03.28 — 06.09.2014
A collection of 31 works by Ricardo Garabito, created between 1965 and 2007 and donated by the artist to the museum's collection. This generous gesture represents an enormous contribution to the promotion and dissemination of Argentine and Latin American art: it is the first time that an artist with such a distinguished career has decided to donate a collection of his most representative works to the museum during his lifetime. “My works have found their place at Malba,” the artist acknowledges.
The exhibition includes 13 paintings, 6 drawings, and 12 sculptures by one of the great exponents of 20th-century Argentine art. Garabito is a painter who works in a traditional academic style: he has a perfect command of composition, supported by masterful drawing and colors that accompany and invigorate his work.
His interest lies in observing the human typologies of Buenos Aires' middle class: he points out details with irony, mischief, and humor, reminiscent of Goya's court portraits or Francis Bacon's work in its sharp ambiguity.
For Samuel Paz—who, along with Samuel Oliver, was a critical reference point and mentor for his work—the figures Garabito portrays awaken in the observer a justified suspicion that the irony is directed at himself. In his still lifes, on the other hand, the silence of space and the immanent strength of everyday elements prevail.
Ricardo Garabito
Argentine artist, illustrator, painter, and teacher. Born in Trenque Lauquen in 1930, he moved to Buenos Aires at the age of 18, where he currently lives and works in his studio in the Monserrat neighborhood.
In the early 1950s, he frequented the Asociación Estímulo de Bellas Artes (Fine Arts Encouragement Association), and between 1953 and 1956 he attended Horacio Butler's workshop. There he met Samuel Paz who, together with Samuel Oliver, would become a critical reference and mentor for his work. In 1963, he held his first solo exhibition at the Rubbers Gallery, and since then he has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Argentina and abroad. He held only eleven solo exhibitions, including anthological exhibitions at the San Telmo Foundation (1982) and the Cronopios Hall of the Recoleta Cultural Center (1998), in addition to his major retrospective in 2007 at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, curated by Samuel Paz and Victoria Noorthoorn, which brought together more than one hundred works by the artist, from the 1960s to the present.
His works are part of the collections of the National Museum of Fine Arts, The Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art – The University of Texas at Austin, and the Art Collection of the Bank of the Republic of Colombia, among other public and private collections in Colombia and abroad.
