We are saddened to announce the passing of Argentine artist León Ferrari.
Born in 1920 in Buenos Aires, Ferrari was a self-taught artist who became one of the foremost pioneers of conceptual art in Argentina. His artistic practice encompassed the media of painting, collage, sculpture, poetry, and printmaking. Known internationally for his often-provocative social and political critiques, Ferrari made work that was highly critical of war, social inequality, discrimination, and the abuse of power.
In the 1950s, Ferrari traveled repeatedly to Italy, where he made his first forays into sculpture. In the early 1960s, he began exploring the connections between word and line in Cuadros escritos (Written Paintings) and Dibujos escritos(Written Drawings) and he continued these explorations throughout his career. These abstract “writings” on canvas and paper combine dry pastel, graphite, watercolor, and colored pencil to make lyrical, almost calligraphic imagery. About these works, Ferrari writes, “I draw silent handwritten words, which tell things, with lines that recall voices. And I write drawings that recite memories that words cannot say.”
In 1965, an exhibition including Ferrari’s La civilización occidental y cristiana (Western Christian Civilization) was censored and then closed by the Catholic Church. His subsequent work would challenge the policies of the church and the role of religion in the history of art. In the late 1960s, Ferrari participated in the collective known as Tucumán Arde. The group intended to draw attention to the conditions of the Tucumán Province through an intervention into the circuits of mass communication, countering the official news media of the Argentine dictatorship. During this period of increasing political activism, Ferrari published what would become a famous manifesto and call-to-arms for artists, in which he wrote, “Art is not beauty or novelty, art is effectiveness and disruption…”
With the persecution, murder, and disappearances of family members and friends during the Guerra Sucia (Dirty War) in Argentina, Ferrari fled to São Paulo, where he remained from 1976 to 1991. During this political exile, Ferrari created metal sculptures, photocopies, postal art, heliography, and art books, and he continued his explorations in drawing. Upon his return to Buenos Aires in the early 1990s, Ferrari created a series of collages to illustrate the official report about the disappearance of Argentineans during the war; the report, created by the National Commission for the Disappearance of Persons and titled “Never Again,” was published in 1984. In 1996, it was reissued with Ferrari’s collages, in which he condemned the relationships between the repressive military regime and the religious establishment.
León Ferrari’s work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions and has been included in several important group exhibitions. These include León Ferrari: Brailles y relecturas de la Biblia, MALBA, Buenos Aires (2012);Tangled Alphabets: León Ferrari and Mira Schendel, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2009); León Ferrari: Obras, 1976-2008, Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City (2008); Escrito en el Aire, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Neuquén, Argentina (2005); Inverted Utopias: Avant-Garde Art in Latin America, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2004); Retrospective León Ferrari, obras 1954-2004, Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires (2004); Politiscripts, The Drawing Center, New York (2004); Heterotopias: Medio siglo sin lugar, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2000); Cantos Paralelos, Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, Austin (1999); Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin, 1950s-1980s, Queens Museum of Art, New York (1999); and Re-Aligning Vision: Alternative Currents in South American Drawing, Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art (1997).
Ferrari's works are included in a number of important international public collections including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City; Daros Latinamerica Collection, Zurich; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Buenos Aires; Museo de Arte Moderna de Rio de Janeiro; Museo de Arte de São Paulo; The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Arts, Austin.
Prints by León Ferrari will be included in the exhibition Impressions | Abstractions at Sicardi Gallery, August 16-31, 2013.
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