Sameer Makarius was born in Cairo in 1924. In 1933, he immigrated with his family to Berlin. At the age of ten, his father gifted him a camera, marking the beginning of his journey with photography. Following the outbreak of the Second World War, in 1940, they moved to Budapest, where he completed his secondary education, began his artistic training, and connected with the protagonists of the local avant-garde. In 1946, he embarked on his return to Egypt with a prior stop in Zurich. There, he organized an exhibition of Hungarian modern art with the support of Max Bill. Back in Cairo, he worked as a decorative artist for advertising and also for an architecture and construction studio.
His artistic work arrived in the Río de La Plata a few years before he did, through his partner Eva Reiner, who was already living in Argentina with her family. In 1948, she lent one of his works for the MADI art exhibition organized in the workshop of the German sculptor Martin Blaszko. After marrying Eva in Egypt in 1952, they traveled together to Paris, where they worked as pattern designers. They finally arrived in Buenos Aires in April 1953, a city that would become their permanent residence. His migratory journey was marked by the drama of war. At the same time, during these displacements, Makarius built a network of relationships around photography, visual arts, and architecture that allowed him to unfold his work in various territories and formats.
Part of that network was activated after he arrived in Buenos Aires, leading him to Mendoza to participate in the Feria de América in 1954. The exhibition was scheduled during the second Peronist government with a dual purpose: on the one hand, to showcase the advances of industrial development in Argentina, and on the other hand, to stage an idea of America based on the unity of Latin American peoples [1]. The overall organization was led by the industrialist Iván Bacsinszky [2], while the architecture and planning of the event were in the hands of architects César Jannello and Gerardo Clusellas. Although both came from Buenos Aires, the former had settled in Mendoza in the late 1940s to work as a professor of Scenography at the Academy of Fine Arts and later as the Director of the School of Ceramics at the National University of Cuyo. In contrast, Clusellas continued his professional activities in the Federal Capital as a member of the OAM studio [3]. Jannello also invited the artist Tomás Maldonado to develop the visual identity of the exhibition, of which he ultimately only designed the graphic module. Later, local artist René Barbuy took charge of turning it into an extensive system applied to signage, and brochures, among other pieces and objects. It is not clear exactly how Makarius arrived, but his time in Mendoza was documented in the Nueva Visión magazine, affiliated with the organizing group, where some of the photographs he took at the event were published [4]. Additionally, he participated as a decorative artist, designing the stand for the "La Cuerina" company and a combined music and bar furniture piece for another client [5].
Shortly before the seventieth anniversary of the inauguration of the Fair, the Municipal Museum of Modern Art in Mendoza recalls the event in the exhibition "En el futuro esto ya pasó. Makarius en Mendoza," curated by Wustavo Quiroga. The selection of photographs recovers some views of the best pavilions. Among them stands out the pavilion of the Republic of Chile, whose vaulted structure based on a wooden grid surprised with precision in its technical execution. On the other hand, the provincial pavilions of San Juan and Mendoza adhered to the more understated Miesian lines that dominated most of the ensemble. Pavilions such as those of the Metalúrgicos Luis Pescarmona Workshops, Cinzano, and Federación Textiles Argentinos, representing some of the most thriving sectors of the industry at that time, presented more vibrant proposals characteristic of advertising architecture. Representing the national government, various ministries, such as Public Works and Agriculture and Livestock - among others - also had their exhibition spaces, as did public educational institutions like the National University of Cuyo.
Makarius's photographs offer different types of records of the event. Some, such as the dance floor on the lake island, allow for the observation of these spaces being inhabited by users, such as musicians and dancers in motion. Others focus on the scenic setups of some stands, like those of textiles and fabrics. The rest concentrate on the architecture of the pavilions, with their modular structures and prefabricated elements. Among the latter, it is worth highlighting the series dedicated to the Allegorical Tower and the one of the MOP Pavilion. Both constructions are also represented in the exhibition by two models located in the center of the room.
The Tower was designed by Jannello and Clusellas as a work of sculptural architecture, located at the entrance of Parque San Martín, between the Caballitos de Marly. It was constructed based on a metal framing system that gave it a light and transparent appearance. The central structure, fifty meters in height, was surrounded by five cubes arranged in a spiral. Inside each cube, two pyramids connected at the vertex were placed, made of metal mesh painted in red and white, emulating the graphic module conceived by Maldonado. At night, the structure was illuminated through a light system synchronized with an electroacoustic music piece composed by Mauricio Kagel, combining instrumental passages with industrial sounds. Through the Tower, its authors reformulated the idea of a monument in a modern key. Additionally, they developed a proposal for the integration of the arts (architecture, sculpture, and music) that engaged with the aesthetic debates of the post-war period.
The Pavilion 24 occupied by the Ministry of Public Works consists of two volumes, one in the shape of a rectangular parallelepiped and another with a circular floor plan, interconnected and linked to the exterior through ramps and stairs. Similar to the tower, the building stood out for its structural approach and technical execution, which simultaneously served as its main aesthetic attributes. This construction is the only vestige that survived the Fair and remained standing, although its use has changed [6]. Thanks to the efforts of a group of architects and designers led by Quiroga, the building was recently declared of heritage interest and is being prepared for restoration. On the other hand, the collective is working on the reissue of the book "Feria de América: vanguardia invisible" [7], incorporating new sources and archival materials found in the last decade, after its initial publication. Additionally, they propose to reconstruct the Allegorical Tower as part of the celebrations for the seventieth anniversary of the event.
Makarius's exhibition is part of this series of initiatives that seek to recover the modernizing legacy of the Feria de América in broader terms. At the same time, it invites a deeper exploration of a figure recognized in the field of photography but less explored from the perspective of the history of architecture and design. Both the visual arts and architecture, as well as the city, had a relevant and sustained presence throughout his career: as a designer, he worked for firms like Churba; as a photographer, he documented the construction of buildings such as the Siam Di Tella plant (1959-1960), collaborated with Clorindo Testa, and captured the building of the Rudolf Steiner School (1961), the first Waldorf school in Argentina. His trajectory speaks to the artistic and intellectual networks that were woven in the aftermath of the Second World War when America became a refuge and a future horizon for Western culture.
About the author
Cecilia Durán is an architect and holds a Master's degree in the History and Culture of Architecture and the City. Her thesis, "Arquitectura como arte público" (Architecture as Public Art), was published as a book in 2020. She is a member of the Laboratory of Space, Technology, and Culture at the National University of Quilmes.
Notes
[1] The countries represented in the competition with their own pavilions were Paraguay, Brazil, and Chile. The rest of the participating Latin American countries gathered in Pavilion 23, including Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, and Mexico.
[2] Of Hungarian origin, Bacsinszky had experience in organizing exhibitions based on his work for the company Tungsram in his home country. In 1933, he migrated to South America, first to Buenos Aires and then to Mendoza, where he founded the company Only SA dedicated to furniture production (Quiroga, 2012).
[3] The Organization of Modern Architecture, created in 1948, brought together a group of young Argentine architects such as Horacio Baliero, Juan Manuel Borthagaray, Francisco Bullrich, Alicia Cazzaniga, Gerardo Clusellas, Carmen Córdova, Jorge Grisetti, among others. The group established relationships with Tomás Maldonado and the artists of the Concrete Art Association "Invention," with whom they collaborated in the creation of the magazine Nueva Visión (1951) and later the homonymous publishing house in the mid-1950s. In addition to their architectural projects, they also ventured into the design of furniture and objects (Liernur, 2004).
[4] “Información. La Feria de América”, Nueva Visión, 6, 1955, pp. 30-34.
[5] Information provided by his daughter, Leila Makarius, in conversation with the author.
[6] For many years it served as a gymnasium for police personnel.
[7] The book, the result of a collective research work, was published in 2012 by the Fundación del Interior.
