Argentine Contemporary Art
Sotheby´s NYC
Continuing its ongoing program of promoting contemporary Argentine art, arteBA Foundation offered a new internationally-oriented project in New York.
arteBA Foundation accepted Sotheby’s challenging proposal to prepare an exhibition of contemporary Argentine art at the auction house’s New York showrooms, coinciding with the annual Fall Sales of Latin American Art that are held every year in late November. The most important institutional and private collectors, critics, curators and public interested in Latin American art gather in New York for the event.
This exhibition provided a rewarding opportunity to come in contact with a varied perspective of contemporary Argentine art. The show highlighted the extraordinary individuality and relevance of that art, brought together in a selection of emblematic works by a group of the most significant artists of recent decades.
The exhibit, titled “Between Silence and Violence”, had been curated by Mercedes Casanegra, and was exhibited at Sotheby’s New York from the 15th to the 20th of November 2003.
A catalogue of the exhibition was sent to Sotheby’s clients and was available to visitors at the show. In conjuction with the exhibit, the arteBA Fundación organized a program of special visits and meetings with the curator.
Sponsored by the Cultural Affairs Section of the Argentine Foreign Ministry.
The intention of this exhibition called “Between silence and violence” is to put on display a series of works of contemporary Argentine art – most of them paradigmatic – produced between 1965 and 2002. The 1970’s in Argentina were characterized by a climate of political turbulence: generalized violence, military dictatorships and State-sponsored terrorism. Many intellectuals were forced into exile.
Within that climate, artists followed two main lines in the development of the work. Buenos Aires was one of the places where Conceptualism began to blossom in the mid-1960’s, and in the early 1970’s the movement continued to expand. This current not only carried the signature of the social and political history of those years but also tacitly wished to establish a mark that would identify it with Latin American regionalism.
Simultaneously, the protests by politically aware artists against the ignominious violence in Vietnam can be seen reflected in “Western and Christian Civilization” (1965), by León Ferrari, one of the earliest expressions of protest against the war. Local violence became an unavoidable theme for artists as the 1970’s progressed.
This exhibition is based on works that represent both of these trends, tracing its continuity through to today.
Mercedes Casanegra
Curator
Artists on the exhibition: Luis F. Benedit, Oscar Bony, Roberto Elía, León Ferrari, Norberto Gómez, Víctor Grippo, Alberto Heredia, Jorge Macchi, Cristina Piffer, Liliana Porter, Graciela Sacco and Edgardo Antonio Vigo.
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