Recovering Beauty: The 1990s in Buenos Aires

Organized by The Blanton, Recovering Beauty: The 1990s in Buenos Aires is the first comprehensive North American presentation of art produced during the 1990s in Buenos Aires, a time of pivotal transformation in Argentina. The exhibition focuses on the work of artists identified as the “arte light” group, which rose to prominence during this decade. The artists involved—including Feliciano Centurión, Sebastián Gordín, Benito Laren, Jorge Gumier Maier, Marcelo Pombo, Cristina Schiavi, Fabio Kacero, Graciela Hasper, and Omar Schiliro, among others—regularly exhibited at the Centro Cultural Rojas, and, through their work, hoped to move beyond the oppressive climate of the military dictatorship of the previous decades to build a new appreciation of visual culture as a source of pleasure and creativity.

The Blanton’s associate curator of Latin American Art, Ursula Davila-Villa states: “Recovering Beauty: The 1990s in Buenos Aires’ purpose is twofold: to display the artists’ shared desire to celebrate life through art, and to demonstrate the crucial role the Rojas Gallery, and its artistic community, played in transforming visual art in Buenos Aires during the 1990s.”