Marcelo Pombo

Marcelo Pombo
Portrait of Marcelo Pombo, by Alberto Goldenstein (1990)
Born	1959 (age 57–58)
Nationality	Argentine
Style	Latin American contemporary art

Marcelo Pombo (born 1959) is an Argentine artist. His work is in the collections of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, , the Blanton Museum of Art of The University of Texas at Austin, among others.

In the late eighties, he began exhibiting small works with images connected to rock, psychedelia, and "gay culture". At the beginning of his career, he formed part of the group of artists that exhibited at the Galería de Artes Visuales at the Centro Cultural Rojas under the direction of Jorge Gumier Maier; the aesthetic production that came out of Rojas was crucial to the course of Argentine art in the nineties.

During that period, Pombo's work was characterized by the use of materials and procedures associated with decoration and domestic handicrafts of the sort taught in school.

Starting in 1999, his production revolved around paintings in synthetic enamel on panel that brought together different styles: surrealist or visionary landscape, costumbrismo, geometric art, and abstract expressionism.

From 2008 to 2015, his production centered on Argentine and Latin American art of the past—works produced at the margins of modernism or rendered invisible by art history.

He grew up in Buenos Aires, at the age of eight, he attended the "Taller de la flor" directed by Ana Srezovic, where he drew and experimented with clay, batik, and enamel on metal.

His childhood was marked by an identification with the universe of rock -music, clothes, lifestyle-, influenced by the reading of Argentinian rock n' roll magazine Pelo and by listening Argentinian rock. He studied in San Isidro National High School.

In 1978, after graduating from high school, he began working as a gofer at an advertising agency. That same year, he enrolled in the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Prilidiano Pueyrredón. He dropped out after only one month. He travelled to Tartagal, in the northern province of Salta, to coordinate a crafts workshop in a Wichí community and went on to visit the rest of northern Argentine, venturing as far north as the Bolivian border. When he returned to Buenos Aires, he worked as an apprentice at a print shop in San Telmo.

In 1982, at the outbreak of the Falkland's War during the last military dictatorship, Marcelo Pombo traveled to São Paulo, Brazil. While there, he produced a series of drawings that make reference to the gay night life in that city. In their style, those drawings bear the influence of Walt Disney, low-budget films, and underground comics by artists ranging from Robert Crumb to Nazario.