Filete.

PAINTING techniques; MODERN painting; ART techniques; ARCE, Martiniano

The article emphasizes the recognition being gained by the filete style of commercial painting as a legitimate art form. Martiniano Arce is considered the most important exponent of Argentina's filete style of popular painting. Arce was the key to the evolution of this style, that was once a purely functional style of commercial painting, into being recognized as a wholly distinctive national style. Filete shares with its music counterpart a link to the legacy of Italian immigrants who flooded into Argentina in the latter part of the nineteenth century. As legend has it, elements of then such popular graphic styles as ornatto Italiano and French rococo were adapted by commercial artists and incorporated into designs and lettering painted on horse-drawn wagons.