Visual artist, architect and designer. His work is part of the main currents of the second half of the 20th century in our country, especially the emergence of conceptual art and its offshoots. His main themes are, firstly, the link between art and science, which allows him an anthropological investigation centred on the analysis of behaviour conditioned by the environment; then, the work on the paradigms of the construction of nationality and the quotations both from local plastic production and from the journeys of the naturalists who explored Patagonia.since childhood he has been inclined towards drawing, design and caricature. He entered the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Buenos Aires in 1956. He graduated in 1963 with an award-winning project. At the same time he began his career as a painter. His first exhibitions place him in the transition from an initial informalism towards a neo-figuration with images not exempt from critical humour: El candidato, Prócer federal, among others in his exhibition Nuevos rostros, presented in 1961 at the Galería Lirolay. There he experimented with the combination of oil and enamel.

In 1963 he moved to Madrid, where he continued to work both in architecture and painting. The latter changes towards an expression close to pop, made up of synthetic forms and flat tones. In 1966 he exhibited at the Galería Europe. He returns to the country and creates, together with Vicente Marotta, the setting Barba Azul, for the Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires, combining volumetric enamels on sheet metal and sound settings, with Marotta’s sculptures in enamelled cement. After exhibiting at the Rubbers Gallery in 1967, he moved with his family to Rome, where he received a scholarship to study landscape architecture. He also produces painted acrylic objects. His interests extend to biology and the possibility of incorporating living organisms into his works.

He returns to Buenos Aires in 1968, where he continues his work as an architect and plastic artist. He presents in the exhibition Materiales. Nuevas técnicas. Nuevas expresiones, at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, his first artificial habitat. This was followed by the exhibition Microzoo, at the Rubbers Gallery, where he exhibited various habitats for plants, animals and insects – bees, fish, turtles, ants, cats. The interest in these works is the analysis of behaviours and their external, artificial and cultural conditioning: the opposition between nature and culture; the gesture, the demarcation of the artistic territory, and the appropriation of materials and techniques from biology, with a discourse that transgresses the purity of the postulates of the experimental sciences, to become sociological and philosophical.

In 1969 he took part in the exhibition Arte y cibernética, organised and curated by Jorge Glusberg to exhibit computer designs – his work with this critic and curator would continue over the years. In 1970, at the Venice Biennale, he presented one of his best-known habitats: the Biotron, with the collaboration of the scientists Antonio Battro and José Núñez, and Glusberg himself.

In 1971 he took part in the exhibition Arte de sistemas, a prelude to the conceptualist deployment of a group that was about to be formed: the Grupo de los 13, led by Glusberg at the CAYC. He was part of this group from the first exhibition, Hacia un perfil del arte latinoamericano, in 1972, to the last, Grupo CAYC in Santiago de Chile, in 1994, and in Arte de sistemas (1971) he exhibited his Laberinto invisible (Invisible Labyrinth), in which the spectator circulates along a route regulated by a set of mirrors, sensors and sound alarms. In 1972 he was invited to hold a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. There he presented the Phytotron, a hydroponic cultivation system whose designs were acquired by the museum. In the same year he began a series of pencil and watercolour drawings imitating the studies of naturalists: views of insects and other species, with notes and analytical references.

In 1977 he took part in the collective submission of the Group of 13 to the São Paulo Biennial, where the group won the Itamaraty Grand Prize, not without controversy, and around this time he began to produce a new series of conceptual works based on the drawings of one of his sons, Tomás, who was only five years old. The works consist of three elements: the child’s drawing, its reworking as a design and its concretion in a volumetric object. This series was exhibited in Los Angeles, New York and Tokyo at the beginning of the 1980s, and from 1978 onwards he took on, in a critical spirit, themes linked to the construction of national identity. In the first place, the countryside – the bastion of Argentina’s agro-livestock industry – and its prototypes: gauchos, ranches, and also tools such as the castration tongs and the designs for cattle brands.

In 1979, together with Clorindo Testa and Jacques Bedel, he won the competition for the recycling of the Centro Cultural Recoleta building. In 1983 he designed the Ruth Benzacar Gallery building, and in 1990, the Munar Foundation, dedicated to design. Between 1984 and 1986, his research into nationality added themes related to pictorial production: quotations and reworkings of works by Jean-Léon Pallière and travelling painters. Towards the end of the decade, he developed his interest in Patagonia and, in particular, in the expeditions of naturalists such as Fitz Roy and Darwin, in Del viaje del Beagle (On the Voyage of the Beagle). The works, composed of drawings and objects, simulate the exhibits of a natural science museum.

Cynthia Cohen, 1969, was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Graduated from Nacional school Prilidiano Pueyrredón, studied with Laura Batkis and did workshops with Pablo Suarez and Marcia Shwartz. Between numerous individual and collective exhibitions both in the country and abroad, stand out, “Bomba de Brillo”, Museo Marco (2020) PanDulce”(2019)Galeria PastoBrasil, BuenosAires“Naturaleza, refugio y recurso del hombre” en CCK (2017), “Futuro brillante” en Galería Van Riel (2016), “El resplandor” en PrismaKh, (2015), “Obra reciente” en Galería del Paseo, Lima (2014), “Monumentos ingravidos” en Galeria del Paseo, Punta del Este (2014), “Una acción para la amistad” en Centro Cultural Recoleta (2014), “Penetración en el medio“en Museo Macro, Rosario (2013), “Candy Crush” en Fundación Esteban Lisa (2013), “Deforme”en CC Ricardo Rojas (2012), “Poderosa Afrodita” en Museo de la Mujer, Córdoba (2011),“SynchroNYcity” en Consulado Argentino en Nueva York (2011) y “Sin palabras” en CC Recoleta(2008). Some of the awards obtained include the selection of her work in Banco Central (2015), Premio Primera Selección Fundación Banco Ciudad (2000), Primer Premio Distinción Alianza Francesa (2000) y Primera Selección Premio Universidad de Palermo (1999).

Manuel Espinosa (1942 – 2006) Born in Buenos Aires. He attended the National School of Fine Arts and the School of Fine Arts Ernesto de la Cárcova.

After a brief surrealist period, he is co-founder of the Asociación Arte Concreto-Invención. It subscribes to the Invencionista Manifesto and participates in the exhibitions presented by the group in 1946: in March, that of the Peuser Room; in September, the one organized in the Center for Secondary Education Diploma Teachers; in October, at the Argentine Society of Plastic Artists (SAAP) and in the same month at the Ateneo Popular de La Boca.

Later his work is kept within a geometric abstraction characterized by the repetition of the square or the circle in the entire compositional surface. On this serial arrangement works shadows, superposition and displacements, which allow you to incorporate forward and backward spatial relationships.

Integrates collective exhibitions such as From concrete art to the new trend, Museum of Modern Art (1963), Beyond geometry, Instituto Torcuato Di Tella (1967), Salon Campa- raison, Paris (1967), Twenty-five Argentine artists, National Museum of Fine Arts (1970), International Biennial of Cagnes-sur-Mer, France (1970), Projection and dynamics, Museum of Modern Art of the Ville de Paris (1973), Current Trends in Argentine Art, Art Center of International Reunions, Nice, France (1974), among others.

In the decade of the ‘80 participates in the exhibitions of the trend called “sensible abstraction”, among which is Geometry 81, presented at the Provincial Museum of Fine Arts of La Plata. In the city of Buenos Aires integrates geometry. Tribute to Max Bill, organized by the Center for Art and Communication, Sensitive Abstraction, shows that it accompanies the Days of Criticism, both held in 1981 and From Constructivism to Sensitive Geometry, presented at Harrods in May 1992, among others.

Participates in the main exhibitions that deal with the development of abstraction in the Río de la Plata. These include Tribute to the Argentine avant-garde of the 1940s, held at Galería Arte Nuevo (1976), Vanguardias of the 1940s. Concrete Art-Invention. Arte Madí. Perceptismo, Eduardo Sívori Museum (1980) and among the most recent, in abstract art from Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires and Montevideo 1933/53, presented at The Americas Society, New York (2001).

In 2001, the Juan B. Castagnino Museum in Rosario dedicated a tribute to him.

María Boneo (1959, Belgrade, Yugoslavia) is an Argentine artist based in Buenos Aires. She studied at the National School of Fine Arts, Argentina; at the Statuaria Arte, Carrara, Italy; and in the studios of sculptors Leo Vinci, Aurelio Macchi, Miguel Angel Bengochea y Beatriz Soto García. She received several awards and mentions, including the Mention of the Salón Nacional de Artes Visuales (2014), the Second Prize at the Salón de Grabado y Escultura Ernesto de la Cárcova (2003) and the First Prize of Scultpure at the Museo Antonio Ballvé (2002). She participated in group and solo shows in institutions such as the Museo Sívori, Palais de Glace, MCMC Galería, and the Museo de Arte Decorativo, in Buenos Aires. Her work was part of art fairs in in Brazil, England, Argentina, United States, and France. Her two monograph books were published in 2019 and 2010, edited by Manuela López Anaya. She is currently part of the Collective 62, an artist platform in Miami, United States.

María Boneo´s work revolves around the use of sculpture to explore one of her main interests: the curvy lines reminiscent of the nest, the womb, and the female figure. By embracing abstraction, Boneo creates volumes which are abundant on convexities and concavities. These are built from diverse materials that introduce color, texture, reflection, temperature, and the presence of the block material. Boneo employs traditional materials, such as marble, wood, and bronze. She also experiments with nickel plated bronze, colored resins, and different types of stones, all of these allow her to achieve the intended nuances, polishing and lacquering. The core of her practice is based on the presence of a particular evocative sensuality, breaking away from obvious associations. Her sculptures set themselves as sensuous bodies, combining both rigidity and coldness while providing a silent and quiet reflection on the origin of life and its constant movements.

Carmelo Heriberto Alves, Rivera, Uruguay, 1913 – Paris, France, 2010. The Catalonian writer Emilio Sans, a friend of his family, introduced him to the Plastic Arts. In 1935 he met Joaquín Torres García during a conference at the Theosophist Society seat, and though he initially adopted his aesthetic guidelines, in 1936 he made his first non-orthogonal paintings, transgressing the traditional limits of the frame confinement. He exhibited those works at the Casa de España, Montevideo, within the framework of a demonstration supporting the Spanish Republic. By the end of 1937 he settled in Buenos Aires where he frequented avant-guard artists and studied Philosophy and Literature in the University. In this city he shared his atelier with the Chilean artist Miguel Martínez, who introduced him to Gyula Kosice, at the time a teenager dedicated to leather goods.

In 1941 he took part in the founding of a bimonthly newspaper, El Universitario, where he published his political and aesthetic ideas. He was also a member of the editing group for Arturo magazine, issued only once in 1944.

In 1946, following aesthetic divergences, two organizations were formed: the Asociación Arte Concreto-Invención and the Madí Group. As a member of the latter, Arden Quin participated in the four exhibitions hosted by the Galería Van Riel and by the Escuela Libre de Artes Plásticas Altamira (Free School of Plastic Arts Altamira) during the last six months of that year. He also took part in the First International Madí Exhibition, organized at the Ateneo de Montevideo, Uruguay. He exhibited polygonal- framed works, movable and co-planar structures, object-pictures, and concave-convex works.

In 1948 he travelled to Paris, where he frequented Michel Seuphor, Marcelle Cahn, Auguste Herbin, Jean Arp, Georges Braque and Francis Picabia, among other vanguard artists. There he had various exhibitions, and participated in the Salon des Realités Nouvelles.

He returned to Argentina in 1954, and together

with Aldo Pellegrini founded the Asociación Arte Nuevo (New Art Association) –integrated by artists of different non-figurative tendencies– that had its first exhibition at the Galería Van Riel in 1955.

Back to Paris he continued with his work, and during this period he introduced collage and découpage to his works, resources that he exclusively used until 1971, when he retook painting. In 1962 he created the Ailleurs magazine, and during that decade he participated in the Concrete Poetry movement.

Among his last exhibitions, his most outstanding ones were hosted by the Galerie Charley Chevalier, Paris (1973); the Galerie Quincampoix, Paris (1977); the Exhibition in Tribute to His Sixty Years, by the Espace Latin-Americain, Paris (1983); the Galeria Niza, Brescia (1986); the Galerie Down Town, Paris (1987); the Gallery El Patio, Bremen, Germany (1988), and the Foundation for Art and Technology, Madrid (1997). In 1998 the Ruth Benzacar Gallery in Buenos Aires organized an important monographic exhibition under the title Carmelo Arden Quin, Paintings and Objects 1945-1995. He also participated in important collective exhibitions, such as Art in Latin America, The Modern Era (1820-1990), at the Hayward Gallery, London (1989); Argentina, Concrete Art Invention 1945, Madí Group 1946, at the Rachel Adler Gallery, New York (1990); Arte Madí Art, at the Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (1997); and the Abstract Art from the Rio de la Plata, Buenos Aires and Montevideo 1933/53 exhibition, at The Americas Society of New York (2001).

He died in Paris on September 27th 2010.

Víctor Magariños D. (Lanús, Buenos Aires Province, 1924 – Pinamar, Buenos Aires Province, 1993) trained at the Escuela de Bellas Artes Manuel Belgrano, in the city of Buenos Aires, where he would later work as an art teacher. In 1946, he founded the Grupo Joven, made up of different artists from his generation. In 1947, he received the Prins award from the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes. He travelled to Paris in 1951 sponsored by the French government, where he got acquainted with artists George Vantongerloo, Fernand Léger, Max Bill, among others. At this point in time he defined a language for his work related to abstraction. Back in Argentina, he continued to create and teach in Buenos Aires until 1967, when he decided to move to the coastal town of Pinamar, just feet away from the Atlantic Ocean. From this location, he stayed connected to artistic and scientific communities from all over the world. 

Some of his solo exhibitions include: the Gallery San Cristóbal of the Instituto de Arte Moderno (Buenos Aires, 1951), Magariños D. at the Centro Venezolano-Argentino de Cooperación Cultural y Científico Tecnológica (Caracas, 1974), Pinturas, vanguardia y retaguardia. Primera muestra luego de 33 años off Buenos Aires at Instituto CAYC (Buenos Aires, 1984), Victor Magariños D. – Finito infinito – Homenaje a Vantongerloo at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts (Brussels, 1986), Victor Magariños D. Obras 1950/1990 at the Fundación Banco Patricios (Buenos Aires, 1991), the retrospective Victor Magariños D. 1924/1993 at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Buenos Aires, 1999), Victor Magariños D. at Galería Van Eyck (Buenos Aires, 2000 and 2005), Presencias reales at MUNTREF (Buenos Aires, 2011), Transmisiones sensibles de un cosmos at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo del Sur (Lanús, Buenos Aires, 2016), Victor Magariños D. Works on paper from the 1950s to the 1990s at Cecilia Brunson Projects (London, 2019), Victor Magariños D. En silencio at MC galería (Buenos Aires, 2022), and numerous exhibitions at the Víctor Magariños D. House-Museum in Pinamar—which he inaugurated in 2002. 

Some group exhibitions he participated in include: place at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1953, XXVIII Venice Biennial (Venice, 1956), Del arte concreto a las Nuevas Tendencias at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (1963), Premio Di Tella (Buenos Aires, 1964), X Bienal de San Pablo (1969), Contemporary Art, 1942-72: Collection of the Albright- Knox Gallery (New York, 1972), Summer exhibition and Visible and tangible form at Simon Dickinson (London, 2022), Belgium-Argentina. Transatlantic modernisms, 1910-1958 at Mu.ZEE Oostende (Belgium, 2022), among others. 

His work belongs to the collections of several Argentinian national museums such as the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (MNBA), the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (Malba), the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Latinoamericano de La Plata (MACLA) and Museo Castagnino+macro de Rosario. Some international institutions that acquired his work are the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, New York, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas, the Museo de Arte Moderno in Paraguay, as well as numerous private collections. 

Horacio Zabala was born in Buenos Aires in 1943. He is an artist and an architect (UBA). Since his early exhibitions, he has explored things, their images and situations. Through his artistic practice, he creates, redirects or transforms some inert and obscure relationships around him to ascribe different identities and meanings to them. Between 1972 and 1976, he was part of the Grupo de los trece at the Centro de Arte y Comunicación (Center for Art and Communication, CAYC), where, in 1973, Jorge Glusberg presented his “Anteproyectos”, an inaugural exhibit that makes up an extensive work program that would influence his later poetics. Between 1976 and 1998 he lived in Rome, Vienna and Geneva; he currently resides in Buenos Aires.

Since 1970, he has carried out many solo and group exhibitions in Europe and America. In 2004, he was awarded the Primer Premio Adquisición at the Salon Nacional de Rosario; in 2005, the Gran Premio Adquisición at the Salon Nacional de Artes Visuales; in 2018, the Achievement Award from the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Art Collection in Miami.

His works belong to collections of public and private institutions, including:

The Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires; Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de Sâo Paulo, Sao Paulo; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix; Museo de Arte Tigre, Buenos Aires province; Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago de Chile; Middlebrough Institute of Modern Art, England; Daros Latinamerica Collection, Zürich; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Rosario, Rosario; J. P. Morgan Chase Art Collection, New York; Colección Fundación Alon para las Artes, Buenos Aires. Institute for Studies on Latin American Art, Nueva York.

María Juanas Heras Velasco (1924 – 2014). In 1945 she graduated from the teaching staff of Cience in the Normal School n1 “Pte. Roque Saenz Peña”, in Buenos Aires where she settled with her family. After completing the teaching degree, and encouraged by her parents, began her training artistic.

In 1946 she attended the Altamira free school of plastic arts, where she studied drawing and painting with Emilio Pettoruti, and sculpture with Lucio Fontana.

In the same place, she took lessons of esthetic with Jorge Romero Brest and also, of Vision with Héctor Cartier. In 1947, after the school was dissolved, she continued to attend classes with Pettoruti in the old building of Charcas 1783: after some time, she set up her own workshop with their teachers and another artists like Pablo Edelstein, Víctor Chab and Febo Martí. From then on, and until the beginning of the `60 participated in national and provincial salon.

In December 1952 she married Alberto Victoriano and with him she shared the interest in poetry and prose, including that of the so called “bet generation”, which manifested itself in some of their works. Together they made three trips to Europe in 1964, 1971 and 1980, they visited also New York City.

She held her first individual exhibition in 1958, in Van Riel gallery. Shortly after, in the middle of the years `60 the artist abandoned the tradicional techniques of the sculpture to start or experiment with others materials and procedures of industrial origin. So, she made sculptures and motifs in acrylic reliefs, like many artists then, due to the calls made by the Salón Plastica con Plasticos (MNBA, 1966), and organized by the Cámara Argentina de la Industria Plástica and the salon of artists with acrylics of Paolini (MAMBA, 1972 y 1973).

In 1971 she presented at the Arte Nuevo gallery the first of her Transposeñas, as she would call from now on many of her sculptures. The artist conceived these works from elements of urban signs. She seeks with her pieces of art speak the language of her time, generor strangeness and reflection on the omnipresence of these artefacts of normative character that are part of the urban landscape that we inhabit. The Tranposeñas and the urban landscape, from now on will be the axis of her many of individual exhibitions.

Throughout her career, she has networked numerous collectives and individual exhibitions in she scopes national and internacional. She obtains awards and distinctions as: Primer Premio, Salón Nacional de Escultura (1983), Primer Premio, Fundación Fortabat (1984), Premio a la Trayectoria Artística, Fondo Nacional de las Artes(1998),Premio“Leonardo” a la Trayectoria (1999), Premio Cultura Nación (2007), y 4 Premios Konex (1982,1992,2012,2012).

Actually her works are exhibit in differents museums from Argentina: Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes; Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires; Museo de Artes Plásticas “Eduardo Sivori”; Fondo Nacional de las Artes; Museo Castagnino  MACRO; Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de La Plata; Municipio de Resistencia, provincia de Chaco; Museo de Bellas Artes de Tres Arroyos; Museo Universitario de Arte de la Universidad de Cuyo; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo.

Silvia Torras (1935 – 1970) arrived in Argentina with her parents the same year of her birth. She studied at the Manuel Belgrano and Prilidiano Pueyrredón Schools of Fine Arts and continued her training in 1956 at Kenneth Kemble’s workshop. She developed her work in a short period of time, three years from 1960. She was a central artist within informalism. Within the informalist map, tending to chromatic parsimony, her works are distinguished by the use of color in an exuberant way from dripping, successive layers of paint and extensive brushstrokes.

In his abstract canvases, vegetal elements are fused. He had two solo exhibitions in galleries, the first at the Peuser Gallery, the second at Lirolay. He was part of a series of important group exhibitions, among them the prestigious Premio di Tella 63 and before that, in 1961, of Arte Destructivo at the Lirolay Gallery, a hinge experience towards conceptualism, happenings and performances that would define the landscape of the second half of the ’60s. In 1962 he exhibited at Peuser and obtained the Honorable Mention in the Ver y Estimar Award; in 1963 he participated for the second time in the Ver y Estimar contest and was part of the selection for the Di Tella Award. He also exhibited in the exhibition Arte Argentino Actual, held at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris.

In 1963 he abandoned painting and settled in Mexico. His work is included in public and private collections such as the National Museum of Fine Arts (MNBA), Museum of Modern Art (MAMBA) in Buenos Aires, Argentina, among others.

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.