Mirtha Dermisache
Because I write!

08.10— 10.09.2017
Curator Agustín Pérez Rubio
Gallery 3, Level 1

This is the first retrospective museum exhibition of the Argentine artist Mirtha Dermisache (Buenos Aires, 1940-2012). Between visual art and writing, the oeuvre of Mirtha Dermisache is divided between books, letters, texts, diaries and postcards, formats in which she experimented with the expressive possibilities of her graphic stroke on paper.

The exhibition provides a complete survey of her artistic output, from the first book she made in 1967 to her last group works in the 2000 decade. It includes 140 pieces from private collections, as well as a broad range of documents from the Archivo Mirtha Dermisache, which since 2013 has been painstakingly cataloguing and recording her works.

Throughout her career, Mirtha Dermisache built up a calligraphic corpus through "illegible writings," a term coined by Roland Barthes, who in 1971 showed great interest in her work and stressed her ability to achieve the "essence of writing". The artist was particularly interested in the editorial capacity of her works, as a form in which to problematize the idea of originality. She was connected to the Instituto Di Tella, the CAYC and the Grupo de los 13, and was characterized as being a solitary, intimistic artist in her written work, and altogether open in her pedagogic production.

“From the very start, Dermisache's work seems to be traversed by the duality between the search for freedom in creation and submission to a set of rules, a discipline. And, when one surveys the whole of her work from 1967 until her death, this duality becomes a constant, indissociable from her task of teaching, understood as the experience of an inverse process of learning: the unlearning of certain ideas that hinder creative free expression," explains curator Agustín Pérez Rubio.

The possibilities for manipulating the mechanisms of publishing will cohabit in the exhibition space with original works, prompting the public to consider the most abstract aspects of writing, such as time, musicality and rhythms, calligraphic plasticity, signification, systematicity and the relation with typography. The exhibition also takes account of the artist's creative processes, which include "legible" texts and exercises, as well as her extensive work teaching at the TAC (Taller de Acciones Creativas [Studio for Creative Actions]) and at the six editions of the Jornadas del Color y la Forma [Conferences on Color and Form] (1974-1981), which led to a practice of “work x sum total” in which she would involve all participants.

The exhibition plan is based on three years of documentary work researching her personal archive, which also will be on view in order to contextualize and show governing and conflicting facets of her work: discipline, say, versus freedom of expression, or print run versus original, the mass-level versus the individual.

Mirtha Dermisache. Porque ¡yo escribo! continues the series of projects in Room 3 which seek to revisit the production of women artists who, for various reasons, were not sufficiently recognized in their era, or whose work has still not found its rightful place in the historiography of contemporary art. Since 2015 monographic exhibitions have been organized for Annemarie Heinrich (Germany, 1912 – Bs. As., 2005), Teresa Burga (Peru, 1935), Claudia Andujar (Switzerland, 1931; living and working in Brazil since 1954) and Alicia Penalba (Bs. As., 1913 – France, 1982).

Catalog

Along with the exhibition, a 300-page catalog will be published on her oeuvre –in a double edition in Spanish and English–, co-published with the Fundación Espigas and with the support of the Archivo Mirtha Dermisache and the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA). The book includes and the curatorial essay of Agustín Pérez Rubio, artistic director of MALBA; and hitherto unpublished texts by Guy Schraenen, editor/publisher and founder of the publishing house Guy Schraenen éditeur and the Archive for Small Press & Communication (A.S.P.C.); Belén Gache, writer and poet; and Lucía Cañada (UBA-IDEAS- UNSAM), as well as a biographical chronicle of the artist by Cintia Mezza, Cecilia Iida and Ana Raviña of the Archivo Mirtha Dermisache.

 

Mirtha Dermisache

Buenos Aires, 1940-2012

Dermisache studied in the National Fine Arts Schools Manuel Belgrano and Prilidiano Pueyrredón. Between 1966 and 1967 she made her first graphic art book. By the 1970s, her work has gained the appreciation of Jorge Romero Brest, Amancio Williams, Oscar Masotta and Edgardo Cozarinsky, among others, and was presented at the CAYC, which Jorge Glusberg directed. Ulises Carrión exhibited her works in the gallery Other Books and So (Amsterdam) and the Belgian editor and curator Guy Schraenen published them through the imprint Archive for Small Press and Communication. Dermisache 's graphic works were also published by Marc Dachy in Antwerp, and published in Flash ArtDoc(k)sKontextEphemera and Axe.

She took part in various group shows, outstanding among them: From Figuration Art to Systems Art in Argentina, at the Camden Arts Centre (London); Arte de Sistemas en Latinoamerica [Systems Art in Latin America] 1974, at the International Cultureel Centrum (Antwerp), and at the Palais des Beaux-Arts (Brussels); and Arte e Ideología. CAyC al aire libre. Arte de Sistemas II [Art and Ideology: CAyC Outdoors: Systems Art II], at the Museo de Arte Moderno (Buenos Aires). In parallel with her artistic production she had an extensive teaching career, from the TAC (Taller de Acciones Creativas [Workshop for Creative Actions]) and with the creation and from the workshops and six editions of the Jornadas del Color y la Forma [Color and Form Conferences] (1974 to 1981), large-scale public workshops aimed at teaching of various visual techniques in order to develop the creative capacity and free expression of adults. Works of hers are in the collection of the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Barcelona (Spain), the Museu de Serralves (Portugal), the Museum of Modern Art (USA) and the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Argentina).

Related Activities

Jueves 7 de septiembre a las 19:00. Sala 3, Nivel 1

Mirtha Dermisache carta

Lunes 4, 11, 18 y 25 de septiembre de 11:00 a 13:00. Biblioteca

Curso

Conceptualismos: una introducción

En el marco de la exhibición dedicada a la obra de Mirta Dermisache, los encuentros son una oportunidad para conocer las principales trayectorias histórico-artísticas que condujeron hacia el giro conceptual en las artes plásticas entre fines de 1960 e inicios de 1970.

Por Fabiana Serviddio
Lunes 4, 11, 18 y 25 de septiembre de 11:00 a 13:00. Biblioteca

Jueves 10 de agosto a las 18:00. Auditorio

Mirtha Dermisache

Mesa redonda

Mirtha Dermisache

En una mesa redonda conformada por Agustín Pérez Rubio –curador de la exposición y director de Malba– y los artistas Eduardo Stupía y Leticia Obeid, se dará cuenta del trabajo de Mirtha Dermisache, desde sus primeros libros en la década del 60 hasta sus últimas producciones.

Participan: Leticia Obeid, Lucrecia Palacios, Agustín Pérez Rubio y Eduardo Stupía
Jueves 10 de agosto a las 18:00. Auditorio

Miércoles 16 y 23 de agosto a las 15:00. Biblioteca
CUPO COMPLETO

Sergio Chejfec

Taller

Escritura a partir de grafismos

En el marco de la exhibición de la artista Mirtha Dermisache, ¡Porque yo escribo!, el Taller de escritura a partir de grafismos se orienta en sentido diferente a los talleres organizados según consignas de género, de contenido, de filiación estética, de ejercicios de técnica narrativa o poética, etc.

Por Sergio Chejfec
Miércoles 16 y 23 de agosto a las 15:00. Biblioteca
CUPO COMPLETO

Auditorio y Plaza Perú

Jornadas del Color y de la Forma

Encuentro

Jornadas del Color y de la Forma

A modo de homenaje y como parte de la exposición Mirtha Dermisache: Porque ¡yo escribo!, MALBA propone revivir este espíritu y reflexionar, 35 años después, sobre el efecto que tuvieron estos encuentros de expresión y creatividad

Sábado 7 de octubre de 11:00 a 13:00 y de 15:00 a 18:00
Auditorio y Plaza Perú

Mirtha Dermisache. Sin título (texto), ca. 1970-1971.

Archivos

Mirtha Dermisache
Simulación e invención

Al acercarnos al legado de Mirtha Dermisache vemos que, en los primeros trabajos, sobre todo en su primer libro importante –dividido en lo que ahora se conoce como Libro No 1, 1967 y un fajo de hojas sueltas que se encuentran en el Archivo– y en sus primeros textos, hay mucha vitalidad: diferentes colores, líneas curvas, expresiones que, dentro del formato escritural, no son tan rigurosas y podrían, quizá, todavía ser asociadas al dibujo.

Por Agustín Pérez Rubio

Jueves 14 de septiembre de 17:30 a 19:00. Sala pedagógica
CUPO COMPLETO

Taller de caligrafia

Sub20

De la letra al gesto
Taller de experimentación caligráfica

Este taller propone un espacio para explorar en la línea caligráfica la energía, el dinamismo y el acto experimental.

A cargo de Fernanda Cozzi
Jueves 14 de septiembre de 17:30 a 19:00. Sala pedagógica
CUPO COMPLETO

Mirtha Dermisache

Encuentros con artistas y escritores

Sesiones Dermisache I: Mauro Césari y Claudia del Río

A través de dos encuentros con artistas y escritores, las “Sesiones Dermisache” se proponen dar cuenta de diferentes aproximaciones artísticas a la relación entre texto e imagen.

Jueves 28 de septiembre a las 18:30. Sala pedagógica

Mirtha Dermisache. Libro Nª 1, 1967.

Archivos

Los abecedarios reversibles de Mirtha Dermisache

Cuenta la leyenda que cuando el cineasta Hugo Santiago vio por primera vez los grafismos de Mirtha Dermisache, dijo: “Acá nadie va a entender lo que estás haciendo. El único que lo puede entender es Borges, pero está ciego y no tenés ninguna posibilidad”.

Por Mariana Di Ció

Libertella Dermisache

Archivos

Siete notas extraídas
Héctor Libertella
y Mirtha Dermisache

Texto presentado en las Sesiones Dermisache I, el primero de una serie de encuentros entre artistas y escritores que parten de las obras y reflexiones de los invitados y de la obra de Mirtha Dermisache para expandirse hacia el trabajo de otros artistas, escritores, ensayistas y experiencias.

Por Mauro Césari