Villa Ocampo in Argentina

 Villa Ocampo was also the mythical home of Victoria Ocampo in San Isidro, a haven of international thinkers and the resting place of some of the spirits of the twentieth century.



The mansion was originally the holiday home of the family and then became the fifth weekend, ended up becoming the permanent residence of Victoria into the 40s.

Home to a unique cultural project in Spain and Latin America, Villa Ocampo has, beyond its architectural importance, furniture and library, a fundamental historical significance because for half a century, was home to some of the leading makers of twentieth century. Renowned Argentine intellectuals and foreigners as Graham Greene, Roger Caillois, Waldo Frank, Alfonso Reyes, Albert Camus, André Malraux, Aldous Huxley, Le Corbusier, Octavio Paz, Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda, Maurice Ravel, Walter Gropius and Jorge Luis Borges, among Others visited Villa Victoria Ocampo and there between lectures, discussions and readings fermented some important ideas and projects of its time. In this international forum of thought was Villa Ocampo, Victoria and her group-which at times evokes the atmosphere of London's Bloomsbury Group, fought for the possibility of a liberal in a time when Latin American military governments reeling pulled by and depressions.

Invited by Victoria, passed through Villa Ocampo worldwide cultural personalities: Tagore, Stravinsky, who wrote a play for Victoria and opened in his home-Ortega y Gasset, Roger Caillois, who spent years in our country and led the library's important South croix du Gallimard, and others. These were years of intense cultural projects. And the Villa Ocampo was born.

If anything highlights the collection of Villa Ocampo is the only mark he knew to Victoria Ocampo, his interest in European avant-garde of the early twentieth century, the need to promote a radical change in art, but without disregarding the past On the contrary, Victoria retained and put in value the nineteenth century pieces inherited from her family. So Villa Ocampo is a unique example of dialogue collection where two centuries in harmony and where the possibility of communication (before breaking) between two ways of seeing and understanding art, able to live in harmony. The collection includes a tapestry Myrbor the house on an original by Pablo Picasso, bought in Paris in 1929, which originally was used as a carpet, but while his owner preferred to protect careless smokers placing it on the wall. Other important works are two portraits of Prilidiano Pueyrredón-el don de Ocampo and José Manuel González, great-grandfather of Victoria and prominent politician, and his wife Clara Lozano, an old woman's head in white marble copy of an original Greek, bought at the Paris Exhibition in 1913 and an oil painting of Pedro Figari painted 1925 portraits made in drypoint by Paul Helleu in 1909 (great portrait of the belle époque and who left the last image in Proust) and on a table, a small bronze in the Prince Troubetzkoy captured the charm of the lady of the house wrapped in a layer of chinchilla. An oil on canvas by Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret shows a splendid Victoria, clad in a white dress and a dark coat over his shoulders. It has a red rose pinned to his belt and a book in his right hand. The photograph collection comprises over 200 pieces, including a portrait of Graham Green's photographer Yousuf Karsh, one of Pierre Drieu La Rochelle taken by Man Ray, portraits of Igor Stravinsky, Virginia Woolf and Charles Chaplin dedicated to Victoria, daguerreotypes and a series stereoscopic photographs depicting an unrecognizable from Buenos Aires early twentieth century.

"Despite feeling citizen of the world was deeply rooted in my sanisidrenses ravines," wrote Victoria in 1976 recalling the garden of Villa Ocampo, daily walks among the honeysuckle scented trails and quiet reading in the shade of trees. The original layout of the garden of Villa Ocampo was, like the house, the work of Don Manuel Ocampo. But then the garden stretched from Libertador Avenue to the Rio de la Plata. At that originally lush green space of 15 hectares and 10,500 square feet today and almost half in Canyon, which inspired poets and musicians but above all grew up in Victoria, extending old trees, giant ombúes, oaks, and Araucaria. At that time there was a huge paradise planted by Victoria herself who used to say build a bouquet with lilac flowers pinned to the lapel of his tailored suits. Love the wall, eucalyptus, magnolias, a lemon verbena is used to make tea for her sister Angelica, Cape jasmine, and what was the pride of Victoria, a thumbergia gardenia fragrant flowers such as daisies that perfume the air, grow majestic . When Victoria had not yet moved to Villa Ocampo and lived in his apartment on Brazil Street near Julian Martinez, used to cut the thumbergias of Villa Ocampo in large quantities, we put wet cotton stalks, and wrapped to go: " arrived, triumphantly, with that burden on our house. Then the rooms smelled like a garden. "

The Imperial Household staircase linking the back row, paired columns and balusters, with the garden that extends behind the house and down into the canyons. In its center a circular fountain on axis with the ladder, throw water with the nonchalance of someone who eternal nap. On either side of the house, among trees, creeping plants and shrubs, is preserved an ancient well of wrought iron and a marble statue with the figure of a woman. To the east, on the edge of the gorge a concrete octagonal gazebo (although the columns and railings simulate tree trunks) on the river rises. Victoria grew up front and the landscape:

"In my ravines of San Isidro, the river was an extension of something else: the grass, mud, prolonging my eyes of myself, no more important than my Transplants sweeping the Cuaderno San Martín at the time of dictation" , wrote in 1965 in a note published in the newspaper La Prensa.

After the death of his father inherited Villa Victoria Ocampo and set about renovating. It eliminated the tennis court and changed the clay ground coarse gravel. He planted native species, favoring white flowers, fruit, and odors. Two Santa Ritas on the back row and on one side of the house, then decorate the house splendor. And there were growing dahlias were his pride, "Did you see something like this in some other garden? asked visitors to Victoria. They say that nobody would dare to contradict.

The carriage road that ran down the ravine is now cut by a street and over the years has been transformed into a green tunnel, with the cobblestones covered with brush and light filtering through the branches. Victoria grew that nature paradise accompanied by his travels in Europe and filled her with longing: "what nostalgia! Why travel if one carries within the seeds of all the beauty of the world? .. When I think that there is summer, the garden is full of flowers, peaches and the sky is blue, I feel miserable, outcast. " In an enormous amount of writing, Victoria testified to his love and true communion with nature.