Drawing has often been considered a minor branch or genre of painting, or a preparatory instrument for it with little value in itself.

Great artists have rectified that idea, making drawing an expression with a light of its own and unique values.

Among others, let us recall: Rembrandt’s sketches in pen, brush, India ink, and wash. Goya’s Caprichos, comprising 80 prints made in a mixed technique of etching, aquatint, drypoint, and burin. Van Gogh’s masterful pen drawings from 1888 to 1890. Also the formidable drawings and posters of Henri de Toulouse Lautrec. Picasso’s sketchbooks, many of which were preparatory studies for his paintings and sculptures, while others possess an autonomy of their own, revealing an intimate and personal artistic vision. Closer to home, the drawings of Rafael Barradas and Carlos Alonso affirm the concept of the autonomy of drawing in relation to other expressions.

Let us also keep in mind other lines of work in the nearby contributions of Saúl Steinberg, Jacques de Loustal, Jacques Tardi, Hugo Pratt, Menchi Sabat, and Mario Buela, among other practitioners. In architecture, the sketch has long been —from Michelangelo and Piranessi to Le Corbusier and Vilamajó— the effective tool that generates the project, even in the present day, marked by the colossal development of information technology, which has revolutionized the practice and craft of architecture.

Luis Díaz and Arturo Villaamil are part of this tradition of draftsmen and artists. Both are dear personal friends, one Platense and the other Celeste-Bretón, one a visceral fan of Gimnasia y Esgrima de La Plata and the other a die-hard Bolso-Tricolor. Both committed to their circumstances and their time. Both prominent architects. Both talented draftsmen, and that is where this story begins. As I write these lines they have not yet met, and this exhibition opens the dialogue through their work.