Marcia Schvartz: Exhibit in New York
Works, 1976 – 2018
55 Walker  New York, NY 10013
Bortolami | kaufmann repetto | Andrew Kreps Gallery
July 14 through september 7, 2021.
LINK.

(Bortolami, kaufmann repetto, and Andrew Kreps Gallery) is
pleased to announce the first survey exhibition in the United States of
Marcia Schvartz (b. 1955, Argentina). The exhibition spans across five
decades of the artist’s practice, from the 1970s to today, and will be
accompanied by a full text by art historian Lucy Hunter , supported by
the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA) .
Marcia Schvartz’s practice is grounded in the expressive yet rigorous
rendering of the human figure, working with painting, ceramic, textile,
sculpture, assemblage, and performance. She is best recognized for her
figurative paintings that depict the complexity of cosmopolitan social
dynamics. Illustrating the political history of Argentina through
personal and populist terms, Schvartz’s work has a recurrent focus on
female figures which she represents in a radical anti-patriarchal and
decolonial manner.
In 1970, she entered the Escuela de Bellas Artes Manuel Belgrano, where
she studied under renowned Argentinian artists Luis Falcini, Luis Felipe
Noé, and most influentially for Schvartz, Aída Carballo. However in
1976 —during Schvartz’s early development as a young artist— a
right-wing coup overthrew Isabel Perón as President of Argentina and a
military junta was installed, leading to a 7-year period of state terror
led by a military dictatorship (adjoined to the larger Operation Condor
campaign in South America) that resulted in their murder of an estimated
30,000 civilians. Schvartz herself was a target, not only for being a
militant and uncompromisingly outspoken artist, but also because her
family was the owner of Fausto, a prominent bookstore known for
disseminating progressive ideas and theories, and publishing radical
literature. Because of this, Schvartz self-exiled to Spain in order to
continue making her art (and later Brazil), before returning to
Argentina in 1983. The loss of so many friends disappeared and murdered
at the hands of the junta, combined with the rise of deaths due to the
HIV/AIDS pandemic in the 1980s, became the painful source of inspiration
for many works by Schvartz during this period and still today.
Although Schvartz has deployed caricaturesque depictions of public
figures such as the Peróns and other political subjects, the works in
this exhibition focus on people that belong to the Buenos Aires
neighbourhood where Schvartz lives, works, and teaches—San Telmo. A
historically marginal neighborhood near the city’s harbor, San Telmo was
later repurposed by artists and the city’s vibrant intelligentsia,
creating a radical post-dictatorial underground scene in the 1980s. In
the portraits on view, Schvartz depicts her neighbors including
shop-owners, taxi and bus drivers, sex workers, bartenders, musicians,
other artists, activists, and football fans, among others. While the
people in her immediate community are among the most represented in her
work, Schvartz has also been creating detailed self-portraits for
decades. In the 1990s, her practice expanded to include a dynamic
mythical element, incorporating scenes that depict the native people of
Argentina without colonial influences (and the subsequent class
subjugation experienced by their descendants), alongside powerful,
animistic depictions of the country’s flora and landscapes.
Marcia Schvartz has exhibited extensively through South America and
Spain and was most recently featured in the traveling exhibition
“Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985” at the Hammer Museum, Los
Angeles, Pinacoteca de Sao Paulo, and the Brooklyn, Museum, 2017-2018.
She has received awards and accolades such as the Gran Premio de Honor
from the Banco Central de la República Argentina, Buenos Aires, 2015;
the Primer Premio at the Salón Hugo Del Carril, Museo de Arte Moderno
de Buenos Aires, 1996; and the Primer Premio in the 37th Salón
Municipal de Artes Plásticas Manuel Belgrano, 1992. Her work is
included in public collections throughout the world, including the Museo
Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte
Reina Sofía, Madrid; and the Bronx Museum of Arts, among others.