Luis Felipe Noe: Chaos as structure: by applying unconventional procedures and methods, this Argentine artist has developed a unique style between energized aesthetic and political avant-garde.

• Author: Bianco, Adriana
• Position: Biography

The 1960s were a particularly significant time in Argentina, a time of cultural and artistic revolution propelled by the Instituto Di Tella, a cultural hub in Buenos Aires life. It was in this decade that Jorge Luis Borges took Argentine literature onto the international stage and women writers emerged who paved the way for the literary boom that was to come. A new focus on national history produced the historical revisionist movement, and the "60s Generation" created a new language in film.

In the visual arts, renovating movements arrived from other countries: informalism, abstraction, destructive art, action painting, pop-art, and op-art. This is the environment in which "Otra Figuracion" or "Nueva Figuracion" appeared in Argentina, merging aspects of these trends with an iconoclastic aesthetic in which the image is used as a sign, not as representation, and the unity of the painting is discontinued. The Nueva Figuracion [New Figuration] group was made up of artists like Luis Felipe Noe, Romulo Maccio, Jorge de la Vega, and Ernesto Delta.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Luis Felipe Noe was the theorist of the group. He was born in Buenos Aires in 1933 and studied painting with Horacio Butler. His first exhibition was in 1959, and he has been creating ever since then: trying out new materials; working with large format canvasses; creating adventures in installation; and focusing on historical, ecological, and mythical themes with a consistently reflective and bold vision.

Noe's works are found in museums and collections in Europe, Latin America, and the United States, and he has received numerous awards and recognitions. In 1985, he was invited to the historic sector of the San Pablo Biennial, and in 1995, the National Museum of Pine Arts in Buenos Aires presented a major retrospective of his works.

Alongside his visual art, Noe has done a great deal of work in art theory, with books such as Antiestetica, Una sociedad colonial avanzada, and a text-poem Wittgenstein: este es el caso.

Luis Felipe Noe is a key figure in the history of Argentine art and a protagonist of the "Nueva Figuracion." His expressionistic zeal, his reclaiming of human and social realms, and his innovations in visual art reveal him as a master, constantly involved in activities that influence the next generations of artists. Because of Noe's relevante In Argentine history and the significance of his work, he was recently nominated as Argentina's representative in the 53rd Venice Biennial, where he will exhibit two great works created for the occasion. From his studio in Buenos Aires, he told us his story.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

I am very attracted to "figures," and painting has been a passion since I was a child. I always wanted to be a painter. My father didn't object, but he influenced me to study law at...