After learning about artists during this semester, I realized I never thought much about my own country’s past and present artists. I knew some of the artists in these posts, such as Marta Minujin, but I was not aware of others, such as Leonor Fini. Therefore, I would like to share what I found. I will describe very briefly 3 “historic” artists and 3 contemporary artists. I hope there is some art or concept that interests everyone.
Historic artists:
Lucio Fontana:
He published “the Manifesto Blanco (The White Manifesto), a pamphlet setting out the goals for the creation of a “spatialist” art. It called for this art to engage with the technology of the day to achieve a radical new format that melded architecture, sculpture and painting, as well as embrace the subconscious”.
In few words: “It positions him as innovator and the first European artist to successfully promote the concept of making art as a performance (or gesture)”.
Fun fact: Kim Kardashian is fan of his work.
Leonor Fini:
In her own words: “A painting is something like a spectacle, a theater piece in which each figure lives out her part”.
The Weinstein Gallery writes: “Fini herself never accepted the label of “woman artist,” and likewise, never considered herself a Surrealist“.
She was born in Argentina, grew up in Italy, and found her way to Paris. “She made a place for herself in the city’s artistic circles, but declined the confining roles (muse, lover, student) that were usually offered to young women”.
She mixes themes around the human body, sexuality, gender roles, sexual fluidity and spectacle/theater.
To learn more.
Fun fact: Leonor Fini and Christian Dior were friends.
Antonio Berni:
He established himself at the forefront of the nuevo realismo movement, which was “the Latin American response to the social realism that was being developed in the United States at the time”.
“Much of his work from this period revolves around two characters: a young boy from the slums named Juanito Laguna and the prostitute Ramona Montiel. Like the rest of the series, El Mundo Prometido a Juanito Laguna is life-size in scale and made almost entirely out of authentic street junk”.
Berni has expressed that: “Juanito is a poor boy but not a poor boy. He is not a loser by circumstances but a being full of life and hope, who overcomes his circumstantial misery because he intuits living in a world full of future.”
In few words: he showed that social problems are universal. Violence and poverty are not unique to any single country or society.
Contemporary artists:
Marta Minujin:
In few words: Her work is all about participation – or joining in. “She wants people to be surprised and shocked, to feel uncomfortable and embarrassed, and to become curious. She sees her role as intensifying people’s lives by getting them to experience things and feelings they normally wouldn’t”.
Some works she has done: In the 1970s, she explored consumerism and popular culture icons. Afterwards, she did “great scale sculptures such as Carlos Gardel, of the tango singer, which she set on fire; a monumental obelisk made of pan dulce that people could eat; and a Parthenon made of books banned during the Argentine dictatorship”.
Leandro Erlich:
In a few words: he is “known widely for installations using mirrors, etc to question our perspective and create unfamiliar spaces which involves viewers interaction”.
According to Ocula.com: “A single change (up is down, inside is out) can be enough to upset the seemingly normal situation, collapsing and exposing our reality as counterfeit. Through this transgression of limits, the artist undermines certain absolutes and the institutions that reinforce them”.
He explores concepts around illusions, reflections, stage sets, optical phenomena.
Marcos Lopez:
In a few words: He is known for his style, Latino Pop. His inspirations are Andy Warhol as well as Diego Rivera. He creates “kitsch tableaux that satirizes Latin American popular culture”.
From his own words: “I want my work to speak from the periphery, to express the texture of the subversive, I try to give my work the pain and untidiness of Mestizo-America.”
