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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2011 > February > 23 > Entry
“Recovering Beauty” exhibit focuses on “arte light”
The state-sponsored violence and persecution in Argentina in the 1970s and through 1983 left the South American nation with deep scars.
After democracy was restored, the process of redefining cultural and political values began. Liberation and free expression were celebrated. And artists responded.
By the 1990s a group of artists in the Argentine capital became known as the “arte light” group for their celebration of beauty, color and personal expressions. Eschewing a more intellectual approach to art, the “arte light” group infused their work with playfulness and free-spirited fun, using humble materials as means of embracing a frolicsome sense of aesthetics whose goal was to recover a sense beauty, pleasure and even silliness.
“Recovering Beauty” is the first comprehensive exhibit in the United States that examines the artists of the “arte light” group and their singular celebration of pure joyful beauty. Curated by Ursula Davila-Villa, Blanton curator of Latin American art, the exhibit is culled from private collections in Argentina and new Blanton acquisitions.
Whether a painting of a tiger on a holographic mirror or a wedding cake-like assemblage of pink and blue stuffed toys, the work made by the “arte light” group doesn’t hold back when it comes to sheer pleasure.
‘Recovering Beauty: The 1990s in Buenos Aires’ continues through May 22 at the Blanton Museum of Art, www.blantonmuseum.org
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