Luis Felipe Noé

Luis Felipe Noé , also known as Yuyo , (born May 26, 1933 in Buenos Aires , Argentina ) is an artist , writer , intellectual and teacher . In 1961 he formed the art style Otra Figuración (Other Figuration) together with three other Argentine artists . Her eponymous exhibition and later works influenced the New Figuration to a large extent. After the group broke up, Noé moved to New York , where he painted and exhibited pictures made up of several parts that also went beyond the canvas. In 1965 he published his groundbreaking theoretical work Antiestética and then took a ten-year break from painting, during which he returned to Buenos Aires, opened a bar, taught, wrote and designed installations with mirrors. When he wanted to start painting again, however, there was a military coup in Argentina , so that he emigrated to Paris in 1976, where he continued his experiments with both the re- texturing of canvases and the process of painting and drawing. His later pictures are decoupled from figuration and show predominantly landscapes. Noé is currently living and working again in Buenos Aires. His son Gaspar Noé is a Franco-Argentine filmmaker.

education

Luis Felipe Noé studied with Horacio Butler 1950-1952 painting , has however much self-taught. He also studied law at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and wrote art reviews for various daily newspapers before opening his first exhibition in 1959 at the Galeria Witcomb .

At the time, informal art was the dominant movement in Argentina, and Noé was heavily influenced by painters Sarah Grilo and José Antonio Fernández-Muro . Other recognized Argentine influences both on Noé himself and on his followers, who later formed the Otra Figuración , existed in the politically oriented neo-figurist Antonio Berni and the Boa group , which consisted of a group of Europeans. In addition, artists such as Antonio Saura , Francis Bacon , Willem de Kooning and Jean Dubuffet could also have inspired the artists of the Otra Figuración . They are therefore often referred to as - at least in certain respects - comparable contemporary artists, for example with regard to de Kooning's brush technique . Nevertheless, the two groups differ noticeably from one another in other details.

Artistic focus

Otra Figuración: Painting

In 1960, the artists of the Otra Figuración formed a living and working community in an apartment building on Carlos Pellegrini Street in Buenos Aires, which also served as living space and studio. Members of the community were Rómulo Maccio , Ernesto Deira , Jorge de la Vega , Luis Felipe Noé himself and - - for a short time Antonio Segui , who exhibited although occasionally with the group together, but generally not as a member of the Otra Figuración is considered , as his style quickly deviated from that of the community around Noé. The stylistic trademarks of neofiguration, as interpreted by the Otra Figuración , consist of strong, lively colors and spontaneous, sharp and quick brush technique with short strokes, the merging of fragmented and deformed drawings with each other or with animals as well as in their political content, the Reflect a good grasp of the appearance of anarchy on canvas. The community used collages, mixed materials, oversized canvases and multi-part installations as materials that gave many of their works an almost sculptural quality. Overall, the artistic representation of the group succeeded in uniting form, content, process and philosophy.

The philosophical basis of the group and its art form is described by Noé as follows: "I believe in chaos as a value", in German about "I believe in chaos as a measurable quantity". In doing so, he does not demonize chaos, but recognizes it and accepts its inevitable existence as a fact. The art of the group reflects the political instability and everyday insecurity in Buenos Aires and also - in a larger sense - the awareness of the precarious situation of all people living in the modern world, according to the community. Noé suggested that in such a world chaos itself should become an organizing principle. The “violent, disturbing” work (this is how the group's first exhibition in 1961 in the Galeria Peuser was described, among other things) “reflected a nation whose history and present day life are shaped by violent incidents”.

Noé worked both political and human chaos into his works. His two most important paintings from around 1963 are Introduccion a la esperanza and Cerrado por brujería . The former won the prestigious Premio Palanza Prize in 1963 , which was donated by the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella . The painting vividly depicts an amorphous , rampaging crowd of figures with open mouths wearing signs saying “Champion, do not leave us” and “Vote for blind force”, while additional signs are not painted but are physically made out of plywood protrude from the upper part of the picture and show portraits of political candidates. The painting comprises nine separate canvases and very vividly communicates the immeasurable anarchy and continuous unrest that defined everyday political life in Argentina at the time. The crowd forms a single massive animal that rumbles around blindly and stands up for a certain, low level of survivability, but at the same time makes itself complicit in the further rise of the oppressors, who are enthroned far above the crowd with a cynical grin.

In contrast, the second painting does not show the people as an indefinable mass, but as individual, grimacing faces that are trapped in a box-shaped grid. The veiled figure of a magician appears indistinctly above them, counteracted by a crucifix and surrounded by cruel mythical creatures. The iconography and structure of the painting suggests an ideological incoherence and that social chaos, belief systems and governments are continually displacing themselves while the residents remain in the cage.

Otra Figuración: Drawing

An exhibition by the group in 1962, titled Esto, at Galeria Lirolay in Buenos Aires, held exclusively with their drawings, had a significant impact on autonomous, experimental drawing in all of Latin American art. Otra Figuración raised the process of drawing above technology and influenced contemporary artists such as Alberto Heredia , Cildo Meireles , Rubens Gerchman and Antonio Dias . The exhibition emerged from the political climate in Argentina in 1962, which Noé expressed with "social and structural shifts" in his drawings. After the president of Argentina was ousted by the military, Buenos Aires fell back into chaos and was on the verge of civil war. For his work Sin titulo , which symbolizes the exhibition, Noé uses black ink on cellulose. The work of art is strewn with random lines and dots and shows rounded, deformed figures gathered around a black, exploding center. Although the work appears to contain surreal elements, it is nonetheless a real psychological and emotional expression of the political disorder in Argentina then and in some cases to this day.

Creative phases

New York, 1965-1966

Otra Figuración was officially closed in 1963, although the group had other joint exhibitions until 1965. That year Noé received a Guggenheim grant that allowed him to move to New York . He took his ideas about chaos even further at the time, designing huge, unsaleable, and difficult-to-store installations. Not infrequently he threw his works into the Hudson River .

Also in 1965 Noé published his book Antiestética , in which he explains his theories about chaos: “The purpose of anti-aesthetics today is to split the concept of unity”, in German: “The sense and purpose of today's anti- aesthetics lies in the division of the concept of unity. ”In the introduction to the brochure accompanying the 1966 exhibition at the Bonino Gallery in New York, Noé revised his earlier view of the fusion of figures to reflect the contrasts in both Argentina and Latin America by adding He wrote that "the essential element of contemporary society is the tension and opposition among diverging cosmovisions, the fraternizations of opposing atmospheres."

The paintings in the exhibition were figuratively concentrated in his work Mambo from 1962, an “inverted painting that suggests another side of painting and gives up neo-figurative painting”. Also on display was the artwork Three Doors , which is made up of deformed, ghostly faces painted as isolated fragments onto old hinged doors - some with missing pieces. The second central element of the exhibition was the gigantic work, ironically titled Balance , the parts of which consisted of several large canvases, some of which lay on the floor, others unsecure or leaned against one another, and still others thrust into the third dimension by Parts of them protruded from the canvas like fragile paper figures. Noé's attempt to control the chaos led to "pictures of broken vision", to "pictures with a disturbed perspective".

After this exhibition Noé returned to Buenos Aires and paused painting for almost ten years. This break is justified by both an existential crisis and commercial failure.

Buenos Aires, 1967-1976

On his return to Buenos Aires, Noé opened a bar that was regularly frequented by writers . Although he had stopped painting for a time, his creativity did not run dry. Noé taught during these years and further developed three-dimensional design by using distorting mirrors for installations that he exhibited in 1968 at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas . The Spiegel also helped him visualize the characters in his experimental novel Recontrapoder , published in 1974 , a philosophical exploration of fragmentation, absurdity, power and aesthetics.

For Noé, life in Buenos Aires was absurd. The restoration of order meant the empowerment of a repressive government, while protests regularly ended in riots and endless social upheaval. Ironically, one of the worst political crises in Argentine history coincided with his return to painting. During an exhibition in 1975 he said: “I feel [...] like a mirror facing both the ghost of a dead person and the future latency of an unborn.”, In German: “I feel like a mirror that sees both the spirit of a dead person and the future latency of an unborn. ”The strife in Argentina has escalated since the 1960s, adding to the existing instability in Buenos Aires. Radicals, ex- Peronists , writers and intellectuals joined urban guerrilla forces and created even more chaos. Strikes, revolts and economic collapse followed. The chaotic situation became even more dire in 1974 when Isabel Perón came to power and street fights between death squads and guerrillas were the order of the day. Bombings and atrocities became routine, and riots were used as a pretext for military brutality and seizure of power. The 1976 coup ended with an estimated 9,000 to 30,000 "disappeared."

Noé then went into exile in Paris.

Paris, 1976-1987

In Paris, Noé further developed his artistic expression. Again he changed the frame of reference by texturing large parts of the canvas with various techniques before the actual painting process, thus creating “a tortured surface to paint”. He also began to paint expressive landscapes that - such as The Storm from 1982 - reflected both internal and external unrest.

In addition, he experimented with other painting techniques and developed a “progressive, narrative transformation of the original image” by producing many variants of an original with a copier. Works like One Passion and Four Transformations were seen as a return to the platform of the Otra Figuración, as the process of painting was in the foreground.

Later work

Noé returned to Buenos Aires again and continued to work with oversized canvases and landscape painting. His 1997 exhibition at the Centro Cultural Borges and Galeria Rubbers in Buenos Aires included 60 pictures, all of which he painted in 1997. With the “violently colored stripes”, Noé introduced a new visual element. He also used the wrinkled canvas technique he had developed in Paris in the 1980s, with great effect in the painting Ominoso .

Noé was honored in 1995/1996 with a retrospective by the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires and at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.

In 2003 Noé worked with Nahuel Rando on the graphic novel Las aventuras de Recontrapoder , where he revised his antihero for a new generation.

Selected works of art

Surname	material	year	Dimensions	exhibition	place
Convocatoria a la barbarie	Different materials on canvas	1961	148 × 223 cm	Private collection	Buenos Aires
La anarquia del ano XX	Oil on canvas	1961	115 × 229 cm	Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes	Buenos Aires
Sin titulo	Ink on paper		29.5 x 38.5 cm	Marcos Curi collection	Buenos Aires
mambo	Various materials on canvas and wood	1962	148 × 223 cm	Luis Felipe Noé	Buenos Aires
Introduccion a la esperanza	Oil on canvas, 9 individual parts	1963	205 × 215 cm (estimated)	Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes	Buenos Aires
Cerrado por brujería	Oil and collage on canvas	1963	200 × 250 cm	Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art	University of Texas
Algún dia de estos	Different materials on canvas	1963	180 × 300 cm	Private collection	Buenos Aires
Nestro Senor de cada dia	Different materials	1964	250 x 200 cm	Private collection	Buenos Aires
That is life	Collage with ink and colored pencils	1965	13 7/8 × 16 13/16 in	Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery Collection	University of Texas
Balance (fragment)	Oil compilation	1964-1965		Luis Noé papers	Buenos Aires
Three doors	Oil on doors	1964	79 × 29/79 × 30/79 × 20 in	Luis Noé papers	Buenos Aires
One Passion and Four Transformations	Ink and photocopies on paper, 5 panels, 1 frame	1982	45 × 148 cm	Luis Felipe Noé	Buenos Aires
Tempestad		1982
En la Marana	Acrylic paint on canvas	1986	200 × 250 cm	Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes	Buenos Aires
Tormenta de la Pampa	Different materials on canvas	1991	215 × 250 cm	Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat collection
Ominoso	Different materials on canvas	1997	79 × 98 in

Selected exhibitions

Noé had more than 40 solo exhibitions in the mid-1980s and also took part in group exhibitions. The following table shows a selection of the most important exhibitions.

Exhibition type		year	Title / content	place	country
E *	G*	year	Title / content	place	country
X		1959		Galeria Witcomb, Buenos Aires (debut)	Argentina
X		1965		Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires	Argentina
X		1966		Galeria Bonino, New York	United States
X		1987	Retrospective	Museo de Artes Plasticas Eduardo Sivori, Buenos Aires	Argentina
X		1995	Retrospective	Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires	Argentina
X		1996	Retrospective	Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City	Mexico
X		1997		Centro Cultural Borges, Buenos Aires	Argentina
	X	1961	Otra Figuración	Galeria Peuser, Buenos Aires (debut of the Otra Figuración )	Argentina
	X	1962	Esto (drawings)	Galeria Lirolay & Galeria Bonino, Buenos Aires	Argentina
	X	1963		Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires	Argentina
	X	1965		Galeria Bonino, Buenos Aires	Argentina
	X	1964	Guggenheim International Award	Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York	United States
	X	1964	New Art of Argentina	Walker Art Center, Minneapolis	United States
	X	1965	The Emergent Decade: Latin American Painters and Paintings in the 1960s	Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York	United States
		1963	Premio Nacional	Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires	Argentina
* E = solo exhibition, G = group exhibition

Publications

Antiestética . Ediciones Van Riel, Ediciones de la Flor, Buenos Aires 1988, ISBN 950-515-308-2 (English, first edition: 1965).
Una Sociedad Colonial Avanzada . Ediciones de la Flor, Buenos Aires 1971, DNB 999669486 .
Códice rompecabezas sobre Recontrapoder en Cajón Desastre . Ediciones de la Flor, Buenos Aires 1974, OCLC 1850357 (English).
A Oriente por Occidente . descubrimiento del llamado descubrimiento o de lo que somos y no somos. Ediciones Artes dos Grafico, Bogota 1992 (English).
El Otro, la Otra y la Otredad . IMPSAT, Argentina 1994, ISBN 987-99212-2-4 (English).
Las aventuras de Recontrapoder . Ediciones de la Flor, Buenos Aires 2003, ISBN 950-515-571-9 (English).

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h Mari Carmen Ramírez, Edith A. Gibson: Re-Aligning Vision . Alternative Currents in South American Drawing. Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery, University of Texas at Austin, Austin 1997 (English).
^ ^A ^b ^c ^d Jacqueline Barnitz: Twentieth-Century Art of Latin America . University of Texas Press, Austin 2001, ISBN 978-0-292-70857-0 (English).
↑ ^a ^b T. Grieder: Argentina's New Figurative Art . In: Art Journal . tape 24 , no. 1 , 1964, ISSN 0004-3249 , pp. 2-6 (English).
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h M. C. Ramírez, H. Olea: Inverted utopias . avant-garde art in Latin America. Yale University Press, New Haven / London 2004, ISBN 0-89090-124-4 (English).
^ P. Frank: Readings in Latin American modern art . Yale University Press, New Haven 2004, ISBN 0-300-10255-0 (English).
↑ ^a ^b J. Glusberg: Art In Argentina . Giancarlo Politi, Milan 1986.
^ EJ Sullivan: Latin American Art in the Twentieth Century . Phaidon Press, London 1996, ISBN 0-7148-3210-3 (English).
^ Jorge Glusberg: Noé, Luis Felipe . In: Jane Turner (Ed.): The Dictionary of Art . Grove, New York 1996, ISBN 1-884446-00-0 (English).
↑ Luis Felipe Noé: Solemn Letter to Myself . December 1965. New York 1966 (English, brochure accompanying the exhibition).
^ ^A ^b J. Wilson: Buenos Aires . A cultural history. Interlink Books, Northampton, Massachusetts 2007, ISBN 978-1-56656-347-5 (English).
^ ^A ^b ^c ^d L. Buccellato, E. Costa: Luis F. Noé at Centro Cultural Borges and Galeria Rubbers . In: Art in America . tape 87 , no. 3 , March 1999, p. 126 f .

Web links

Commons : Luis Felipe Noé - collection of images, videos and audio files

MNBA: MNBA - Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes - Argentina. Archived from the original on September 27, 2007 ; accessed on August 8, 2011 (Spanish, pictures by Luis Felipe Noé on display in the museum).
The Legacy Project: Visual Arts Library. Luis Felipe Noé. Retrieved August 8, 2011 (English, biography).
Arte en España: Noe Luis Felipe. Curriculum. Retrieved August 8, 2011 (Spanish, biography).
Cerrado por brujería. Blanton Museum - Size 3. Accessed August 8, 2011 (picture Cerrado por brujería ).

personal data
SURNAME	Noé, Luis Felipe
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Yuyo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Argentine artist
DATE OF BIRTH	May 26, 1933
PLACE OF BIRTH	Buenos Aires , Argentina

[Re-Aligning-1] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h Mari Carmen Ramírez, Edith A. Gibson: Re-Aligning Vision . Alternative Currents in South American Drawing. Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery, University of Texas at Austin, Austin 1997 (English).

[Barnitz-2] A ^b ^c ^d Jacqueline Barnitz: Twentieth-Century Art of Latin America . University of Texas Press, Austin 2001, ISBN 978-0-292-70857-0 (English).

[Grieder-3] T. Grieder: Argentina's New Figurative Art . In: Art Journal . tape 24 , no. 1 , 1964, ISSN 0004-3249 , pp. 2-6 (English).

[Olea-4] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h M. C. Ramírez, H. Olea: Inverted utopias . avant-garde art in Latin America. Yale University Press, New Haven / London 2004, ISBN 0-89090-124-4 (English).

[5] P. Frank: Readings in Latin American modern art . Yale University Press, New Haven 2004, ISBN 0-300-10255-0 (English).

[Jorge-6] J. Glusberg: Art In Argentina . Giancarlo Politi, Milan 1986.

[7] EJ Sullivan: Latin American Art in the Twentieth Century . Phaidon Press, London 1996, ISBN 0-7148-3210-3 (English).

[8] Jorge Glusberg: Noé, Luis Felipe . In: Jane Turner (Ed.): The Dictionary of Art . Grove, New York 1996, ISBN 1-884446-00-0 (English).

[9] Luis Felipe Noé: Solemn Letter to Myself . December 1965. New York 1966 (English, brochure accompanying the exhibition).

[Wilson-10] A ^b J. Wilson: Buenos Aires . A cultural history. Interlink Books, Northampton, Massachusetts 2007, ISBN 978-1-56656-347-5 (English).

[Laura-11] A ^b ^c ^d L. Buccellato, E. Costa: Luis F. Noé at Centro Cultural Borges and Galeria Rubbers . In: Art in America . tape 87 , no. 3 , March 1999, p. 126 f .