Drawing joy The first thing to be decorated with this technique was the public bus. “In order to make it look cheerful”, says a filete*1 artist, trying to explain. And they say that in the 30’s, when drawing patriot insignia (flags, rosettes, badges) was forbidden, a vacant place was left in the filete design, and somebody came up with the idea that El Zorzal, Carlos Gardel, should be in the center of the painting. This was done on thousands of windows, walls and signs and thus, tango and fileteado became associated forever. But none are effect of the other; however they are both result of the same period and the same street landscape. In popular imagination they are mutually involved, they are associated, and it is not just a coincidence. The floreo, that drawing feet make in the characteristic tango step, reproduces a movement similar to the one hands make when painting cornucopias, dragons, little birds and golden edgings around, for example, Gardel, Discépolo or Polaco Goyeneche’s face. The painter Ricardo Gómez said that if tango is a sad feeling to be danced, filete is a happy feeling to be painted. And if he says so! More alive in buses than in museums, this fine stroke joy follows with steady hand the edges of the mirror where a driver looks at himself. In the streets, in a shop window for export, in San Telmo or Abasto, Che Guevara is painted on a rectangular panel, with his beret and his scarf, or Eva Perón in the color era, smiling and shining, surrounded by curved lines, birds and flowers. Anywhere in Buenos Aires, one can find a sign with the word bar in filetado, its relief and shadow project it outwards as if trying to push it from the calligraphy into the city. Should that be the intention? To transcend the plane surfaces, and be part of the urban movement: walk the streets, have a coffee in La Giralda or smoke a ciggy in a cuchitril*2. Fileteado talks to the typical porteño and becomes a level of representation of urban mythology. Meticulous, joyful, impassioned, and precise, the fileteador’s brush works in a little workshop (a little workshop, yes: atelier would be too much sophistication). And with every work, every word, every detail of stroke and color, this worker draws, embellishes and keeps part of the history of our popular art alive.
(*1) Fileteado or filete is a type of artistic drawing, with stylized lines, flowers and plants typically used in Buenos Aires.
(*2) Cuchitril is an old dirty room, in lunfardo (tango language).