Eduardo Sívori (October 13, 1847 – June 5, 1918) was an Argentine artist widely regarded as his country's first realist painter.

Life and work

Born to Genoese immigrants in

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South Am ...

, Sívori had harbored artistic leanings during childhood that, for family reasons, went unfulfilled. Asked by his father to join him on a business trip to

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

in 1874, Sívori took the opportunity to frequent Parisian ateliers. Returning to Buenos Aires, the experience drew him to other local painters, including his brother, Alejandro, José Aguyari and

Eduardo Schiaffino Eduardo Schiaffino (1858-1935) was an Argentine painter, critic, intellectual and historian. A member of a group known as the '' Generation of '80'', he founded the National Museum of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires and sparked the development of pai ...

, who would later become one of Argentina's best-known

symbolist Symbolism was a late 19th-century art movement of French and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts seeking to represent absolute truths symbolically through language and metaphorical images, mainly as a reaction against naturalism and real ...

painters. Together, they founded the Society for the Promotion of Fine Arts in 1875, an important early milestone in the development of artisan

guild A guild ( ) is an association of artisans and merchants who oversee the practice of their craft/trade in a particular area. The earliest types of guild formed as organizations of tradesmen belonging to a professional association. They sometimes ...

s in Argentina. Sívori earned recognition for his ''Dolce far niente'' ("Sweet Do Nothing"), for which he was awarded a gold medal at the 1880 Continental Art Salon of Buenos Aires. He returned to Paris in 1882, eventually earning an apprenticeship in the prestigious Jean Paul Laurens atelier, following which he created ''El despertar de la criada'' ("Waking of the Servant"), perhaps his best remembered work. Increasingly renowned, his travels took him to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...

, where he was awarded a second gold medal at the St. Louis Exposition of 1884 for ''Dolce far niente''. Sívori thereafter focused his efforts on commercial art, creating portraits and landscapes for clients, among the best-known of which was local stockbreeder Godofredo Daireaux's in 1903. His bucolic landscapes soon earned him renown as the "portraiteur of the pampas." These relationships helped result in the designation of his guild as an official entity within the National Academy of Fine Arts in 1905, of which he was named president in 1910. Eduardo Sívori died in Buenos Aires in 1918 at the age of seventy, and was honored posthumously with the naming of the new Eduardo Sívori Museum in his honor, in 1938.

External links

Official Sívori Museum biography
Argentine people of Italian descent People from Buenos Aires 1847 births 1918 deaths Burials at La Chacarita Cemetery 19th-century Argentine painters 19th-century Argentine male artists Argentine male painters 20th-century Argentine painters Realist painters 20th-century Argentine male artists {{Argentina-painter-stub