Marta MINUJIN — Argentina’s answer to Andy Warhol
Disclaimer: The information provided in this episode comes from multiple sources and is not my scientific studies or discoveries. All authors and sources are credited at the end of this article. Thank you!
Welcome to HerArt podcast, a project for art lovers, especially art created by women. I am so excited to start this new season! I got 12 amazing stories about distinct female artists, from all over the world. For the third season, I will do my best to introduce you to not only the ultimate OGs of the art world but encourage you to meet new amazing and talented Moldovan artists.
In our first episode, we will talk about Marta MINUJIN — Argentina’s answer to Andy Warhol. My name is Nata Andreev and I am going to tell you seven curious facts that you didn’t know about the artist whose appetite for all kinds of sensation and for public attention made her a central figure during a transformative period in Latin American art.
Curious Fact #1
Born into a bourgeois family in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, Marta received art training very early on. After studying at the Buenos Aires School of Fine Arts, she exhibited her work from 1957 onwards and held her first solo exhibition at only 16 years old, in the Argentinian capital. During these years, she became friends with Alberto Greco, a very famous informal artist who was to have a great influence on her career. Later on, Marta studied for three years in Paris, where she participated in the second Biennial in 1961 and became friends with the new realist artists, particularly Niki de Saint-Phalle who was a French-American sculptor, painter, and filmmaker. Widely noted as one of the few female monumental sculptors, known for her social commitment and work.
Curious Fact #2
Given the fact that Marta is no stranger to a lineage of Argentine protest against dictatorship, it is no wonder that she strives to destroy all that tends to exist infinitely. The intellectual elite of the 1960s influenced her work as well. Minujín was around circles in which topics such as semiotics were everyday discussions. This knowledgeable artist has had her solo exhibitions in New York, Buenos Aires, Seville, Paris, Tokyo, Connecticut, and the list goes on.
Curious Fact #3
Following the end of her fellowship in Paris, the artist had decided to destroy all the works she’s made in the previous three years. She had invited her fellow artists for an exhibit at the open-air studio one early evening in June. This performance was colored with post-war desolation and ecstatic feelings at the same time. The artist wanted to destroy her works with a creative force of others, meaning that all the artists invited had to bring elements of their own work, but not just any — those that best described and expressed them.
Curious Fact #4
Emerging in the 1960s as one of the strongest voices in Argentinian art, Minujín has often refused to make lasting objects, instead of this Marta developed her work in opposition to institutional structures. Her simultaneously monumental and fragile works challenge conventions of art while testifying to her determined engagement with both radical artistic forms and the gimmick of popular culture. Minujín’s capacity to inspire awe and surprise has solidified her reputation as a pioneer of Latin American conceptual art.
Curious Fact #5
Minujín’s environments and sculptures of the mid-’60s had a strong Pop sensibility. In La Menesunda, which was seemingly more indebted to the funhouse than to art history, visitors walked through neon-lit corridors, ascended scented stairwells and passed beneath confetti-dumping machines. Among the many surprising spaces re-created in the retrospective was a small bedroom from La Menesunda, in which a live couple was installed in the bed. And by the way, Minujín’s piece predates John and Yoko’s “Bed-Ins” by four years.
Curious Fact #6
A good deal of attention was dedicated to Parthenon of Books, a public art piece that had an enormous positive impact. In it, Minujín covered a massive replica of the Greek temple on Buenos Aires’s main thoroughfare with 25,000 books banned by the murderous military regime, which had left power only weeks earlier. On Christmas Eve, the books were given away and the structure toppled. Parthenon of Books became an icon of Argentina’s awakening from a nightmare.
Curious Fact #7
Minujín’s work is all about participation — or joining in. She makes art that people don’t just look at — but actively encounter. She wants people to be surprised and shocked, to feel uncomfortable and embarrassed, and to become curious. She sees her role as intensifying people’s lives by getting them to experience things and feelings they normally wouldn’t.
Thank you so much for listening to the first episode of season three, of HerArt podcast — a project for art lovers, especially art created by women. If you want to follow more of what we do, find us on Facebook and Instagram. And don’t forget to tune in next month, when I am going to tell you about Joan MITCHELL — the last Abstract Expressionist. See you later!
References
Art News | New Museum | Tate | Aware Women Artists | Widewalls
