The MALBA & Berni

Antonio Berni's "other side"

One of my first excursions here in Buenos Aires was to the MALBA—Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires. I have been looking forward to visiting this museum since last semester, when I spent many afternoons reading Buenos Aires travel guides. Before I visited MALBA, I had heard from a few kids in my program that it wasn’t anything special and that it was too small. My friend Reiko and I completely disagreed…the museum was a decent size, comparable to New York City’s the Whitney or Guggenheim…and we both fell in love with the work being exhibited.

Walking throughout the museum I noticed that most of the art was bright and colorful—to me it was very representative of the vibrant and unique Latin American culture. Even if the museum was on the smaller side, to me, every piece was interesting and time-worthy. Usually I skip throughout museums, picking and choosing what I want to spend time looking at because yes, sometimes I find that art can be boring. This wasn’t the case at the MALBA.

Antonio Berni, a famous Argentine painter, had many pieces on exhibit. Reiko (my museum partner) and I were pleased to see Berni’s famous painting “Manifestacion” because she had posted a blog about this painting last semester in our “Abroad at Home” class. This painting definitely captures the trouble and the strife of the Argentine people, as well as a culture of protest.

Interestingly, Reiko and I both found ourselves drawn to a bunch of mixed-media, collage-like pieces of art. These pieces of art used coins, lace, egg cartons, and other three dimensional objects to create very interesting images. Blown away by this unique art-style, we checked the name of the artist and to our surprise it was Antonio Berni…the same artist that painted the previous painting I just mentioned. His paintings and his collage-pieces were COMPLETELY different styles. While his paintings seemed deep, serious, and emotionally-packed, his collages were more creative and fun. To me, Berni’s collage pieces were making a commentary on themes like the rich vs. the poor and the real vs. the imagined. The pieces portrayed glamorous women and cities, but they were composed of everyday objects—often what we would consider trash. Something seemed slightly satirical about these pieces…they were creepy and surreal. Like Buenos Aires, his work is all about discrepancies—Buenos Aires is a city where there is the very very rich and the very very poor. The country has a history of unjust dictatorships and I get the perception that many Argentine’s believe that everything the government does and says is simply some kind of a façade. Berni’s work captures this kind of pessimism.

P.S. the picture I posted uses lace and other textured materials...
Here is a link to another one of Berni's collage-like art pieces:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2336/2237223763_726db17198.jpg?v=0
And Here is a link to Berni's famous "Manifestacion" (Completely different style!):
http://www.conicet.gov.ar/INSTITUCIONAL/arte_conicet/images/manifestacio...