RAMOS CATALAN (1888-1961)
Fitz Roy / Cerro Chalten (3,405m- 11, 171 ft)
Chile - Argentina border
Fitz Roy / Cerro Chalten (3,405m- 11, 171 ft) is a mountain located near El Chaltèn village, in the Southern Patagonian Ice Field in Patagonia, on the border between Argentina and Chile. First climbed in 1952 by French alpinists Lionel Terray and Guido Magnone, " The Fitz Roy " remains among the most technically challenging mountains for mountaineers on Earth. Mount Fitz Roy is the basis for the Patagonia clothing logo following Yvon Chouinard's ascent and subsequent film in 1968.
Argentine explorer Francisco Moreno first saw the mountain on 2 March 1877. He named it Fitz Roy, in honour of Robert FitzRoy, who, as captain of the HMS Beagle had travelled up the Santa Cruz River in 1834 and charted large parts of the Patagonian coast.
Cerro is a Spanish word meaning mountain, while Chaltèn comes from a Tehuelche (Aonikenk) word meaning "smoking mountain", due to a cloud that usually forms around the mountain's peak. Fitz Roy, however, was only one of a number of peaks the Tehuelche called Chaltèn.
It has been agreed by Argentina and Chile that their international border detours eastwards to pass over the main summit, but a large part of the border to the south of the summit, as far as Cerro Murallуn, remains undefined.
The painter
Benito Ramos Catalán (1888-1961) was a chilean painter who used to sign "Ramos Catalan". Known for his marines and landscapes of the Andes and Chile, and most particularly for his mountains paintings. Most of them have the same title: "Mountains of Chile" or "Mountains landscapes of Andes", making quite difficult to know which mountain was exactly depicted, in a country which has quite a lot of summits ! To add to the difficulty, he used to paint the most famous mountains of his country under very unusual angles or with proportions that do not correspond exactly to their real size... making even more difficult to recognize and identify them for experts ! That is why today, 55 years after his death, some of these mountains paintings are not clearly identified and presented, in the public sales, as 'possibly' a particular summit of Chile or Andes...
His works are in many Chilean institutions like Viña del Mar Fine Art Museum, O'Higginiano Fine Art Museum in Talca, Valparaiso Fine Art Museum, and Navy Schools in Valparaiso and Talcahuano. Ranos
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