Romulo Macció

Romulo Macció (1931 – 11 March 2016) was an Argentine painter associated with the local avant-garde art movement which took shape during the 1960s.

Born in Buenos Aires, Macció developed an early interest in drawing, was self-taught and was hired as a graphic designer at the age of fourteen. Soon earning some renown, he mounted his first exhibition in Buenos Aires' Galeria Gatea in 1956. Macció's visually unabashed abstract art brought him to the attention of, among others, architect Clorindo Testa and he joined the Boa Group, one of a number of intellectual circles influencing local cultural life in those days. Awarded the prestigious De Ridder Prize in 1959 and the Torcuato di Tella Institute International Prize in 1962, his fame brought him close to other Argentine avant-garde artists, such as Luis Felipe Noé. He and Noé soon helped pioneer the Neo-figurative movement that swept Latin American art during the 1960s. A self-declared rebel against aesthetics in art, Macció described much of the genteel portrait and landscape art available at that time as "pink chocolate." Macció's tortured figures were often the dead or dying and were set against backdrops that suggested urban pollution and decay. Recently, his work has tended to center around social problems.

Maceió's work continues to be displayed in Argentine and European galleries. There have been eight retrospective art books published on his work since 1969. A number of his works are in the permanent collections of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires, the Blanton Museum of Art and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C..

Macció died at the age of 84 on 11 March 2016.

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