Norberto Puzzolo received the title Doctor Honoris Causa from the UNR for his career, journalistic, photographic and artistic work.

“It is a great emotion because it comes from the Public University and I feel doubly honored because I do not belong to the academic field,” said the plastic artist and considered that this title, which is the highest awarded by the University, “humanly it is the most important award.” that I received.” The distinction was promoted by the Faculties of Political Science and Humanities and Arts, with the support of the Human Rights Area of ​​the UNR and the Rosario Memory Museum.

“I come from a very humble home where the effort was for the children to study and have a degree. The premise “my son the doctor” was the main phrase to the point that my sister Alcira is a statistician and my brother Rolando is an accountant and doctor. “Three children and three university degrees,” she says ironically but clarifies: “I am from a time when you studied or worked.”

He started working very young, at 15 years old, in a printing press as a “che pibe” where he put together brochures. The owner sent him to study and he did it first with Marcelo Dasso. Then, through his maternal uncle, the painter Anselmo Píccoli, he arrived at the painting and drawing workshop of the renowned Juan Grela. There he met those who would be his colleagues from the Rosario Avant-garde Art Group. They believed that art should not be in museums but on the street, they disowned institutions and warned “it is always time not to be complicit.”

With this movement he began his journey by being the first exhibitor of the Experimental Art Series. In 1968 they carried out “Tucumán Arde”, a collective and multidisciplinary work to show what was happening in this province with the closure of numerous sugar mills, great poverty, unemployment, malnutrition, infant mortality and school dropouts. It is one of the most emblematic artistic and political experiences in the history of the country and Latin America and that continues to generate repercussions and research work to this day.

During the dictatorship he stopped working and returned to democracy with a work linked to memory such as the series “No more”, an allegory to the moments of repression. In the 80s, his production began to acquire unique features, highlighting portraits of artists, self-portraits and still lifes.

“Evidencias” from 2010 is one of the founding works of the headquarters of the Rosario Memory Museum. It is an installation in progress that expresses the tireless search for children expropriated from their parents during state terrorism in our country. It is made up of two boards that contain more than two hundred pieces that in a playful sense make up a large puzzle, each piece representing each of the children who were taken from their families during the dictatorship.

“Every year we move the cards from one place to another when the grandchildren recover,” he explains and adds: “I always say that this work does not belong to me, that it belongs to the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo because the content is so strong that “We had to find a way to accompany it.” In this sense he was not interested in metaphorizing but rather showing something characteristic of children, like a game.

Regarding his photographs, the ones he took as a photojournalist for the magazines “Noticias” and “El mundo” stand out, recording historical moments that happened in the region such as the act of the survivors of the Trelew Massacre at the National Flag Monument. in 1973, the wake and farewell of the Peronist militant Costantino Razetti and the series he made of “El Villazo” in 1974 when the town of Villa Constitución participated in days of struggle and mobilization of workers from the metallurgical industrial plants that carried out the takeover massive factories.

Puzzolo comments that a few years ago the curator Rodrigo Alonso insisted that he incorporate those photos into an exhibition, but that at first he did not want to do so because there were many colleagues who were no longer here, some of whom were murdered in a dramatic way, and "he did not want to achieve prestige with people." "They deserve my respect."

Furthermore, it was a very decimated archive. He explains that in the 70s it was difficult to send photos to Buenos Aires. You had to send a quick copy or the roll directly on a plane that left in the afternoon. Only if there was a little more time, he could develop them and keep a negative.

Finally, with those photos that remained, the ESMA memory archive was formed and today he is very grateful because they became public use and in turn filled the void of those dark years in which Puzzolo believed that he had done nothing . “Feeling that this served as a document of an era already has another value,” he says and mentions his emblematic photo “Attack on the Iberia bar” located in front of the Faculty of Philosophy and a meeting point for the left of the time, where you can see the stained glass window chipped and with a bullet hole.

Political compromise

“The experience of the first years of life marks one and “Tucumán Arde” marked me in art,” he says. “I always tried to have a certain coherence, to move with certain latitudes.” He believes that because of his work and the place where his works are exhibited, he is identified as an artist with political commitment.

He says that if he makes large landscapes with an empty chair and exhibits them in the Parque de la Memoria in Buenos Aires, they will undoubtedly have a connotation. “Of course they are designed to look a certain way but the place also gives meaning to the work.”

When you do a job you think more about what you don't want to be seen than what you want to be seen. “I never show the card I have up my sleeve because every work is polysemic. Each one will see through their own knowledge, knowledge, experience and that perspective of the other, which may be different or find a new point in the work, enriches it.”

As an example, he mentions that he made some large forests with fires that go out and that can be identified with a lot of things that go out. “I never say where the work came from but it could be self-referential because I am a big man. However, a young girl can interpret that a wind appears on that fire and lights it. That look that I had not taken into account is very enriching,” she explains. “The work is made by an author but is completed with the gaze of the other. If no one sees it, the work does not work.”

Consider that it is very difficult to define what art is. “I think it is a way to make this unavoidable path we have towards death more bearable. It is a way to sublimate. That happens to me. I sublimate through art. Beyond that one proposes a reflection, a search for some answers.”

Teacher

Puzzolo was a Professor of Professional Practice in the Photography major at the Higher Institute of Technical Education No. 18 in the province of Santa Fe. The students went to his photography studio once a week and carried out professional practices. “I never studied, I was a teacher out of suitability,” he clarifies.

He told the students that he was passing on to them what had worked for him but that each one had to do their own search, to make an effort to find new things. And he insisted on “giving everything you can, making an effort and working as hard as possible so that if it's your turn, your work has some value.”

“I have to admit that I am privileged to find out that this existed and to be able to do the work that I like,” he acknowledges and reflects, “Today, how many kids can know about this if they don't have the minimum conditions?”

Due to a personal decision, he never sent his works to compete in prizes or salons. “I believe that one work does not deserve a prize over another, that everyone does what they want, the best they can,” she says. In any case, he received different awards throughout these years and his works are found in institutions and collections in Argentina and abroad. They can be seen in their website.

The National Museum of Fine Arts awarded him the 2001 Leonardo Prize for his career in photography. In 2002 she received the Konex award, a diploma of merit in photography. In 2009 the Argentine Association of Art Critics gave him the award for lifetime achievement of a photographer. In 2021 he received the National Award for Artistic Career, a recognition granted by the Ministry of Culture of the Nation for having “contributed decisive contributions to the art of the Argentine Republic.” Today, at 75 years old, he continues to display his art. The last time from the town of Timbúes, very close to Rosario.

Journalist: Victoria Arrabal/Photographer: Karen Roeschlin