Becket, November 28, 2013
As far as I know, Horacio Coppola was the only Argentinean
student at the Bauhaus. He was a pupil of the legendary photographer and
teacher Walter Peterhans during the last years of the school, around 1932, when
it was already in Berlin and under the direction of Mies van der Rohe.
When Coppola came back to Buenos Aires in 1936, the city was
celebrating the 400th anniversary of its first foundation and offered the young
photographer a perfect modern subject. In one of his best know photographs, he
shows the city at night, with the "Calle Corrientes" as a gash of
electric light cutting through the center of the image and culminating in the
Obelisco, the monument at the intersection between Corrientes and 9 de Julio that had been finished only months earlier. In the foreground Coppola
places the SAFICO Building, a 26-story modern skyscraper finished in 1934. Don't
you think that Hugh Ferriss would have been blown away by the SAFICO? I'm no
sure but I think that the photo must have been taken from the top of the COMEGA
Building, another modern skyscraper finished in 1934 and located two blocks to
the east.
In Coppola's photo, the widening of Corrientes street is
almost complete, ready to turn into "Avenida Corrientes", one of the several thoroughfares opened at the time that introduced the speed of the car into
the historic grid of Buenos Aires.
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