Lucía Ximena Cristi Moreno (December 13, 1920 – July 21, 2022) was a

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes, Andes Mountains and the Paci ...

post-impressionist Post-Impressionism (also spelled Postimpressionism) was a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction a ...

and figurative

expressionist Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

painter. Alongside the artists and , she is recognized for her work to convey "the worlds and perspectives of feminine expression."

Biography

Ximena Cristi was born in

Rancagua Rancagua () is a city and commune in central Chile and part of the Rancagua conurbation. It is the capital of the Cachapoal Province and of the O'Higgins Region, located south of the national capital of Santiago. It was originally named Sa ...

, Chile, in 1920. For six years beginning in 1939 she studied at the Arts Faculty of the University of Chile, majoring in painting and graduating with a bachelor's in visual arts. While at the university she studied under the painter Jorge Caballero, who influenced her artistic development. Cristi became part of the " generación de 1940" ("generation of 1940"), an artistic movement in Chile that also included Francisco Otta, , Aída Poblete, Ernesto Barreda, and Carlos Pedraza. This group, which was influenced by the likes of Pablo Burchard,

Camilo Mori Camilo Mori Serrano (September 24, 1896 – December 7, 1973) was a Chilean painter and a founder of the '' Grupo Montparnasse''. The son of an Italian immigrant, Camilo Mori entered the "Escuela de Bellas Artes" (School of Fine Arts) at the Uni ...

, and Luis Oyarzún, practiced a style similar to

fauvism Fauvism ( ) is a style of painting and an art movement that emerged in France at the beginning of the 20th century. It was the style of (, ''the wild beasts''), a group of modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong col ...

. Later on, thanks to a scholarship from the Italian government, Cristi traveled to Italy to study at the

Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma The Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma is a public tertiary academy of art in Rome, Italy. It was founded in the sixteenth century, but the present institution dates from the time of the unification of Italy and the capture of Rome by the Kingdom ...

from 1948 to 1952. In 1953, she joined with Matilde Pérez, Aída Poblete, Sergio Montecinos, and Ramón Vergara to form the "Grupo de los cinco" ("Group of Five"). This group, which stemmed from a joint exhibition that the artists staged at the Chilean-French Cultural Institute, reflected an inconformity with the traditional mediums of pictorial representation. They dedicated themselves to experimenting with new ways of artistic creativity. While they did not all work in a cohesive style, the five artists shared similar ideas about the reality of the painting, which they saw as corresponding to a balance of forms rather than to visual reality. She was also a member of the "Rectángulo" ("Rectangle") group alongside Gustavo Poblete, , Matilde Pérez, , Maruja Pinedo, and Uwe Grumann. The group's members based their work on geometric and abstract forms, and they maintained that "art is an art of ideas." Cristi also taught art, including as a professor of painting at her alma mater, the University of Chile, from 1960 to 1982. In 2020, to mark her 100th birthday, the Chilean undersecretary of culture and art launched a project to research and study the work of Ximena Cristi, which culminated in the publication of a book titled ''Catálogo de obra razonada'' ("Catalog of Reasoned Work") in 2022. Cristi died in July 2022 at the age of 101.

Work

According to Cristi, her inspiration always came from nature: "If I have a still life, a chair, an object, or a tree, it's very objective, very real, born from there." While she applied her personal vision to her paintings, she acknowledged that she never painted from her imagination, always using something objective as her guide. Her work is primarily based on interiors, gardens, still lives, and human figures. Some of her signature works can be found at the

Chilean National Museum of Fine Arts The Chilean National Museum of Fine Arts ( or ), located in Santiago, Chile, is one of the major centers for Chilean art and for broader South American art. Established in 1880 (making it the oldest in South America), the organization is manage ...

, including ''Jugadores de rugby'', ''El árbol del jardín'', and ''Sillón de espaldas''. Other works are featured at the Casa del Arte, , and various other museums and private collections. Among more than a dozen awards received throughout her career are, notably, the

Altazor Award The Altazor Award of the National Arts or simply Altazor, is a Chilean award which is awarded annually. The winners are chosen by the own creators and performers of the arts. They were established in 1958, but were not awarded until 1999. The a ...

in 2011 and the

Pablo Neruda Order of Artistic and Cultural Merit The Pablo Neruda Order of Artistic and Cultural Merit () was created in 2004 by the National Council of Culture and the Arts (Chile), National Council of Culture and the Arts of the government of Chile, as part of the commemoration of the 100th ann ...

in 2022.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cristi, Ximena 1920 births 2022 deaths Post-impressionist painters Expressionist painters People from Rancagua Chilean women centenarians University of Chile alumni Academic staff of the University of Chile 20th-century Chilean painters 20th-century Chilean women painters