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Marta Minujín: Arte! Arte! Arte!, First U.S. Survey of an Argentine Force in Postwar Latin American Art, is at the Jewish Museum

New York Latin Culture Magazine
Marta Minujín Arte! Arte! Arte! (Marta Minujín inside Implosion!, Pinacoteca de São Paulo, 2023. Photo Beto Assem. Courtesy Marta Minujín Archive)

Marta Minujín Arte! Arte! Arte! (Marta Minujín inside Implosion!, Pinacoteca de São Paulo, 2023. Photo Beto Assem. Courtesy Marta Minujín Archive)

Marta Minujín: Arte! Arte! Arte!, at the Jewish Museum in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, is the first U.S. survey of one of Argentina’s most celebrated conceptual and performing artists. She has that exuberant and beautifully crazy, Argentine vibe.

Marta Minujín: Arte! Arte! Arte!

Marta Minujín inside Implosion!, Pinacoteca de São Paulo, 2023. Photograph by Beto Assem. Courtesy Marta Minujín Archive.

Marta Minujín: Arte! Arte! Arte!, the first U.S. survey of one of Argentina’s most celebrated conceptual and performing artists; is at the Jewish Museum in Manhattan’s Upper East Side; from Friday, November 17, 2023 to March 31, 2024. $18. 🇦🇷 🇮🇱

Marta Minujín

Marta Minujín in Paris, with her first multicolored mattresses, 1963. Marta Minujín Archive. © Marta Minujín, courtesy of Henrique Faria, New York and Herlitzka & Co., Buenos Aires.

The Spanish Jewish Argentine from beautiful San Telmo, Buenos Aires showed talent at a young age. Her art career launched when a National Arts Foundation scholarship sent her to Paris in 1960. French and Argentines love each other. She tapped into that funky French vibe and started creating “livable sculptures” using mattresses. It became her signature.

Argentines, French, and Spaniards love to burn things. Before rockers were burning their guitars, Minujín was burning her art. In Argentina, protestors burn things every day to get on the news. It’s one of the national sports.

She lived through the Argentine Dictatorship years 1976-1983. That changes people because to survive, you can only speak in code. Art is Minujín’s code. Today, Argentines are some of the world’s best mime creators. And Marta is an artist of the world.

Women are the guardians of culture. Many female Latin American artists eventually turn their art practice to dramatizing the problems of their people.

Marta Minujín and Andy Warhol, El pago de la deuda externa argentina con maíz, “el oro latinoamericano” (Paying Off the Argentine Foreign Debt with Corn, “the Latin American Gold”), the Factory, New York, 1985 / 2011, Chromogenic color print, 36 3/8 × 39 1/4 in. (92.4 x 99.7 cm). Collection of the artist. © Marta Minujín, courtesy of Henrique Faria, New York and Herlitzka & Co., Buenos Aires.

In 1985, Minujín staged a happening with Andy Warhol to dramatize the Argentine debt problem. She bought a shipment of corn and took photos of her handing Warhol ears of corn as symbolic payment for Argentina’s debt. Kind of corny, but Argentina’s debt is still a problem. Before the Perons, Argentina was one of the world’s richest countries (“rich as an Argentine”), but the country has never recovered from institutional thievery at all levels. Today the buitres (New York venture capitalist vultures) keep Argentina in a debt trap.

Genius usually shows early, though it often fades through the years. Minujín hasn’t faded. She keeps blooming because to her, “everything is art.”

Everything is Art”

Marta Minujín

Marta Minujín “Sculpture of Dreams” is an immersive public installation in Times Square, November 8-21, 2023. Go see it and turn your dreams into art.

Keep up with Marta on Instagram (if you can) @martaminujin

For more information, visit thejewishmuseum.org

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