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.

Born in Buenos Aires in 1923, Alfredo Hlito attended the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes. His first works showed a considerable influence of the Uruguayan Joaquín Torres García, though some years later he turned towards clearer forms and implemented a more abstract sense of composition. In 1945 he was a charter member of the Asociación Arte Concreto-Invención, and signed the Inventionist Manifesto in 1946.

His austere and personal style remained unchanged throughout great part of his work. During the concrete period (1945-1955) he wrote extensively on the problems of this type of abstraction, and those texts were compiled in 1995 by the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes.

He took part, together with other members of the Asociación Arte Concreto-Invención in the Salon des Realités Nouvelles, Paris, as well as in the New Realities exhibition at the Van Riel gallery, Buenos Aires, both in 1948.

In 1951 he collaborated with Tomas Maldonado in the founding of Nueva Visión magazine. In 1954 he received the Acquisition Award from the II Biennial Exhibition of San Pablo, and the following year he participated in the XXVIII Biennial International Art Exhibition of Venice.

In 1964 he travelled to Mexico, where he lived until 1973.

He was a Number Member of the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes as from 1984. In 1987 the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes organized an important retrospective exhibition of his works, Alfredo Hlito. Obra pictórica 1945/1985 (Alfredo Hlito, Pictorial Work 1945/1985).

He also participated in important collective exhibitions, such as Vanguardias de la década de los 40. Arte Concreto-Invención. Arte Madí. Perceptismo at the Eduardo Sivori Museum (1980); Argentina, Concrete Art Invention 1945, Madí Group 1946 at the Rachel Adler Gallery, New York (1990); in the Art from Argentina 1920/1994 exhibition opened at Modern Art Oxford, 1994, a travelling exhibition that after visiting several European countries, was closed at the Centro Cultural Borges, Buenos Aires, in 1995.

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.

Victor Magariños D. (Lanús, Buenos Aires province, 1924 – Pinamar, Buenos Aires province, 1993). He trains at Escuela de Bellas Artes Manuel Belgrano, in the city of Buenos Aires, where he would later work as an art teacher. In 1946, he founds and leads the “Grupo Joven,” made up of different artists from his generation. In 1947, he receives the Prins award from the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes. He travels to Paris in 1951 sponsored by the French government, where he interacts with George Vantongerloo, Fernand Léger, Max Bill, and other artists. Back in Argentina, he continues to create and teach in Buenos Aires until 1965. In 1967 he decides to move to Pinamar and seek refuge there, on a sandbank just feet away from the sea, in the rural area. From that location, he stays connected to artistic and scientific communities from all around the world.

Some of his solo exhibitions include the one that happened in the Gallery San Cristóbal of the Instituto de Arte Moderno in 1951, his 1974 exhibition at the Centro Venezolano-Argentino de Cooperación Cultural y Científico Tecnológica in Caracas, in 1984 at the CAYC in Buenos Aires, the one at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in 1986, his 1991 exhibition at the Fundación Patricios in Buenos Aires, in 1999 the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires, in the Gallery of Art Van Eyck in 2000 and 2005, the many exhibitions that still take place today at the Víctor Magariños D. House Museum in Pinamar—which he inaugurated

in 2002 and multiple expositions have been held annually and to date; at MUNTREF in 2011, at MACSUR in 2016 and his 2019 exhibition at the Cecilia Brunson Projects gallery.

Some group exhibitions he participated in were the one that took place at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1953, the XXVIII Bienal de Venecia in 1956, the 1963 group exhibition “Del arte concreto a las Nuevas Tendencias” at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, the Premio Di Tella in 1964, the X Bienal de San Pablo in 1969, the 1972 group exhibition “Contemporary Art 1942 – 72 – Collection of Albright – Knox Gallery” in New York, to name a few. In his most recent exhibitions this year, we find the one that took place in Belgium at the Mu.ZEE in February. The exhibition was called “Trans-Atlantische modernismen België-Argentinië. 1910-1958”.

His work is part of the cultural heritage of several national museums such as the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, the MALBA, MACLA and MACRO. Some international collections that include his works are the MOMA 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 many 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.

María Martorell(1909 – 2010) Born in Salta, Argentina. In 1942, she began painting under the tutelage of the artist and set designer Ernesto M. Scotti. It is also around this time that she began to travel constantly to Buenos Aires, a city where abstraction was growing strongly, generating a new avant-garde movement. In 1946 she exhibited at the National Salon and in 1949 she received the First Prize at the First Annual Salta Painting Salon. This same year she received the First Prize at the Salón Amigos del Arte. In 1952, the artist settled in Madrid where she attended to the free workshops of the Fine Arts Association and the Museum of the San Fernando Academy.

In 1954 she traveled to Paris, where she settled for a few years, linking up with the Denise René Art Gallery, which promoted abstraction and mainly works of an optical and kinetic nature.

At the beginning of the 1960s, and under the direction of Jorge Romero Brest as director of the National Museum of Fine Arts (MNBA), an intense modernizing program was proposed that included, for the first time, various exhibitions of contemporary Argentine art, legitimizing in this way, Martorell’s work in the national context of abstraction.

The 1960s were the years with the greatest visibility of Martorell’s work. At the beginning of the decade she traveled to New York, where she connected with neo-figuration, pop-art, happenings, kineticism and the dematerialization of the work. In 1961 she had a solo exhibition at the Collector’s Gallery in New York and his first tapestry show in Salta. In 1962 he exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chile and in 1963 he joined the exhibition Ocho artistas constructivos, at the MNBA, in Buenos Aires, invited by its director Jorge Romero Brest. In 1967 she opened a solo exhibition of tapestries executed by Cafayate textile artisans at the El Sol gallery in Buenos Aires. That year she also participated in the National Salon and the exhibition Beyond Geometry, at the Di Tella Institute.

In 1974 she presented an individual exhibition at the Venezuelan-Argentine Center for Scientific- Technological Cultural Cooperation in Caracas. In

1975 he presented two important exhibitions, both at the Bonino gallery in Buenos Aires and at the Avril gallery in Mexico. In 1977 she held a solo exhibition at the San Diego Gallery in Bogotá, culminating the decade with a large exhibition at the OAS headquarters in Washington D.C called Pinturas de María Martorell.

As part of the recognition of her artistic work, on December 22, 1980, the Academy of Fine Arts appointed María Martorell as academic delegate for the province of Salta. In 1982 she held a solo show called El pintor y su memoria, at the Unión Carbide Argentina space in Buenos Aires and in 1985 at the Centoira gallery. In 1989, she received the Artistic Merit Award granted by the government of the province of Salta. In 1990, the Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires (MAMBA) organized a retrospective exhibition of his work, called De la Figuración a la abstracción 1948-1990. During that decade and the next, she continued to actively participate in the artistic scene, both in Buenos Aires and Salta, with various individual and collective exhibitions in spaces such as the Recoleta Cultural Center, the Palais de Glace, the MAMBA and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Jump

On July 26, 2010, she died in the city of Salta. In the 20th edition of ArteBA, a tribute called María Martorell: La energía desencadenada (1909-2010) was realized. In 2013, the Museum of Fine Arts of Salta held the tribute exhibition La Energía del Color, where works from different stages of the artist were presented.