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Lawyer, politician and journalist, he was born in Montevideo in 1861. Figari was a member of the Uruguayan Parliament as well as Director of the National School of Arts and Crafts in Montevideo. Figari traveled throughout Europe in the 1890s after receiving his law degree. Later he will live in Paris, from 1925 to 1933.

Although he excels as a talented artist, he never studied art as a child but only in adulthood with the painter Godofredo Sommavilla (1850-1944). He wrote several books, both art and law.

Pedro Figari’s story is very curious. He started painting late, at the age of 60, the age at which people retire, and after a successful career as a lawyer, intellectual judge, journalist pedagogue, politician and philosopher, he decided indulge in painting. In 1921 he abandoned all these activities and devoted himself to art, although he had a previous career as a draftsman and painter, little known at the time. Everything he did and previously thought he dumped into his painting. At that time he moved to Buenos Aires where he remained for four years. In 1930 Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) wrote a book about Figari. During his stay in Argentina, Figari works especially on cardboard, and is also influenced by the work of Vuillard and Bonnard. This effect can be seen in his paintings of gauchos and the Pampas landscape.

From 1925 onwards he remained in Paris for eight years. There, in his workshop he is visited by famous artists and intellectuals of the moment. Figari perfectly separated the two times of the artists’ works: creation and production.

At the end of his days, Figari was appointed Art Counselor at the Ministry of Public Education.

He painted scenes that recreate the historical and cultural past of regional and American identity.

Their cards show black candomberos, gauchos, pampas and ombúes, colonial courtyards, bowling players. He took up certain formal conquests of Impressionism and transformed them into a personal style of which no other influences are recognized.

His works are represented in the salons of the Naval League, of the Ministry of Public Works; from the Directorate of the Navy, the Provincial Museum of Fine Arts of La Plata, and the Pedro de Mendoza in Buenos Aires.

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