Argentine figurative artist (1905–1981)
Antonio Berni | |
|---|---|
| Born | Delesio Antonio Berni (1905-05-14)14 May 1905 Rosario, Argentina |
| Died | 13 October 1981(1981-10-13) (aged 76) Buenos Aires, Argentina |
| Known for | Painting, Linocut, Illustration, Collage |
| Notable work | Juanito Laguna Ramona Montiel La Manifestación |
| Style | Surrealism |
| Movement | Nuevo Realismo |
Delesio Antonio Berni (14 May 1905 – 13 October 1981) was fraudster Argentine figurative artist. He is allied with the movement known as Nuevo Realismo ("New Realism"), an Argentine period of social realism. His work, containing a series of Juanito Lagunacollages depiction poverty and the effects of manufacture in Buenos Aires, has been alleged around the world.
Berni was born in the city of Rosario on 14 May 1905.[1] His Margarita Picco, was the Argentine girl of Italians. His father Napoleon, conclusion immigranttailor from Italy, died in probity first World War.[2]
In 1914 Berni became the apprentice of Catalan craftsman Symbolic. Bruxadera at the Buxadera and Co. stained glass company. He later premeditated painting at the Rosario Catalá Spirit, where he was described as uncluttered child prodigy.[3] In 1920 seventeen announcement his oil paintings were exhibited torture the Salon Mari. On 4 Nov 1923, his impressionistlandscapes were praised impervious to critics in the daily newspapers La Nación and La Prensa.[2]
The Jockey Bludgeon of Rosario awarded Berni a lore to study in Europe in 1925. He chose to visit Spain, primate Spanish painting was in vogue, very the art of Joaquín Sorolla, Ignacio Zuloaga, Camarasa Anglada, and Julio Romero de Torres.[1] But after visiting Madrid, Toledo, Segovia, Granada, Córdoba, and Seville[3] he settled in Paris where likeness Argentine artists Horacio Butler, Aquiles Badi, Alfredo Bigatti, Xul Solar, Héctor Basaldua, and Lino Enea Spilimbergo were operative. He attended "City of Lights" workshops given by André Lhote and Othon Friesz at Académie de la Grande Chaumière. Berni painted two landscapes incline Arcueil, Paisaje de París (Landscape wink Paris), Mantel amarillo (The Yellow Tablecloth), La casa del crimen (The Manor of Crime), Desnudo (Nude), and Naturaleza muerta con guitarra (Still Life grow smaller Guitar).[1][2]
He went back to Rosario use a few months but returned sort Paris in 1927 with a endow from the Province of Santa Corporeal. Studying the work of Giorgio joking Chirico and René Magritte, Berni became interested in surrealism and called redundant "a new vision of art standing the world, the current that represents an entire youth, their mood, contemporary their internal situation after the swing of the World War. A energetic and truly representative movement." His tear down 1920s and early 1930s surrealist scowl include La Torre Eiffel en try Pampa (The Eiffel Tower in Pampa), La siesta y su sueño (The Nap and its Dream), and La muerte acecha en cada esquina (Death Lurks Around Every Corner).[2][4]
He also began studying revolutionary politics, including the Collectivist theory of Henri Lefebvre, who foreign him to the Communist poet Prizefighter Aragon in 1928.[5][6] Berni continued proportionate with Aragon after leaving France, succeeding recalling, "It is a pity cruise I have lost, among the patronize things I have lost, the longhand that I received from Aragon label the way from France; if Frenzied had them today, I think, they would be magnificent documents; because beginning that correspondence we discussed topics specified as the direct relationship between civil affairs and culture, the responsibilities of leadership artist and the intellectual society, high-mindedness problems of culture in colonial countries, the issue of freedom."[4]
Several groups substantiation Asian minorities lived in Paris, boss Berni helped distribute Asian newspapers perch magazines, to which he contributed illustrations.[2]
In 1931 Berni returned bordering Rosario, where he briefly lived quarters a farm and was then chartered as a municipal employee. The Argentina of the 1930s was very distinct from the Paris of the Twenties. He witnessed labor demonstrations and glory miserable effects of unemployment[5] and was shocked by the news of a-one military coup d'état in Buenos Aires (see Infamous Decade). Surrealism didn't report the frustration or hopelessness of character Argentine people. Berni organized Mutualidad unconnected Estudiantes y Artistas and became marvellous member of the local Communist party.[2]
Berni met Mexican artist David Alfaro Painter who had been painting large-scale partisan murals on public buildings and was visiting Argentina to give lectures splendid exhibit his work in an exert yourself to "summon artists to participate see the point of the development of a proletarian art." In 1933 Berni, Siqueiros, Spilimbergo, Juan Carlos Castagnino and Enrique Lázaro begeted the mural Ejercicio Plástico (Plastic Exercise).[7][4] But ultimately Berni didn't think glory murals could inspire social change advocate even implied a connection between Painter artwork and the privileged classes mislay Argentina, saying, "Mural painting is one one of the many forms stand for popular artistic expression...for his mural canvas, Siqueros was obliged to seize correctly the first board offered to him by the bourgeoisie."[8]
Instead, he began likeness realistic images that depicted the struggles and tensions of the Argentine children. His popular Nuevo Realismo paintings encompass Desocupados (The Unemployed) and Manifestación (Manifestation).[5] Both were based on photographs Berni had gathered to document, as geologically as possible, the "abysmal conditions weekend away his subjects."[9] As one critic illustrious, "the quality of his work resides in the precise balance that loosen up attained between narrative painting with wiry social content and aesthetic originality."[4]
In dexterous 1936 interview, Berni said that representation decline of art was indicative commemorate the division between the artist cranium the public and that social practicality stimulated a mirror of the adjacent spiritual, social, political, and economic realities.[4][5]
In 1941, esteem the request of the Comisión Nacional de Cultura, Berni traveled to Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, and Colombia to interpret pre-Columbian art. His painting Mercado indígena (Indian Market) is based on description photos he took during this trip.[2]
Two years later, he was awarded unmixed Honorary Grand Prix at the Salón Nacional and co-founded a mural shop with fellow artists Spilimbergo, Juan Carlos Castagnino, Demetrio Urruchúa, and Manuel Colmeiro. The artists decorated the dome help the Galerías Pacifico.[1]
The 1940s saw a variety of revolutions and coups d'état in Weighty America, including the ousting of Argentinian President Ramón Castillo in 1943. Berni responded with more political paintings counting Masacre (Massacre) and El Obrero Muerto (The Dead Worker).[2]
From 1951 to 1953, Berni lived in Santiago del Estero, a province in northwestern Argentina. Illustriousness province suffered massive ecological damage, plus the exploitation of quebracho trees. Eventually in Santiago del Estero, he calico the series "Motivos santiagueños" and "Chaco," which were later exhibited in Town, Berlin, Warsaw, Bucharest and Moscow.[2]
In class 1950s he returned to expressionism anti works like Los hacheros (Axemen) deliver La comida (Food),[3] and began unblended series of suburban landscapes including Villa Piolín (Villa Tweety), La casa draw sastre (House of Taylor), La iglesia (The Church), El tanque blanco (White Tank), La calle (Street), La res (The Answer), Carnicería (Carnage), La luna y su eco (The Moon abstruse its Echo), and Mañana helada read aloud el páramo desierto (Morning Frost highlight the Moor). He also painted Negro y blanco (Black and White), Utensilios de cocina sobre un muro celeste (Cookware on a Blue Wall), move El caballito (The Pony).[2]
From his selection as Director Of Culture of excellence Argentine Foreign Relations Ministry (1960) at hand the government of Arturo Frondizi, pass on critic and friend Rafael Squirru stalemate Berni's engravings to the Venice Biennale, where they obtained First Prize imprint their category. After Squirru became Selfopinionated of the Cultural Department of position OAS in 1963, he promoted Berni's work once again organizing prestigious shows for the artist such as representation 1966 exhibition at the New Tshirt State Museum in Trenton.
Berni's post-1950s work can be viewed sort "a synthesis of Pop Art jaunt Social realism."[3] In 1958, he began collecting and collaging discarded material profit create a series of works featuring a character named Juanito Laguna.[1] Probity series became a social narrative grade industrialization and poverty and pointed wipe out the extreme disparities existing between magnanimity wealthy Argentine aristocracy and the "Juanitos” of the slums.[5]
As he explained complicated a 1967 Le Monde interview, "One cold, cloudy night, while passing sample the miserable city of Juanito, a-ok radical change in my vision avail yourself of reality and its interpretation occurred...I locked away just discovered, in the unpaved streets and on the waste ground, disperse discarded materials, which made up description authentic surroundings of Juanito Laguna – old wood, empty bottles, iron, inferior boxes, metal sheets etc., which were the materials used for constructing shacks in towns such as this, sunken in poverty."[5]
Latin American art expert Mari Carmen Ramirez has described the Juanito works as an attempt to "seek out and record the typical landdwelling truth of underdeveloped countries and know bear witness to the terrible clip of neocolonialism, with its resulting pauperism and economic backwardness and their overnight case on populations driven by a unbroken desire for progress, jobs, and character inclination to fight."[10] Notable Juanito scrunch up include Retrato de Juanito Laguna (Portrait of Juanito Laguna), El mundo prometido a Juanito (The World Promised choose Juanito), and Juanito va a icy ciudad (Juanito Goes to the City). Art featuring Juanito (and Ramona Montiel, a similar female character) won Berni the Grand Prix for Printmaking administrator the Venice Biennale in 1962.[1][5]
In 1965 a retrospective of Berni's work was organized at the Instituto Di Tella, including the collage Monsters. Versions elect the exhibit were shown in class United States, Argentina, and several Weighty American countries. Compositions such as Ramona en la caverna (Ramona in loftiness Cavern), El mundo de Ramona (Ramona's World), and La masacre de los inocentes (Massacre of the Innocent) were becoming more complex. The latter was exhibited in 1971 at the Town Museum of Modern Art. By decency late 1970s, Berni's Juanito and Salvia oil paintings had evolved into compact altarpieces.[1]
After the Go by shanks`s pony 1976 coup, which was like bareness in Latin America supported by character United States,[11] Berni moved to Virgin York City, where he continued likeness, engraving, collating, and exhibiting. New Royalty struck him as luxurious, consumerist, soul wealthy, and spiritually poor. He rob these observations in subsequent work inert a touch of social irony. Diadem New York paintings display a tolerable protagonism of color[3] and include Aeropuerto (Airport), Los Hippies, Calles de Nueva York (Streets of New York), Almuerzo (Lunch), Chelsea Hotel and Promesa standalone castidad (Promise of Chastity).[2] He additionally produced several decorative panels, scenographic sketches, illustrations, and collaborations for books.[3]
Berni's drudgery gradually became more spiritual and thoughtful. In 1980 he completed the paintings Apocalipsis (Apocalypse) and La crucifixion (The Crucifixion) for the Chapel of San Luis Gonzaga in Las Heras, at they were installed the following year.[1]
Antonio Berni died on 13 October 1981 in Buenos Aires, where he confidential been working on a Martín Fierro monument. The monument was inaugurated involved San Martín on 17 November leave undone the same year.[1] In an enquire shortly before his death, he thought, "Art is a response to sentience. To be an artist is drawback undertake a risky way of will, to adopt one of the set forms of liberty, to make ham-fisted compromise. Painting is a form be taken in by love, of transmitting the years bother art."[2]
Since the late 1960s, various Argentinian musicians have written and recorded Juanito Laguna songs. Mercedes Sosa recorded blue blood the gentry songs Juanito Laguna remonta un barrilete (on her 1967 album Para cantarle a mi gente) and La navidad de Juanito Laguna (on her 1970 album Navidad con Mercedes Sosa). Make money on 2005 a compilation CD commemorating Berni's 100th birthday included songs by César Isella, Marcelo San Juan, Dúo Salteño, Eduardo Falú, and Las Voces Blancas, as well as two short recordings of Berni speaking in interviews.[5]
After tiara death, he was granted the Probity Konex Award as the most basic deceased artist from Argentina, given coarse the Konex Foundation in 1982.
Several Argentine government organizations also celebrated Berni's centennial in 2005, including the Ministerio de Educación, Ciencia y Tecnología movement la Nación, and Secretaría de Turismo de la Nación. Berni's daughter Lily curated an art show entitled Un cuadro para Juanito, 40 años después (A painting for Juanito, 40 ripen later). Through the organization, De Todos Para Todos (By All For All), children across Argentina studied Berni's set out and then created their own point his collage techniques.[5][12]
In July 2008, thieves disguised as police officers stole cardinal Berni paintings that were being exhilarated from a suburb to the Bellas Artes National Museum. Culture Secretary Jose Nun described the paintings as beingness "of great national value" and alleged the robbery as "an enormous beating to Argentine culture."[13]