Tag: buenos aires

Eduardo Mac Entyre

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

Alejandro Pasquale

The Artwork of Alejandro Pasquale

Born in Buenos Aires in 1984, Alejandro Pasquale is an Argentine painter. In 2002, he entered the Universidad Nacional de les Artes in Buenos Aires to pursue an arts education. Two years later, Pasquale left the university and continued his education under the tutelage of local artists. Among those artists active at this time in Buenos Aires was painter Eduardo Stupia who works almost extensively in black and white with occasional use of color. In both 2013 and 2014, Pasquale participated in Stupia’s workshops at the highly regarded Torcuato Di Tella University in Buenos Aires.

Alejandro Pasquale’s work resides in the art category of magic realism, a realistic portrayal of the world with additional mystical or cryptic elements. His intriguing drawings and paintings, predominately figurative, abound in highly detailed elements. With a background in art based on his love of nature, Pasquale places his figures in lush, natural surroundings; however, he obscures their faces and emotions through masks composed of foliage and flowers. With their sense of sight covered, the figures are removed from the external world and absorbed into a state of internal contemplation.

In 2011, Pasquale was recognized for his drawings in the Salon de Mayo held at the Provincial Museum of Fine Arts “Rosa Galisteo de Rodriguez” in Santa Fe, Argentina. In 2015, he was a finalist at the National Painting Biennial in the city of Rafaela. In the same year, Pasquale won the first award at the National Exhibition of Contemporary Art held at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Junin, a provincial city of Buenos Aires. In 2017, he was awarded a scholarship to participate in the Encontro de Artistas Novos exhibition held at the Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Pasquale also participated in the Salón Nacional de Arts Visuales held in 2021 at Buenos Aires’s Palais de Glace.

Alejandro Pasquale is a regularly appearing artist with the Beinart Gallery in Melbourn, Australia; the Victor Lope Gallery in Barcelona, Spain; the Quimera Gallery in Buenos Aires, Argentina; the Stone Sparrow Gallery in New York City; and the Daniel Raphael Gallery in London. In addition to his many solo and group exhibitions, he continues to exhibit in many international art fairs. Alejandro Pasquale’s work is included in many private collections around the world. 

“The intention of my work is to be a necessary reminder that, even though we often overlook it, we are a horizontal part of the great network of living beings that co-inhabit this earth. We belong, on the day we allow ourselves to recognize this, to this immense and magical nature. We are nature.”  —Alejandro Pasquale

Notes: Images of Alejandro Pasquale’s work and contact information can be found at the artist’s website located at: https://alejandropasquale.com

Alejandro Pasquale’s work can also be seen at Saisho, an online art market site, and at the avante-garde Beinart Gallery where Pasquela has had several solo exhibitions. 

Saisho is located at: https://www.saishoart.com/alejandro-pasquale

Beinart Gallery is located at: https://beinart.org/collections/alejandro-pasquale

 

Eduardo Catalano

Eduardo Catalano, Stainless Steel and Aluminum, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Inaugurated in April 2002, this gigantic flower by Buenos Aires-born Eduardo Catalano  has become one of the latest icons of Buenos Aires. Officially the flower goes by the name of Floralis Generica, but since nobody seems to be able to remember that ‘scientific’ name, it usually gets called the Steel Flower. The solar flower is 23 metres high and weighs 18 tonnes. When the petals are open they span 32 metres and when closed only 16 metres.

One of the fascinating features of this sculpture is that it acts like a real flower in that its gigantic petals are open during the day and then close for the night with a red glow emanating from within. There are four special nights a year where the petals remain open: 25th May, 21st September and the 24th and 31st of December.

The Steel Flower is made of stainless steel and aluminium and sits in the centre of a pool of water which reflects the flower and also protects it from vandals.