The pre-Columbian period
The first peoples left many exceptional archaeological remains in Patagonia, in the province of Santa Cruz, such as the Cueva de las Manos. A visit to the cave is a perfect complement to a visit to the Piedra Museo and the Los Toldos site. The famous Cueva de las Manos is one of the world's oldest rock art sites. These paintings, produced over several thousand years between the 12th and 11th centuries BC, can be divided into 3 periods: Archaic, with the 800 hands painted in negative and accompanied by elementary geometric motifs; the hunting scene, including human figures; and the final, more abstract period, with abundant geometric and symbolic figures. Objects and copies of the Piedra Museo rock paintings are on display at the Pico Truncado Museum. Other cave paintings can be seen in the nearby caves of the Río Shehuen. 150 km from San Julian, the caves ofEstancia La Maria offer a wide variety of prehistoric paintings. Some are colorful, attesting to the mastery of pigment production techniques. The equally diverse motifs depict animals, hands and indigenous symbols.
3,000 years ago, sedentary peoples began practicing ceramics. The villages thus formed honored a founding ancestor, the huanca, represented by a stone statue with human or zoomorphic features. These peoples prospered and developed skills such as ceramics, metallurgy and stone-cutting. Stone masks and ceramic urns were essential to their funeral rituals. Superb examples, as well as diaguita pieces, can be seen at the Museo Inca Huasi in La Rioja.
Colonial period
As in Europe, the colonial period was characterized by a predominance of religious art. The works adorning places of worship were commissioned from mainly Italian and Spanish artists, who produced them on site or shipped them to Argentina. The Society of Jesus played a major role in the spread of Christian art in Latin America, until its expulsion at the end of the 18th century. Among its masters were Andrés Bianchi (1677-1740) and Florián Paucke (1719-1789), whose memoirs in the form of watercolors tell the story of colonial Argentina, its dress, customs, natives, flora and fauna... A precious testimony.
From independence to the beginning of the 20th century
It goes without saying that the political and social turmoil of the late 18th and early 19th centuries had a profound influence on Argentine art. Portraits and landscapes of the land took precedence over religious art. During this period, many foreign artists visited Argentina and sketched the life of the times. The watercolors of Emeric Essex Vidal (1791-1861) are among the most exciting on the continent. Carlos Enrique Pellegrini (1800-1875) left profound canvases of Buenos Aires and customary street scenes. Adolfo d'Hastrel (1805-1875) published a book of drawings and watercolors on the Río de la Plata. At the same time, Argentine artists offered their vision of their country. Carlos Morel (1813-1894) assembled a series of lithographs on the Río de la Plata and produced portraits and engravings of the period. Prilidiano Pueyrredón (1823-1873), one of Argentina's most notable 19th-century painters, set out to immortalize rural habits. He caused a scandal with El Baño, a nude exhibited at the Museo nacional de Bellas Artes. The eclectic collection of the MNBA and its Neuquén branch includes works by Rembrandt, Rubens, Renoir, Cézanne, Rodin, Chagall, Gauguin and Goya, Van Gogh(Le Moulin de la Galette) Monet(Le Pont d'Argenteuil) and Picasso, alongside Argentine painters and sculptors such as Cándido López, Castagnino, Benito Quinquela Martín, Fernando Fader, Xul Solar, Thibon de Libian, Lucio Fontana, Enrique Alonso and Raquel Forner. The Museo de Artes Plásticas Eduardo Sívori, founded in 1938 in Palermo Park, houses 4,000 Argentine works from the 19th century to the present day. A sculpture garden complements the photography gallery and the galleries of paintings, prints and drawings.
Avant-gardes of the 20th century
The 20th century was marked by a series of tragic events: repressions, executions, political instability, self-proclaimed presidents and a currency crisis. Despite this turbulent context, Impressionism was introduced in 1902 by the painter Martín Malharro, followed by Faustino Brughetti and Ramón Silva. Shortly afterwards, the Nexus group came on the scene, working to establish an Argentine artistic identity in painting.
The first wave of the avant-garde began to take shape, driven by the political freedom movements shaking the continent. Three movements stood out: the Florida or Paris group, led by the most emblematic of Argentine painters, Antonio Berni. Around him were Norah Borges, Horacio Butler, Xul Solar and Emilio Pettoruti, among others, all linked by their formal research and interest in European avant-gardes such as Surrealism and Dadaism. The Museo Xul Solar presents the work of the most eccentric of them all, also a sculptor marked by esotericism. The second group, called Boedo, focuses on social issues. José Arato, Adolfo Bellocq and sculptor Agustín Riganelli exhibited in factories and modest neighborhoods. Finally, the La Boca group, strongly influenced by Italian immigration, focused on the work and lives of immigrants.
A second wave emerged from the evolution of the artists of the first avant-garde. These included the surrealist-inspired Orion group, the sensitive painters who conveyed strong emotions through chromatic play, the naïfs, who turned away from social concerns, and neorealism, an extension of Boedo.
New art schools
Following the political exclusion of some art school teachers, the Tucumán Muralists School was opened in 1948 in the working-class district of Villa Quinteros. Academic policy evolved. Sculpture, engraving, materials engineering and drawing were taught alongside this practice, which had the advantage of freeing itself from restricted exhibition spaces to get closer to the people, its primary vocation being political.
In the province of Córdoba, several styles are asserting themselves, from realism to hyperrealism, from moderate expressionism to more dreamlike languages. At the Biennales de Córdoba, you can admire local artists such as sculptors Marcela Argañaraz and Clara Ferrer Serrano, surrealist Pedro Pont Vergés, Antonio Seguí and José Aguilera.
Born in Argentina in 1899, Lucio Fontana began his career as a sculptor, a passion he inherited from his father. In 1940, back in Buenos Aires, he set up a private school with painter Jorge Larco: the Altamira Academy. It was here, in 1946, that he wrote the White Manifesto, which laid the foundations for the future of art through the notions of time and space. In 1949, Fontana painted his first monochromes, before piercing his canvases with holes and incisions. He is currently Argentina's most highly-rated artist, following the sale in New York of Concetto spaziale. La fine di Dio, which fetched $29.2 million.
Abstraction, Madi, Op Art
Emilio Pettoruti is often considered the precursor of abstract painting in Argentina. Enamored of geometry and Renaissance art, he left to train in Europe. Upon his return in 1924, he caused a sensation by presenting his futuristic works in Witcomb Hall.
Born of abstract art, the Madi movement was formed in 1946 in Buenos Aires around Carmelo Arden Quin, with the aim of bringing together all trends in modern art. The only movement of international scope, it brought together the Uruguayan Rhod Rothfuss, the German Martín Blaszko and the Japanese Satoru Satō.
From the 1950s onwards, Argentine neo-surrealism offered an escape from the anxieties generated by political and social tensions. Inspired by surrealism, the artists Osvaldo Borda, Jorge Tapia, Guillermo Roux and Roberto Aizenberg combined dreamlike and metaphysical life.
At the same time, members of the Espartaco group conceived their paintings as a means of engaging in social struggles, through aesthetic forms imbued with Latin American traditions.
These divergent currents paved the way for optical art, championed by Gyula Kosice of the Madi group, who helped establish Vasarely's reputation in Latin America. The happenings of Marta Minujín, Rodolfo Azaro and León Ferrari found their place at the Instituto Di Tella, where artists were invited to express themselves freely, abolishing the boundaries between art, work and life. While the Instituto Di Tella no longer exists, the Ruth Benzacar gallery has been an institution in the contemporary art world for some fifty years. Located in the working-class district of Villa Crespo, the pioneering gallery continues to promote emerging Argentine artists.
Nowadays
Twentieth-century Latin American art comes together at the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA). In addition to its rich collection, the venue features exhibitions by Argentine photographers. Sara Facio, born in 1932, used her camera to cover the turmoil of the Perón era, helping to establish the medium as an art form in Argentina. An avid traveller, she produced striking portraits of her contemporaries, including Julio Cortázar and Jose Louis Borges. Sara Facio was also behind the opening of Fotogalería del Teatro Municipal General San Martín, Argentina's leading exhibition space for photography. Her contemporary, Alicia D'Amico (1933-2001), devoted her life to photography, focusing on feminist issues and the role of women in photography. Faithful to black and white, she composed balanced, precise images.
Born in 1966, photographer Eduardo Carrera offers a different vision of Argentina. Of the dictatorship his country suffered, he prefers to capture signs of violence off-camera, in desolate landscapes, disorientated faces and abandoned objects.
For the past thirty years, the latest developments on the art scene have come together at the ArteBA fair, held every May in Buenos Aires. However, Argentina relies on private initiatives to train the younger generation and disseminate their art. Artists are grouped together in collectives and students are trained by mentors. Some prominent figures in the art world organize international residencies designed to push the emerging scene forward.
