Fernando Fader was a French-born Argentine painter of the Post-impressionist

Post-Impressionism

Post-Impressionism is the term coined by the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe the development of French art since Manet. Fry used the term when he organized the 1910 exhibition Manet and Post-Impressionism...

 school.

Life and work

Fernando Fader was born in Bordeaux

Bordeaux

Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture...

, France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 in 1882. His father, of Prussia

Prussia

Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...

n descent, relocated the family to Argentina

Argentina

Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

 in 1884, settling in the western city of Mendoza

Mendoza, Argentina

Mendoza is the capital city of Mendoza Province, in Argentina. It is located in the northern-central part of the province, in a region of foothills and high plains, on the eastern side of the Andes. As of the , Mendoza's population was 110,993...

 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

Munich

Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

 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

Naturalism (art)

Naturalism in art refers to the depiction of realistic objects in a natural setting. The Realism movement of the 19th century advocated naturalism in reaction to the stylized and idealized depictions of subjects in Romanticism, but many painters have adopted a similar approach over the centuries...

 Barbizon School

Barbizon school

The Barbizon school of painters were part of a movement towards realism in art, which arose in the context of the dominant Romantic Movement of the time. The Barbizon school was active roughly from 1830 through 1870...

.
He returned briefly to Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...

, 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

Impressionism

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...

, however, and this motivated Fader to join other artists similarly out of favor with conservative Argentine audiences, such as Cesáreo Bernaldo de Quirós

Cesáreo Bernaldo de Quirós

Cesáreo Bernaldo de Quirós was an Argentine painter of the post-impressionist school.- Life and work :De Quirós was born in Gualeguay, Entre Ríos Province, in 1879. He began to paint at age eight, and shortly afterwards, created a facial composite sketch that resulted in a fugitive criminal's...

, the sculptor Rogelio Yrurtia

Rogelio Yrurtia

Rogelio Yrurtia was a renowned Argentine sculptor of the Realist school.-Life and work:Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina to Basque immigrants in 1879, Rogelio Yrurtia enrolled in the local Society for the Promotion of Fine Arts in 1899. A talented student, he quickly earned a scholarship on which...

 and Martín Malharro

Martín Malharro

Martín Malharro was an Argentine painter of the Post-impressionist school.-Life and work: Martín Malharro was born in the central Buenos Aires Province city of Azul in 1865. His childhood interest in painting led to domestic violence at home, from which he left for Buenos Aires in 1879...

 (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 shorlty 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

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 and Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 and earned a gold medal at the Pacific International Exposition

Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915)

The Panama-Pacific International Exposition was a world's fair held in San Francisco, California between February 20 and December 4 in 1915. Its ostensible purpose was to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal, but it was widely seen in the city as an opportunity to showcase its recovery...

 in San Francisco, in 1915. An onset of tuberculosis

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

, 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

Asthma

Asthma is the common chronic inflammatory disease of the airways characterized by variable and recurring symptoms, reversible airflow obstruction, and bronchospasm. Symptoms include wheezing, coughing, chest tightness, and shortness of breath...

 and precluded outdoor work. This led Fader to turn to still life

Still life

A still life is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which may be either natural or man-made...

, 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. The Buenos Aires community of art galleries organized a 1932 retrospective of 119 works in honor of Fader's 50 ^th birthday, by which time he was too ill to attend.

Fernando Fader died in Ischilín Department

Ischilín Department

Ischilín Department is a department of Córdoba Province in Argentina.The provincial subdivision has a population of about 30,105 inhabitants in an area of 5,123 km², and its capital city is Deán Funes, which is located around 834 km from Capital Federal....

, Córdoba

Córdoba Province (Argentina)

Córdoba is a province of Argentina, located in the center of the country. Neighboring provinces are : Santiago del Estero, Santa Fe, Buenos Aires, La Pampa, San Luis, La Rioja and Catamarca...

at age 52, in 1935. His former home in the rural hamlet of Loza Corral is maintained as a museum.

Museo Castagnino: Fernando Fader

Gallery