Actually, there isn't a specific moment when I discovered myself as an artist. It's timeless. Since I was a child, I always drew, I was always researching, seeking, studying. When I was 10, my mother gifted me my first book on cartoon drawing because she saw I was drawing TV or comic characters. From there, I think my vocation as a future artist or draftsman awakened. At that time, there was no internet, no videos, none of that. You had to take courses, work, study, read many books, and that's what I dedicated myself to. I had a completely self-taught education, where I read books, was interested in art, in how to solve certain drawing or painting situations. Later on, as a young man, I started studying sculpture, advertising drawing, serigraphy (which is one of the techniques I use the most), and lately watercolor. I studied at the Pedro Figari School of Arts and Crafts, and later I studied Visual Communication and Drawing Teaching. Currently, I have taken watercolor workshops with Pito Campos and Carlos Astramskas.
I believe that art is always a tool through which one has something to say. One has something to reflect on. That's why one can study the technique of certain artistic forms, like watercolor, and know what brushstroke to use, what colors to employ, what contrasts, what composition, everything that is in the theoretical framework. But for me, art must communicate things, it must make people reflect, it must move feelings and even provide peace and tranquility, creating a state in the viewer. One can create a drawing that is technically perfect, but that doesn't convey anything. However, when we manage to move the viewer, when we get them to identify with what they see, that's when things change and that's the most important thing for me. Each of my paintings must convey something, must tell a story, must make people reflect on certain situations. From there, feedback is formed and one can dialogue with the viewer through the work as a tool. As for my references, I studied advertising drawing, I developed in serigraphy, and my references have been artists like Shepard Fairey, Andy Warhol, who were related to advertising, stencil, and serigraphy. Lately, I have been exploring the work of watercolorists like Álvaro Castagnet and Juan Saturio, people who really express a lot through watercolor, and that's what I try to convey in my work.
What mainly motivates me are the themes. Addressing a theme implies a study, an investigation, immersing oneself in that particular theme. I can't simply base myself on saying "I liked this photo and I'm going to reproduce it," because that would be superficial. At the time of my first exhibition in 2019, I was very committed to veganism. I wanted to denounce animal abuse and raise awareness among people through my drawings and paintings. The exhibition was called "Tinta Negra" (Black Ink) and combined watercolor and Chinese ink. I managed to create expressive works, developing characters and raising awareness about animal abuse. Now, with watercolor, I'm exploring the theme of boats. Moving to the coast, I am very close to the sea and artisanal fishing. I want my paintings to reflect the lives of fishermen, their sacrifice, effort, and dedication. I want to convey the uncertainty of going out to sea and not finding anything, or the uncertainty of not knowing when you will return. That's why the boat watercolors are solitary, silent, with stormy or threatening skies. I want to motivate the viewer to feel the latent danger, the loneliness, or a certain poverty. What motivates me are the themes. Perhaps in the future, I will be interested in homelessness, and then I would research how those people live on the streets, what they do. My motivation goes beyond simply reflecting something I liked; it focuses on themes and generating reflection.
Artistic style is a constant search, isn't it? When one discovers their own style, I believe they reach the climax of art, don't they? One can look at a painting and say, "Ah, this work is by such an artist, this one is by another, this belongs to so-and-so, this one is by so-and-so." That's something only the great geniuses do. What one is doing is discovering techniques, trying to work and specialize in them so that they are authentic, credible, and expressive. Hopefully one day, someone will see my boat paintings and say, "That's a work by Archetti," but it's a very precise search and I'm not sure I've reached it yet. The idea is to keep working, keep researching, and see how far I can develop my own style. I think it's the great artists who really create styles. I don't consider myself one of them yet. Regarding techniques, serigraphy led me to make mass productions, to work with paper, paints, and inks, which is fantastic. But when people see the final result of serigraphy, they think it's just passing a spatula, isn't it? But they don't see the complete process, the work in the photographic laboratory to create the original matrix and then stamp it. It's like they see the birth but not the pregnancy. All that previous process is the pregnancy, it's the gestation of the work. There's a whole process behind to achieve the final work. As for me, being very anxious, I discovered watercolor. I had experimented with it before, but I realized I knew nothing about watercolors. I started studying it in 2020 and found a technique that is quick and expressive, and that satisfies my anxiety. If I'm clear about what I want to do, I can finish a work in a single day. That captivated me because it's not like oil or acrylic, which take weeks or months, but watercolor is more agile. That's what really attracted me to continue researching in this technique.
What really interests me is that people receive something from my works, that they reflect on them, that they put themselves in the place of what I'm denouncing and that my works transmit some feeling to them, regardless of what it is: whether it's hatred, sadness, joy, tranquility, or inner peace. If I manage to convey some feeling, I feel satisfied because it means that the work has managed to establish a connection between the viewer and the artist. I think the real challenge lies in this. Despite being full of motivations and deciding to work on certain themes or make denunciations, the true essence lies in how to achieve it, how to make the work really contain that theme and provoke reflection and concern. There's a quote from Bansky that says that art has to unsettle the calm and reassure the disturbed. That's why I always seek to provoke that emotion, to generate that disturbance. Everything else is a search for technique, for how to achieve certain effects, and it's done through trial and error.
My first solo exhibition, which took place in 2019 just before the pandemic, revolved around the theme of animals, which turned out to be very motivating, unsettling, and disturbing. It was a moment of intense development both in technique and in theme. The exhibition took place at the Paseo del Prado, an old hotel whose peeling walls provided a somewhat eerie and denunciatory atmosphere, which fit
