In Tate Modern
- Artist
- Juan Batlle Planas 1911 – 1966
- Original title
- El mensaje
- Medium
- Tempera on paper
- Dimensions
- Support: 630 × 490 mm
frame: 937 × 791 × 38 mm - Collection
- Lent from a private collection 2022
On long term loan - Reference
- L04561
Summary
The Message (El mensaje) 1941 is a painting in tempera on canvas that presents an ambiguous encounter in a room between six figures. On the left a red figure wearing a black hat stands balancing on a stone and points towards a group of four persons opposite. In the foreground another lies on the floor and reaches upwards and outwards, suggesting perhaps some kind of plea. Of the four figures standing on the right, the foremost reaches or points downwards; the others seem to stoically observe the scene. All of the figures are rendered with vertical blocks of colour, giving each a crystal-like three-dimensionality. The figures stand in a room rendered in shades of blue and aquamarine; low doorways frame the composition. In the background, the heads of three additional figures peer out through a rectangular window.
In the 1940s Batlle Planas produced various paintings, collages and writings with the title The Message. This particular painting is the largest known and its composition is the most complex and colourful. It was included in the survey exhibition Surrealismo en la Argentina (Surrealism in Argentina) in 1967, curated by Jorge Romero Brest, at the Instituto di Tella, Buenos Aires. The work was also featured in Aldo Pellegrini’s publication Panorama de la pintura argentina that same year.
One of the only visual artists in Argentina to consistently self-identify as a surrealist, Batlle Planas was a proponent of using artistic methods and imagery to explore the unconscious. In the 1930s he became well known for his Paranoid X-Ray series of drawings and collages made through automatic methods. By the early 1940s his study of Zen Buddhism and psychologist Wilhelm Reich’s writings on orgone (esoteric) energies led him to a new style and subject matter, of which this painting is representative. The works of this period show unusual crystalline figures, often in stark natural landscapes or buildings, engaging with stones. Esoteric in meaning, the scenes have been read by art historians in relation to Batlle Planas’s interest in orgone crystals – transmitters of universal and ancient energies – which became popular in Argentinian print culture of the period. They can also be seen as philosopher’s stones, as well as reflecting the artist’s interest in the history of European painting, particularly Romantic and pastoral scenes of sages and wise men in the landscape.
Born in 1911 in Spain, Batlle Planas spent almost the entirety of his life in Argentina. Rather than attend art school, he apprenticed with his uncle José Planas Casas at his engraving workshop. In addition to producing paintings, collages and murals, he collaborated with avant-garde writers and poets as a printmaker, illustrator and graphic designer. Batlle Planas independently studied Freudian psychoanalysis, psychology and science, and in the 1930s worked as an assistant to Dr Enrique Pichon-Riviére in the care and treatment of the mentally unwell. In addition to studying gestalt theory, unconscious, automatic processes and the affects of colour, he created his own research institutes for the study of energy. His served as mentor to a generation of Argentinian painters exploring psychological approaches to their subjects, notably Roberto Aizenberg, Victor Chab and Jorge Kleiman.
Further reading
Guillermo Whitelow, Obras de Juan Batlle Planas, Buenos Aires 1981.
Michael Wellen, ‘Paranoia and Hope: The Art of Juan Batlle Planas and its Relationship to the Argentine Technological Imagination of the 1930s and 1940s’, Journal of Surrealism and the Americas, vol.3, no.1, 2009, pp.84–106,
https://repository.asu.edu/items/17435, accessed 15 November 2020.
Juan Batlle Planas. El Gabinete Surrealista, Fundación Juan March, Madrid 2019.
Michael Wellen
November 2020, updated July 2021
Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you.
You might like
-
Horacio Coppola Egg and Twine
1932, printed c.1950–70 -
Horacio Coppola London
1934 -
Horacio Coppola Pianist, London
1934 -
Horacio Coppola Hampstead Heath, London
1934 -
Horacio Coppola London
1934 -
Horacio Coppola London
1934 -
Horacio Coppola London
1934 -
Julio González Stern Face
1936 -
Julio González Reclining Figure with a Large Hand
1936 -
Julio González Figure at a Window
1936 -
Julio González Figure in Glory
1940 -
Julio González Standing Woman Shouting
1940 -
Julio González Houses and Sky
1941 -
Julio González Marie-Thérèse with a Veil No. 2
1941 -
Julio González Girl Dressing her Hair
1942