William Shakespeare, La tempestad, Buenos Aires, Biblioteca Nacional, 1979.
Drama
El Rey Salomón (drama bíblico en tres actos), Buenos Aires, Marchand Editorial, 1980.
Quotes
Prose
On the importance of culture
The time has come when it must be acknowledged that art and thought are more than just a luxury: they are the abstract symbol of a community’s deepest longings.
We should be careful not to raise economic and social issues above the level where they naturally belong for when that happens, we shall have succumbed to the pathetic idolatry of the golden calf.
We are pained not so much by the ignorance of those who cannot read, as by the ignorance of those who cannot see.
Our enemy is not man but stupidity.
I can see no higher privilege for a society than that of having the intellectual and the poet in its midst.
Societies will not tolerate a state of spiritual vacuum.
On the cultural identity and importance of Latin America
The great nations of Spain and Portugal, England and Scotland, Ireland and other European countries have given being to our communities and, happily for Latin America, in combination with the blood of the native Indian peoples which runs through our veins, sustaining and nourishing us.
Latin America is underdeveloped economically. Latin America is not underdeveloped culturally.
In the realm of creative achievement, many among the best artists, composers, writers and intellectuals of today are to be found in Latin America.
On the functions of art
The purpose of art and thought is to reveal to man his true essence putting him face to face with his deeper self.
Art is like a mirror and every man reacts to a work of art according to what he himself is.
Very often what art reveals to man is something he would prefer not to see; that explains why art has so many detractors.
On the responsibilities of artists and intellectuals
The poet must be a part of the world but he cannot be its creature.
I cannot agree to reduce or limit the creative act to the needs and levels of sociological considerations.
A poet is neither a politician nor an economist nor a sociologist. The intellectual, the artist and the creative mind does not adhere to this or that partial aspect of man but to man himself.
The great legacies of any culture - whether their creators be called Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Kafka or Picasso - move us today because they present man with his problems, his pains and his joys, which are far more lasting than his social, political or economic condition.
Those who have pledged themselves to the major revolution of the spirit must firmly refuse the compromise of minor revolutions and the distraction of partial goals.
On Communism in Latin America
The Marxist alternative might well carry out a revolution, as in Cuba, but it would never be our own and would thus bring all the frustration that incompatibility implies.
Take away the images of the Saints and you will get the image of Lenin in no time.
Communism overruns any country which does not possess its own mystique.
(The above quotes are all excerpts from Squirru’s addresses delivered at the Panamerican Union in Washington D.C. between 1963 and 1964, which can be found in their entirety in The Challenge of the New Man. A cultural approach to the Latin American scene, Washington D.C., Pan American Union, 1964.)
Books on Rafael Squirru
Augusto Rodríguez Larreta, El Arte y Rafael Squirru. Ediciones del Hombre Nuevo, Buenos Aires 1951
Marta Campomar, Rafael Squirru - ojo crítico y palabra creadora. Ediciones de arte Gaglianone, Buenos Aires 1997.
Eloisa Squirru, Tan Rafael Squirru!, Ediciones El Elefante Blanco, Buenos Aires 2008.
Distinctions
Doctor Honoris Causa in Humanities, University of Neuquén, Argentina
Doctor Honoris Causa in Humanities, University of Morón, Argentina
Konex Platinum Award in Visual Arts, Konex Foundation, Buenos Aires
Gratia Artis Prize of the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes, Argentina
Honorary Member of The Association of The Corcoran Gallery
Consultant Member of the CARI (Consejo Argentino Relaciones Internacionales) of Buenos Aires
Honorary Member of the Miguel Lillo Foundation, San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina
Honorary Member of the Academia de Bellas Artes of Chile
