Post by Grubb
The final stop on our Sunday trek was Casapueblo down the road from Punta del Este. This jerrybuilt meringue of a house decorates the cliffs that fall from a small jut of land that pokes into the Atlantic. It began being constructed in the late 1950s by Carlos Páez Vilaró and was finished thirty-six years later. Carlos was an Uruguayan artist who modeled the house in Mediterranean cliff hugging style, but he did without previous plans, inviting other artist friends to contribute by helping pay for the rambling house and designing their own rooms. Its thirteen floors now have more than 70 rooms. Built out of whitewashed cement and stucco with no straight lines, it stands out like a whipped cream fantasy garnishing a rocky coast.
The inner workings of this hodgepodge house are a maze of curved hallways and ceramic stairs that, from their cozy confinement, look like they were created for Hobbits.
Carlos was a painter, but, from observing his work on display in a gallery in the house (he liked to paint butterflies, seahorses, and fish), he wasn’t as talented as, say, Picasso who was one of his contributing friends (and certainly didn’t feel diminished by the tight passageways).
A room off of the gallery was devoted to newspaper clippings of Flight 571. Apparently Carlos’ son was on the plane and survived the crash. Carlos claimed to have never given up hope. I feel like there are few places in Uruguay that I could go to that aren’t haunted by this trauma.
Carlos was also a big sun worshipper. Each room in this curvy whitewashed conglomeration has a view of the setting sun. The big moment in our inspection of Casapueblo was the sunset ceremony. At 5:50 PM everyone visiting the house/gallery/cafe collected on the veranda facing west and were requested to remain quiet as we listened to a recording of Carlos voicing a poem he wrote glorifying the sun. It wasn’t a short poem. And Carlos was no Neruda. But it had enough solemnity to encourage people to jostle for a position on the landing and hold up their cell phones to capture the sun dropping behind a peninsular coast in the distance. The sun disappeared as Carlos ended his poem with, “Adios, sol!”
Ella and I agreed that as far as sunsets go this one was underwhelming. Just a bright round burn on the horizon spreading a thin reflection in the water. No crimson colors shading into indigo that a streak of clouds might have accentuated. A small hot glow and then darkness. I’ve seen nuclear explosions that were more conducive to worship, but that’s just me. The crowd on the veranda checked the videos on their phones and seemed satisfied.
As we were walking away post-sunset, Ella commented, “That’s more like it.” Towards the south a trail of grey-tinted orange clouds graced the horizon.
When you said “jerrybuilt meringue idea house” I couldn’t imagine what you’d seen But that describes it perfectly. Wow.
Oops, “… of a house”
Cool building. It reminds me a bit of Gaudi, not in any details but in the flowing style. Gaudi had more ornamentation. I think I like this one better.
The Austrians have their own version of this: Friedensreich Hundertwasser (Austrian visual artist and architect). He has a similarly weird (and colorful) apartment house in Vienna.
But is there a sunset ceremony?
Another fun fact. When the artist died (I think 2014 or 2015), the finances of the estate were pretty bad so the widow (still alive and living in the house currently had to sell off a large portion to be turned into a hotel.