In 1933, Egon von Vietinghoff traveled first alone and then later with his wife and daughter to Majorca, Spain, followed by a year later to South America. For a couple of months, he worked in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in a metal factory belonging to his brothers-in-law in order to make ends meet.


He was deeply involved with etching and pen-and-ink-drawing but unsatisfied with seeming stagnation of his artistic development in oil-painting.

The moves did not solve his domestic difficulties with his wife. Both husband and wife were strong characters and came from wealthy families. The lifestyle to which they were accustomed could not be supported with the money Egon earned from painting. Their problems absorbed his attention, exhausted his energy and kept him from his inner mission as an artist.

Later, he lived – separated from his family – in a solitary log cabin near Las Toscas (Atlantida), on the banks of the Rio de la Plata in Uruguay. This period also enriched his collection of stories which he sometimes told with a lively mimic, roguish eyes and almost Latin gestures: of the torn sail on the Rio de la Plata, of the involuntary taming of the black panther on the jungle border by his neighbors, of the fisherman's wife who needed to ask her husband's reminder of how many children they had (or was this an anecdote from Capri?), of the thousands of tarantulas darkening the window at night, of the self-invented exercises to heal his shoulders and ribs broken in a car accident, the reason for his bald spot, and of his hallucinations due to caffeine poisoning brought about by excessive mate consumption.