Juan Salvatierra, pintor mudo, humilde y autodidacta, deja a sus hijos un misterioso cuadro en herencia: un inmenso mural que ocupa casi cuatro kilómetros de rollos de tela y que pintó en secreto hasta el día de su muerte. Al descubrir que falta una parte de la obra, su hijo Miguel se irá adentrando en los enigmas del pasado del artista en una peripecia que, de Argentina a Uruguay, lo llevará a reconstruir la verdadera historia de su familia y a replantearse su propia vida.

Publicada originalmente en 2008, Salvatierra es una de las novelas más admiradas y traducidas de Mairal. Con precisión, sobriedad y lirismo, el autor de La uruguaya explora sutilmente los lazos entre el pasado y el presente, entre padres e hijos y entre la vida y el arte. Una narración evocadora, cargada de resonancias, sobre la aventura que supone acceder a lo más íntimo de aquellos a quienes mejor creemos conocer.

Salvatierra, pintor mudo por un accidente cuando era niño, deja a sus hijos la herencia de su obra, cuatro kilómetros de pintura donde ha intentado plasmar toda su vida. Los diferentes rollos en los que está dispuesta la obra llevan sus fechas correspondiente. La búsqueda de uno de los rollos en un intento de rescatar y resguardar toda la obra, y con ello, el descubrimiento del padre, es la línea argumental de esta novela de Mairal. Una delicia. ( )

The short, sharp and often beautiful descriptions of the 2 miles of continuous paintings of Juan Salvatierra
may well make readers long for a movie or illustrated book!

As his first two sons eventually come to search for the mysterious missing 1961 roll of canvas, it also becomes a mystery why
they did not immediately move this valuable inheritance into a concrete guarded building.
Fire always loomed as a strong possibility, as did theft.

This obvious choice would also have delivered a different and way less predictable and disappointing ending. ( )

The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra
A charming, imaginative and magical short novel by Pedro Mairal, an Argentine poet and novelist.

Two brothers return to their hometown in Barrancales. Their mission is to find a home for their father’s paintings. A mute caused by a childhood accident his mother apprenticed him to a German painter while his father ignored him.

Salvatierra, as he is known, worked for 40 years at the Post Office but his passion was a giant scroll of painting that memorialized the life he led and the town they came from.

Miguel and Luis travel from Buenos Aires at intermittent times. Their father’s work has been designated a cultural artifact, yet it collects dust in the abandoned shed in which his father painted and hung out with assorted neighborhood characters. The brothers contact museums, one of which, located in Amsterdam expresses an interest in acquiring this unique work for their Latin American wing.

The story unfolds with intrigue and a powerful ending that will be your delight to discover.

Passages:
“Salvatierra painted without any lateral divisions so as to achieve continuity between the different scenes. That was something that obsessed him. He wanted his painting to encapsulate the fluidity of a river, of dreams, the way in which they can transform things in a completely natural way without the change seeming absurd but entirely inevitable, as if he were revealing the violent metamorphosis hidden within each being, thing, or situation.”

“In the canvas from that time there is a slow transition from nocturnal scenes to those with the brightness of morning. First there are lengthily twilight landscapes with black women washing clothes on the riverbank. Salvatierra painted the hour when the first stars are reflected in the water, and everything is beginning to merge into the shadows. In one segment, somebody is striking a match, and in the darkness, you can just make out a woman, who is smiling provocatively from behind the bushes.” ( )

I thought I would love this book, and I did. It's the story of coming to terms with a death, a loss and a discovery. Juan Salvatierra was a mute and an artist; his sole work was a huge painting that he worked on for his entire adult life. When he dies, his son tries to find a single scroll of the painting representing a year of his father's life. What he finds, what he loses and what he finds out roll out in a simple and beautiful story. It turns out sometimes the trees must be gone in order to find the forest.
http://www.bostonbibliophile.com/2015/12/review-missing-year-of-juan-salvatierra... ( )