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Casa Proa Álvaro Besa

Location: 595 Álvaro Besa Street - Cerro Alegre

It is located at the end of Álvaro Besa Street. It is a connecting route for the main streets of Cerro Alegre. The building is outstanding for having a cruise-like structure, where two streets with different gradient meet. It was built based on American building techniques. Overall, classic stylistic features stand out, particularly by its halfway terminated cornices and socles, gables and slender openings. The turret and bow window highlight the façade. The internal areas have been organized according to their importance and usage, as well as the access yard and gardens. Lukas’[Renzo Pecchenino (Lukas) sketches made the building famous, and now is part of the collective memory of those who know the work of the artist.

Museo Cielo Abierto

View of the entrance Museo a Cielo Abierto

Museo Cielo Abierto from Valparaíso is a pioneer initiative in Chile and it is composed of 20 wall paintings of several pictorial styles; placed in the foothills of Cerro Bellavista, in the most important port city of Chile. It was inaugurated in 1992 and several well-known artists participated, some of them are world-renowned such as Roberto Matta and Mario Carreño, among others.

History

The beginning of this unique museum goes back to 1969, when a group of students from the Instituto de Arte de la Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (currently PUCV), led by Professor Francisco Méndez Labbé, started doing big paintings on the walls of houses and supportive walls of Cerro Bellavista. Between 1960 and 1973 they gave birth near seventy paintings in diverse locations of the city. At the beginning of the tragic 1973, Nemesio Antúnez –by the time as the director of Museo de Bellas Artes de Santiago- was proposed the idea of calling diverse painters to materialize paintings having in mind the idea of make an artistic walk by the hills of Valparaíso. The military coup in September the 11th forced to postpose the accomplishment of the project which it was not accomplished until 1991 due to an agreement signed between the university and the Municipality of Valparaíso: project that was led by Francisco Méndez Labbé and his disciple-colleague painter Israel Fraiman, first curator and cofounder.

View of Plaza Victoria, Valparaíso

Cerro Bellavista was chosen for building the museum given that, asides from being convenient since it is located downtown and near Plaza Victoria, it has large buttresses and houses around.

Painting in Cerro Bellavista, Ferrari Street, Valparaíso

As Paola Pascual -curator and graphic designer from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (PUCV)- explained “this is important in order to say: well then, mister painter, choose whatever canvas you want”. Moreover, it has the Ascensor Espíritu Santo, which gets you halfway the tour, that is to say, that “the cerro had all the requirement to make it accessible for people. Then, came to life the idea of having a variety of painters and paintings in a diverse area where there live people with such different socioeconomically background, and therefore very different from one another. This resembles a little of what Valparaiso is”.

Sadly, the mural paintings are exposed, not only to the harshness of time, but also to the assaults of hooligans that enjoy scratching them. In order to preserve and restore the paintings, the Taller de America Valparaiso a Cielo Abierto was created in 1994 and was led by Paola Pascual. Here work students from different degrees of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso.

But the situation has gotten worse with some of the mural painting having disappeared under the graffiti stratches and spray.

Graffiti in Valparaíso

Virtually none of them has escaped these attacks. Because of this, the municipality of Valparaiso has taken measures in order to “control the graffiti vandalism that has turned the city into the most scratched of all in Chile” and has designated 30 million Chilean pesos to restore the 29 mural paintings.

The restoration plan ‘will be carried out by well-known painters of the area based on a registry of the condition of each one of the murals that the Universidad Católica de Valparaíso will conduct’ and there is a plan for the community to get involved in the protection of Cerro Bellavista.

Access

The paintings are located in a wide sector of this hill, which creates an art park downhill; it also includes observation points and stairways between the attractive patrimonial architecture of the area.

There are a few options of route:

a) Start from Plaza Victoria and head to the hill down Aldunate Street to then go up the Pasteur stairway.

b) Access through Ascensor Espíritu Santo from its high or lower station (in the lower part, Aldunate Street, behind Ripley store there is a map of all locations of the mural).

View of the Ascensor Espíritu Santo

c) Start from the lower part or higher part of Ferrari Street.

d) You can start from Pasteur and Rudolph promenades, through Hector Calvo Street.

The easiest way is to take the elevator and when you go out, turn left to see all ten murals that are in Rudolph Street, until you get downtown through Ferrari Street. At that point you should take the elevator again but this time go right to see the other ten murals that are throughout Guimera Street. Then you will find stairways in Pasteur Street until you get downtown again. Those who are in good physical condition can walk up the Pasteur stairways to get to the high part of Hector Calvo street, walking by the Guimera Street promenade and Rudolph Street to continue and then get downtown towards Aldunate Street taking Ferrari Street(option A).