Julio Barragán (1928 – 14 January 2011) was an Argentine painter of the Concretist and

Cubist Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...

schools.

Life and work

Barragán was born 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 ...

. He began studying art at age 12, creating reproductions of

Renaissance art Renaissance art (1350 – 1620 AD) is the painting, sculpture, and decorative arts of the period of European history known as the Renaissance, which emerged as a distinct style in Italy in about AD 1400, in parallel with developments which oc ...

masters such as

El Greco Domḗnikos Theotokópoulos ( el, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος ; 1 October 1541 7 April 1614), most widely known as El Greco ("The Greek"), was a Greek painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El G ...

. He studied at the National School of Ceramics, where he graduated in 1945 with a technical degree and met his future wife, María de las Nieves Adeff (born 1926); Adeff, became an accomplished potter. His work was first exhibited at the National Fine Arts Exhibition in 1946. His early work was Realist, and he rejected the contemporary genres that had already marked the careers of, among others, his elder brother,

Luis Barragán Luis Ramiro Barragán Morfín (March 9, 1902 – November 22, 1988) was a Mexican architect and engineer. His work has influenced contemporary architects visually and conceptually. Barragán's buildings are frequently visited by international ...

. Barragán traveled 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 ...

, France, in the late 1940s, however, and was influenced by

Georges Braque Georges Braque ( , ; 13 May 1882 – 31 August 1963) was a major 20th-century List of French artists, French painter, Collage, collagist, Drawing, draughtsman, printmaker and sculpture, sculptor. His most notable contributions were in his all ...

and

Pablo Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is ...

. He joined the "Twenty Painters and Sculptors" group with his brother, Bruno Venier, and Oscar Capristo, among others. The group, active in Argentina between 1952 and 1963, exhibited works in a number of Abstract genres, although Julio Barragán's Concrete phase contrasted with much of the group's more surreal work. His style of painting then shifted to

Cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...

, adopting a chiaroscuro tone that would become his trademark. The landscapes and cityscapes he painted in subsequent decades were marked by Cubist and

Impressionist Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...

influences. These became his best-known works, and to meet growing demand, he adopted an "

assembly line An assembly line is a manufacturing process (often called a ''progressive assembly'') in which parts (usually interchangeable parts) are added as the semi-finished assembly moves from workstation to workstation where the parts are added in sequ ...

" routine at his

Villa Urquiza Villa Urquiza is a barrio or neighborhood of Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is located between the barrios of Villa Pueyrredón, Belgrano, Villa Ortúzar, Coghlan, Saavedra and Agronomía. Its limits are the streets and avenues Constituyentes, ...

atelier An atelier () is the private workshop or studio of a professional artist in the fine or decorative arts or an architect, where a principal master and a number of assistants, students, and apprentices can work together producing fine art or vi ...

, whereby several easels were assembled in a row that allowed Barragán to alternate randomly from one work to another. Barragán's work was exhibited in most of the nation's leading art galleries, including the Gutiérrez y Guad,

Sotheby's Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, and ...

, Wildenstein, and Witcomb galleries, as well as in the Eduardo Sívori Museum and others. His work earned the Braque Prize at the

Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art The Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art known locally as the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires or MAMBA is a modern art museum located in Buenos Aires, Argentina. History The museum opened on April 11, 1956, and resulted from an initiative by ...

(1964), the Grand Prize in Painting at the Belgrano Municipal Salon (1970), and First Prizes at the National Salon in 1976 and 1978. Local art critic Mauricio Neuman described him as a ''"solitary aristocrat of beauty."'' He retired from Buenos Aires' art shows in 2005, and died in his Almagro neighborhood home in 2011 at age 82.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Barragan, Julio 1928 births 2011 deaths Artists from Buenos Aires Argentine people of Spanish descent Argentine painters Argentine male painters Cubist artists