of the right contacts and plunging on time in the theoretical bargains of the season launched by the critics. For this ill-defined riffraff, the profile of a man whose everyday work is subject to the law of diamond hardness, must undoubtedly represent an unbearable and devastating mirror, since all possibility of identification is out of the question, as if it were a cross between two genetically incompatible species. However, Iglesias has done nothing but submit his natural talents to the voluntary and constant practice of a discipline. Merely that. But no less than that either.

Educated at the Belgrano and Pueyrredon Schools of Art, his training was rounded off with a prominent career as a print media graphic designer in Buenos Aires. This rich experience reinforced the great sense of synthesis he had unconsciously learned as a child from frequent contact with comic strips, including cartoonists such as the Dante Quinterno of Patoruzito and the Alberto Breccia of Vito Nervio. All of this is complemented by the expressionist vestiges repeatedly seen in his work (although Rafael Squirru once said that "the famous German expressionism seems shy when contrasted to Iglesias Brickles's results") -vestiges of Otto Dix or Max Beckmann in particular, who the artist claims to have been his mentors along with Giorgio De Chirico, Edward Hopper, Antonio Berni, and Lino Enea Spilimbergo, apart from his much admired teacher Aida Carballo.

Those Platonic or torrid influences -derived from contradictory aesthetics and transmuted into hybrid practices- have macerated for a long time and turned into something new: his own, non-transferable way of drawing the functional map of an unknown geography. Exactly twenty years ago, Eduardo demarcated his territory: "I want my engravings to be Argentinean. Even if they are treated as comic strips, they cannot represent scenes from another country or another place. [...j We must put it through our heads once and for all that this is our world and we need to make the most of it with the tools we have at hand and stop hoping for impossible conditions". All evidence indicates that this concise, albeit ambitious, plan was more than accomplished, and that it could be safeguarded against the plague of time and doubt.
We deem it pointless to point out that this is a path that promises -and offers- more thorns than roses. He who, in the colorless, odorless, and insipid universe of international lack of differentiation, chooses to plant his tree in a landscape of precise perimeter and tradition is exposed to immediate questioning by the native epigones of the Center. But, as far as these disputes are concerned, it is best to resort to the expert opinion of Adolfo Colombres: "That is why modernism -which greatly aided European expansion- and especially post-modernism, attempt to abolish the physical place, the territory, as a substratum of thought and art. With it removed, the identities that were conceived in it are dissolved, fragmented as a broken mirror, and the collective subjects fall into inertia and uncertainty, unable to decide on a direction. Under this acid rain, the emancipating springs of art weaken and even rust completely".

To end this words circularly, let us quote once again maestro Squirru, whose sensitive and trained eye is probably the one that has more thoroughly explored our artist's work: "Iglesias Brickles's career has earned him recognition. Because of the soundness of his work, I dare say he is ready for international confrontations, and I base myself on the same criterion I adopted when I sent the sculptor Alicia Penalba to San Pablo and Berni to Venice, where they received the highest awards. Iglesias would definitely capture the attention of any audience".

For now, his work of over two decades is today displayed in this book and in the great retrospective exhibition held by the Museo Sivori, and will surely travel to other prestigious galleries of the country. It shall be a journey Eduardo will definitely like. A visit to the different regions of a contrasted and multifarious Argentina, which will be an initiation for many, and a moment of recognition for others. But maybe, and most importantly, it could become a trigger. Something to poke the ever uncertain fire of memory in order to expose us to the demands of other dimensions, to encourage us to day-dream.

Buenos Aires, Winter of 2005

Notes
1. Oil on woodcut. T.N.
2. Jose Maria Gatica and Carlos MonzOn. Argentinean boxers. T.N.