Raquel Forner (1902–1988) was an

Argentine Argentines, Argentinians or Argentineans are people from Argentina. This connection may be residential, legal, historical, or cultural. For most Argentines, several (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their ...

painter known for her expressionist works.

Life

Forner was born in 22 April 1902, in

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires, controlled by the government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Argentina. It is located on the southwest of the Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires is classified as an Alpha− glob ...

, Argentina. Her father was Spanish by nationality and her mother was an Argentine of Spanish descent. As a result of frequent family travel to Europe, Forner spent part of her childhood in Spain, and later developed an artistic interest in the

Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War () was a military conflict fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republican faction (Spanish Civil War), Republicans and the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalists. Republicans were loyal to the Left-wing p ...

. Forner completed studies at the National Academy of Fine Arts (today part of the National University Art Institute) in Buenos Aires in 1923. A year before graduation she received an appointment to teach drawing at the same academy. In 1924 she received a third place award from the Argentine National Salon of Fine arts, and in 1928 she had her first solo exhibition in Buenos Aires. Afterward she relocated to Paris and studied with Othon Friesz. In 1936, she married the Argentine sculptor Alfredo Bigatti.

Artistic themes

Forner's work demonstrated an interest in current events, and from the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 this took a dramatic and tragic tone. She borrowed ideas from

surrealism Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...

during the 1940s, adapting its esthetic of distortion without seeking to reproduce a dream state. In 1942 she took first place at the Argentine National Salon competition. During the 1940s through most of the 1950s she produced several series on similar tragic themes in a primarily expressionist mode. Forner often portrayed strong female figures, but not as specific explorations into gender norms. Beginning in 1957, coinciding with the

space race The Space Race (, ) was a 20th-century competition between the Cold War rivals, the United States and the Soviet Union, to achieve superior spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the ballistic missile-based nuclear arms race between t ...

, Forner's attention turned to imagined scenes of interplanetary travel. With her ''Space Series'', which exhibited in Europe and earned recognition, she became one of the earliest fine artists to portray scenes of outer space. This period is characterized by a more vibrant use of color and a personal cosmic mythology of her own creation. Forner's artistic portrayals of space travel continued until the 1970s. The United States

National Air and Space Museum The National Air and Space Museum (NASM) of the Smithsonian Institution is a museum in Washington, D.C., in the United States, dedicated to history of aviation, human flight and space exploration. Established in 1946 as the National Air Museum, ...

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums, Education center, education and Research institute, research centers, created by the Federal government of the United States, U.S. government "for the increase a ...

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

has several examples of her late period work in its collection including ''Return of the Astronaut,'' 1969. Her work was exhibited widely throughout Argentina, and she was given two Konex Awards (the highest in the Argentine cultural realm) in 1982. Forner died on 10 June 1988 in Buenos Aires. That year, the Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art organized a retrospective in her honor. Her work is included in the collection of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Art Museum of the Americas, the Museum of Modern Art and others.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Forner, Raquel 1902 births 1988 deaths 20th-century Argentine painters Artists from Buenos Aires Argentine people of Catalan descent Expressionist painters Argentine expatriates in Spain 20th-century Argentine women painters