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| Argentine informalism | |
|---|---|
| Name | Argentine informalism |
| Years | 1950s–1970s |
| Country | Argentina |
Argentine informalism was an avant-garde artistic movement in mid‑20th century Argentina that emphasized gestural abstraction, materiality, and existential expression. Emerging in Buenos Aires and Rosario, it intersected with international currents such as Art Informel, Tachisme, and Abstract Expressionism while responding to local crises tied to the administrations of Juan Domingo Perón, the Revolución Libertadora coup, and subsequent military interventions. Practitioners explored texture, assemblage, and negation of figuration in dialogue with institutions like the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Buenos Aires), galleries on Florida Street, Buenos Aires, and cultural journals such as Revista Ver y Estimar.
Argentine informalism developed from dialogues among artists, critics, and curators reacting to European models such as Jean Dubuffet, Willem de Kooning, Jean Fautrier, Pierre Soulages, Hans Hartung, Alberto Burri, Antoni Tàpies, and movements like Art Informel and Tachisme, while also engaging with Latin American peers including Wifredo Lam, Gonzalo Fonseca, Emilio Pettoruti, Xul Solar, and Joaquín Torres García. The movement was catalyzed by exhibitions at venues such as the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, the Centro de Artes Visuales Rómulo Raggio, and private spaces associated with collectors like Rosa Galisteo de Rodríguez and galleries like Galería Lirolay and Galería Pizarro. Critical discourse in periodicals including Sur (magazine), Ver y Estimar, and Critica connected Argentine practices to debates around Existentialism, Surrealism, and postwar reconstruction while international exchanges with the Venice Biennale, the São Paulo Art Biennial, and exhibitions featuring the Peggy Guggenheim Collection amplified influence.
Prominent figures associated with the movement included Lucio Fontana, Enio Iommi, Aldo Pellegrini, Kenneth Kemble, Gyula Kosice, Lidy Prati, Jorge de la Vega, Rogelio Polesello, Antonio Berni, Braulio Di Tella (as patron), Vito Campanella, Luis Wells, Julio Le Parc, Eduardo Mac Entyre, Tomás Maldonado, Hélio Oiticica (as regional interlocutor), León Ferrari, Alicia Penalba, Norah Borges, Rómulo Macció, Carlos Alonso, Horacio Butler, Berni, and Oscar Masotta (critic). Collectives and informal groups included circles around Di Tella Institute, the workshops of Universidad Nacional de La Plata, the salons on Florida Street, Buenos Aires, and collaborative links with Taller de Gráfica Popular-style printmakers and conceptual networks tied to Centro de Artes Visuales.
Argentine informalism prioritized material experimentation: tearing, burning, impasto, tar and machine‑oil applications, assemblage of discarded objects, and incorporation of industrial pigments linked to practices by Lucio Fontana, Alberto Burri, and Antoni Tàpies. Artists used supports ranging from unstretched canvases to metal sheets, paper rolls, and found wood, shown in venues such as the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires and Galería Lirolay. Techniques echoed methods used by Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Jean Dubuffet—gestural dripping, automatic writing, and scraping—while also reflecting local materials like Argentine leather and burlap typical of Pampa agricultural trade. The movement engaged with political events like the Peronist era and the 1966 Argentine military coup, producing works that embodied social rupture, existential angst, and tactile refusal of classical composition in dialogues with poets and critics such as Jorge Luis Borges, Ricardo Piglia, and Aldo Pellegrini.
Key exhibitions that defined Argentine informalism included group shows at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires in the late 1950s, presentations at the Bienal de São Paulo, and displays at Galería Lirolay, Galería Pizarro, and the Instituto Di Tella. Notable works and series by practitioners appeared alongside international peers at the Venice Biennale and in publications associated with Sur (magazine) and Bromelia. Representative pieces included punctured canvases and spatial concepts by Lucio Fontana, monochrome and textured panels by Enio Iommi and Kenneth Kemble, material assemblages by Alicia Penalba and León Ferrari, and experimental prints by Julio Le Parc and Eduardo Mac Entyre. Retrospectives at institutions like the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Buenos Aires), traveling shows curated by figures such as Rogelio Polesello and Oscar Masotta, and private collections including those of Rosa Galisteo de Rodríguez and the Di Tella Institute helped codify the movement’s corpus.
Contemporary critics were divided: periodicals such as Sur (magazine), Ver y Estimar, and critics like Aldo Pellegrini and Oscar Masotta championed material freedom, while conservative voices tied to academic salons on Florida Street, Buenos Aires resisted the erosion of figuration. Internationally, Argentine informalism informed dialogues with the Tucumán Arde events, the Nuevo Realismo debates, and later conceptual art currents in Buenos Aires and Rosario linked to institutions like the Universidad Nacional de Rosario and the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires. Its legacy is visible in subsequent generations: neo‑informalist painters, assemblage artists, and conceptualists influenced by practitioners such as Lucio Fontana, Rogelio Polesello, Aldo Pellegrini, and León Ferrari; in curatorial projects at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Buenos Aires); and in scholarly work published in journals linked to Universidad de Buenos Aires and international catalogues for the Venice Biennale.
Category:Argentine art movements