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Antonio Berni
He was born Delisio Antonio Berni in Rosario, Santa Fe -
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Antonio Berni's Life
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First exposition
When he was 15 years old, he made his first exposition in Mari Art Gallery.
The local newspapers wrote articles on this "Child prodigy" -
In Europe
The Jockey Club of Rosario awarded Berni a scholarship to study in Europe in 1925. He chose to visit Spain, as Spanish painting was in vogue, particularly the art of Joaquín Sorolla, Ignacio Zuloaga, Camarasa Anglada, and Julio Romero de Torres. But after visiting Madrid, Toledo, Segovia, Granada, Córdoba, and Seville. he settled in Paris, where fellow Argentine artists Horacio Butler, Aquiles Badi, Alfredo Bigatti, Xul Solar, Héctor Basaldua, and Lino Enea Spilimbergo were working. -
He returned to Argentina
In 1931 Berni returned to Rosario, where he briefly lived on a farm, and was then hired as a municipal employee. The Argentina of the 1930s was very different from the Paris of the 1920s. He witnessed labor demonstrations and the miserable effects of unemployment, and was shocked by the news of a military coup d'état in Buenos Aires (see Infamous Decade). Surrealism didn't convey the frustration or hopelessness of the Argentine people. -
The Unemployed
He began painting realistic images that depicted the struggles and tensions of the Argentine people. His popular Nuevo Realismo paintings include Desocupados (The Unemployed) and Manifestación (Manifestation). Both were based on photographs Berni had gathered to document, as graphically as possible, the "abysmal conditions of his subjects."[8] As one critic noted, "the quality of his work resides in the precise balance that he attained between narrative painting with strong social content -
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Juanito Laguna's series and Ramona Montiel paintings
Berni's post-1950s work can be viewed as "a synthesis of Pop Art and Social realism." In 1958 he began collecting and collaging discarded material to create a series of works featuring a character named Juanito Laguna. The series became a social narrative on industrialization and poverty. -
Juanito Laguna
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Bearni's death
Antonio Berni died on October 13, 1981 in Buenos Aires, where he had been working on a Martin Fierro monument. The monument was inaugurated in San Martin on November 17 of the same year
