Biography

Born in Buenos Aires in 1928. She studied at the studio of Horacio Butler, her uncle, and at the National School of Fine Arts. It was around the age of 23 that she began to exhibit. In the first exhibitions she was presented as Juana Bullrich, her married name, but it was around 1961 and 1962 (following her divorce) that she stopped using that name and began to appear as Juana Butler. 

Her first individual exhibition was held in 1955 at the Galería Antígona. Among her later solo exhibitions, we can highlight the Van Riel Gallery in 1959, the Rubbers Gallery in 1961, 1962 and in 1968 together with Juan Campodónico and Carlos Leone, in the Contemporary Gallery the following year, in 1974 in the New Art Gallery, in Ruth Benzacar in 1977, in the Del Retiro Gallery in 1980 and in the Jacques Martínez Contemporary Art Gallery in 1985. She held a travelling exhibition of 20 works in Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela and Mexico between 1972 and 1975, organised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Argentine Republic.  In 2003 a large retrospective of her  last 30 years of painting was held at the Centro Cultural Recoleta. 

She participated in the Second Salon of Young Argentinean Painting at the Institute of Modern Art in 1950, in the Ver y Estimar Prize at the National Museum of Fine Arts in 1961 and 1962, and in the María Calderón de la Barca Foundation Prize at the National Academy, Witcomb Gallery in 1966. 

She took part in the exhibition held at the Sociedad Hebraica called Tendencias Surrealistas en la Argentina in 1965, in the Self-Portraits exhibition organised by the Rubbers Gallery the following year, where she shared the space with renowned artists such as Roberto Aizenberg, Juan Batlle Planas, Antonio Berni, Juan Grela, Ricardo Garabito and Emilio Pettoruti, among others, and participated in the Surrealist Exhibition Homage to Juan Batlle Planas, Proar Gallery in 1967. She represented Argentina at the First Latin American Art Biennial of São Paulo in 1978, with a consignment of 15 oil paintings from the series Orígenes y Exhalagos (Origins and Exhalagos). 

Her works are part of the collections of the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, Museo de Arte Moderno and renowned private collections. She died in Buenos Aires in March 2017.