The fileteado porteño is a popular decorative art born in the beginnings of the 20th century in the Buenos Aires city.

Its origins can be found in the carts factories where the firsts craftmen actually created it while making the carts ornamentation. Unfortunately we have very poor documentation about the fileteado's genesis and subsequent development.

The craft masters testimonies collected in the middle of XX century constitute the only fileteado history.

As it happens with the tango history, there is neither a first artist nor an exact date allowing to establish precisely its beginnings. Anyhow all testimonies agree in mentioning three Italian immigrants as its creators : Cecilio Pascarella, Vicente Brunetti and Salvador Venturo. Each one of them with his own characteristics, developed the fileteado at the same time, working with the different types of carriages available at the start of the century.
The first followers of these pioneers were their own descendants.

It was so that in Buenos Aires the carts fileteada decoration began to appear over the uniform grey municipal colour by giving another new colourfull appearance
A step further consisted in separating these two colours by means of a thin line of a more intense or contrasting hue. And this was the starting point for the different motifs forming later the wide repertoire that, as well as the technique and the composition, will be characteristic of this tipical art.
Flowers, scrolls, acanthus' leaves, ribbons with the Argentine colours, little balls, straight and curve lines of different thickness are richly combined with rural scenes and popular characters, like Carlos Gardel., the most famous tango singer