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By applying unconventional procedures and methods, this Argentine artist has developed a unique style between energized aesthetic and political avant-garde
Luis Felipe Noé
The 1960s were a particularly significant time in Argentina, a time of cultural and artistic revolution propelled by the Instituto Di Telia, a cultural hub in Buenos Aires life. It was in this decade that Jorge Luis Borges took Argentine literature onto the international stage and women writers emerged who paved the way for the literary boom that was to come. A new focus on national history produced the historical revisionist movement, and the "60s Generation" created a new language in film.
In the visual arts, renovating movements arrived from other countries: informalism, abstraction, destructive art, action painting, pop-art, and op-art. This is the environment in which "Otra Figuración" or "Nueva Figuración" appeared in Argentina, merging aspects of these trends with an iconoclastic aesthetic in which the image is used as a sign, not as representation, and the unity of the painting is discontinued. The Nueva Figuración [New Figuration] group was made up of artists like Luis Felipe Noè, Rómulo Maccio, Jorge de la Vega, and Ernesto Deira.
Luis Felipe Noè was the theorist of the group. He was born in Buenos Aires in 1933 and studied painting with Horacio Butler. His first exhibition was in 1959, and he has been creating ever since then: trying out new materials; working with large format canvasses; creating adventures in installation; and focusing on historical, ecological, and mythical themes with a consistently reflective and bold vision.
Noé's works are found in museums and collections in Europe, Latin America, and the United States, and he has received numerous awards and recognitions. In 1985, he was invited to the historic sector of the San Pablo Biennial, and in 1995, the National Museum of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires presented a major retrospective of his works.
Alongside his visual art, Noè has done a great deal of work in art theory, with books such as Antiestética, Una sociedad colonial avanzada, and a text-poem Wittgenstein: este es el caso.
Luis Felipe Noè is a key figure in the history of Argentine art and a protagonist of the "Nueva Figuración. " His expressionistic zeal, his reclaiming of human and...