lines, employing a greater use of sunlight contrasts. His new surroundings also gave him ample bucolic inspiration, and he created many of his most well-known works during this period, many of which romantically portrayed farm life. This productive period was cut short by a sudden worsening of Fader's breathing difficulties around 1921, which by then had become chronic asthma and precluded outdoor work. This led Fader to turn to still life, nudes and self-portraits, resulting in a third, distinct period in the artist's prolific body of work.

Though forced into reclusion by ill health, Fader never lost the following he had acquired during his heyday around 1915, and the National Academy of Fine Arts organized a retrospective of his work in 1924.

In 1915, due to the initial stage of tuberculosis Fader moved to Córdoba. There began the second period of his work, in which works exhibited more impressionistic features. There he also created his most famous works. Most of them romanticized rural life. This unusually productive period stopped the sudden deterioration of Fader's health, which in 1921 led to asthma and prevented any work in the open air. In this connection, Fader painted mostly dead nature, acts and self-portraits. Works from that time are included in the third period of his work.

In 1932, on the occasion of Fader's 50th birthday, a retrospective was organized on the initiative of the gallery association in Buenos Aires, during which 119 works by the artist were presented. Unfortunately, the health of the artist did not allow him to participate in this event. Fernando Fader died in Córdoba in 1935, aged 52.

Fernando Fader died in Ischilín Department, Córdoba at age 52, in 1935. His former home in the rural hamlet of Loza Corral is maintained as a museum.
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