The Artwork of Eduardo Mac Entyre
Born in February of 1929 at Buenos Aires, Eduardo Mac Entyre was an Argentine artist. Although he created work in the traditions of abstract, cubist and figurative
art, he is best known for the geometric paintings fashioned through a series of random algorithms. Although evocative of thirteenth-century Italian mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci’s nautilus designs, Mac Entyre’s paintings, due to their randomness, are more complex as each formed helix is unique.
Born to a Scottish father and Belgian mother, Eduardo Mac Entyre was encouraged at an early age by his mother and maternal grandfather to create art. He began his artistic pursuit with experimental drawings that studied the rules of composition contained within the works of Rembrandt, Hans Holbein and Albrecht Dürer. In the 1950s, Mac Entyre followed these studies with paintings that were executed in Cubist and Impressionistic styles.
In 1952, Mac Entyre became a member of the Grupo Ioven (Young Group), a post-WWII association of young artists who distanced themselves, often through the creation of geometric abstractions, from the artistic orthodoxy in Argentina at the time. He also studied the works of the Bauhaus and Concrete Art movements as well as the theories of Swiss graphic artist Max Bill and Belgian abstract painter Georges
Vantongerloo, a founding member of the Dutch pure-abstract movement De Stijl. Mac Entyre, at this time, became a member of the Commission of the Asociación Arte Nuevo and contributed articles for its “A.N.” magazine.
In 1954, Eduardo Mac Entyre entered his work at the group exhibition held at Galeria de Arte Comte in Buenos Aires. It was at the 1959 exhibition at the Galería Peuser in Buenos Aires that his work was brought to the attention of art patron Ignacio Pirovano and Rafael Squirru, the director of the Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires. Recognized for his work, Mac Entyre joined other abstract artists, most notably Miguel Ángel Vidal, in the formation of the Generative Art movement that was expanded later by such established computer artists as mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot.
Mac Entyre and Miguel Vidal are considered the main representatives of geometric abstract art in Argentina. It was art patron Ignacio Pirovano who suggested the term ‘Generative Art” to characterize their artistic endeavors. In 1960, the Generative Art group’s first exhibition was sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires and held at the Galería Peuser where the group presented its founding manifesto. The values contained in its manifesto influenced later generations of artists, both in Argentina and throughout the 
world. In 1961, Mac Entyre was selected as one of the artists to participate in the Argentina Section of the Sixth São Paulo Biennial which was organized by Rafael Squirru.
Mac Entyre created a distinct, aesthetic visual language of vibration and motion by arranging and juxtaposing geometric closed shapes and curved lines, executed in acrylics, to generate new forms on a flat canvas. His meticulous and precise rendering of the circular elements produced subtle variations of movement and rotation, aided by translucent colors at the intersecting points. Originally sketched by hand from a series of random algorithms, Mac Entyre’s symmetrical paintings developed alongside computer technology. In 1969, he experimented with vibratory effects in drawings produced with software developed by IBM.
Under the recommendation of portrait painter Franz van Riel and art critic Jorge Romero Brest, Eduardo Mac Entyre participated in the Torcuato di Tella Institute, a non-profit foundation for the 
promotion of Argentine culture. In 1982, he received the Konex Award as one of the most important geometric painters in Argentina. Selected by UNESCO as one of the most representative artists of Argentina, Mac Entyre received an award from the Maria Calderon de la Barca Foundation for his painting “Christ, the Light”. This painting was later donated to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Vatican City, Italy.
Eduardo Mac Entyre died in Buenos Aires on the fifth of May in 2014 at the age of eighty-five. In addition to private collections, his work is housed in the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires, New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, the Ringling Museum, and the LSU Museum of Art in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, among others.
Note: The official site for Eduardo Mac Entyre, sponsored by the city of Buenos Aires, can be located at: https://www.instagram.com/eduardo_mac_entyre/reels/
Second Insert Image: Eduardo Mac Entyre, Untitled, 1973, Screen Print on Paper, 110.4 x 74 cm, Victoria and Albert Museum, Kensington, England
Third Insert Image: Eduardo Mac Entyre, “Sin Título (Untitled)”, 1950, Oil on Canvas, 100 x 70 cm, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Buenos Aires
Bottom Insert Image: Eduardo Mac Entyre, “Hacia Un Extremo (Towards an Extreme)“, Date Unknown, Acrylic on Canvas, 80 x 80 cm, Private Collection