Marta Minujín: Difference between revisions

Marta Minujín was born in the [[San Telmo]] neighborhood of [[Buenos Aires]]. Her father was a Jewish[[Jew]]ish physician and her mother a housewife of Spanish descent. She met a young economist, Juan Carlos Gómez Sabaini, and married him in secret in 1959; the couple had two children. As a student in the [[National University Art Institute]], she first exhibited her work in a 1959 show at the Teatro Agón. A scholarship from the [[w:es:Fondo nacional de las Artes|National Arts Foundation]] allowed her to travel to [[Paris]] as one of the young Argentine artists featured in ''[[Pablo Curatella Manes]] and Thirty Argentines of the New Generation'', a 1960 exhibit organized by the prominent sculptor and [[Paris Biennale]] judge.<ref name=clarin>[http://www.clarin.com/diario/2005/07/06/conexiones/t-1008529.htm ''Clarín'': 'Superé todos mis problemas, como Maradona' (7/6/2005) {{in lang|es}}]</ref>

These works earned her a [[Guggenheim Fellowship]] in 1966, by which she relocated to [[New York City]]. The ''[[coup d'état]]'' by General [[Juan Carlos Onganía]] in June of that year made her fellowship all the more fortuitous, as the new regime would frequently censor and ban irreverent displays such as hers. Minujín delved into [[psychedelic art]] in New York, of which among her best-known creations was that of the "Minuphone," where patrons could enter a telephone booth, dial a number, and be surprised by colors projecting from the glass panels, sounds, and seeing themselves on a television screen in the floor.<ref name="time">{{Cite news|url=httphttps://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,899583,00.html|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160309234058/http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,899583,00.html|archive-date=9 March 2016|title=Sculpture: The Number is 581-4570, but Don't Call It|newspaper=Time|date=7 July 1967}}</ref> The Minuphone was designed and constructed, in collaboration with her, by engineer Per Biorn, who was employed at Bell Telephone Laboratories, and the work was shown at the Howard Wise Gallery in New York City.<ref>[http://www.fondation-langlois.org/html/e/page.php?NumPage=581 Biorn Biography]</ref> She was on hand in 1971 for the Buenos Aires premiere of ''Operación Perfume'', and in New York, befriended fellow conceptual artist [[Andy Warhol]].<ref name=clarin/> Her image is included in the iconic 1972 poster [[Some Living American Women Artists (collage) | Some Living American Women Artists]] by [[Mary Beth Edelson]].<ref name="SAAM">{{cite web |title=Some Living American Women Artists/Last Supper |url=https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/some-living-american-women-artistslast-supper-76377 |website=Smithsonian American Art Museum |access-date=21 January 2022}}</ref>

Minujín returned to Buenos Aires in 1983, and the [[Argentine general election, 1983|return of democracy]] the same year, following seven years of a generally failed dictatorship, prompted her to create a monument to a glaring, inanimate victim of the regime: [[freedom of expression]]. Assembling 30,000 [[censorship|books banned]] between 1976 and 1983 (including works as diverse as those by [[Sigmund Freud|Freud]], [[Karl Marx|Marx]], [[Jean-Paul Sartre|Sartre]], [[Antonio Gramsci|Gramsci]], [[Michel Foucault|Foucault]], [[Raúl Scalabrini Ortiz]], and [[Darcy Ribeiro]], as well as satires such as ''[[Absalom and Achitophel]]'', reference volumes such as ''[[Enciclopedia Salvat]]'', and even children's texts, notably ''[[The Little Prince]]'' by [[Antoine de Saint -Exupéry]]), she designed the "Parthenon of Books [Homage to Democracy]." Following President [[Raúl Alfonsín]]'s 10 December inaugural, Minujín had this temple-like structure mounted on a boulevard median along the [[Nueve de Julio Avenue|Ninth of July Avenue]]. Dismantled after three weeks, its mass of newly unbanned titles was distributed to the public below and given back to their owners, symbolically putting the tools for rebuilding a free society back in the hands of the people.<ref name=pagina12/><ref>[http://www.lanacion.com.ar/nota.asp?nota_id=986759 ''La Nación'': Política y concepto {{in lang|es}}]</ref><ref name=":0" />

Minujín has continued to display her art pieces and happenings in the [[Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art]], the [[Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Buenos Aires)|National Fine Arts Museum]], the [[ArteBA]] contemporary art festival Buenos Aires, the [[Barbican Center]], and a vast number of other international galleries and art shows, while continuing to satirize [[consumer culture]] (particularly relating to women).<ref name=konex/><ref>[http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/16929/arteba/ ArteBA {{in lang|es}}]</ref> In 2023 her work was included in the exhibition ''[[Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940 -1970]]'' at the [[Whitechapel Gallery]] in London.<ref name="Whitechapel Gallery">{{cite web |title=Action, Gesture, Paint |url=https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/action-gesture-paint-women-and-global-abstraction-1940-70/ |website=Whitechapel Gallery |access-date=21 April 2023 |language=en}}</ref>