Rogelio polesello biography

Rogelio Polesello Biography

Rogelio Polesello, born in the Argentine capital in 1939, presented his works for the first time at the age of twenty and subsequently became one of the two artists of the Instituto Di Tella, a cultural reference institution in the region, at the end of the 1960s. Polesello received his training at the Manuel Belgrano National School of Fine Arts and the Prilidiano Pueyrredón National School of Fine Arts, both located in Buenos Aires. In 1959 he joined the Associacão Arte Nuevo, founded by Aldo Pellegrini and Carmelo Arden Quin. The paintings included in his first solo exhibition at Galería Peuser (Buenos Aires, 1959) follow the aesthetics of Op Art and are based on Gestalt theories. Its geometric shapes, usually empty and dilated, added or subtracted from the whole according to perceptive principles, produce specific optical effects.

b. 1939, Buenos Aires, Argentina - d. 2014, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Rogelio Polesello studied at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Manuel Belgrano and graduated from the Escuela de Artes Visuales Prilidiano Pueyrredón as a professor of print, drawing and illustration in 1958.

Polesello took on the Constructivist tradition in Latin America, with its search for order through geometric abstraction, to a new level, defining geometry in human terms in his work that is both full of vitality and sensual interaction.

He had numerous individual exhibitions in major galleries and museums in Latin America, Europe and the United States and his work is part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and the Museum of Modern Art of Latin America in Washington D.C., among others.

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Rogelio Polesello (1939-2014) was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Painter and sculptor, he presented his first solo exhibition in 1959 at the Peuser gallery where his admiration for Victor Vasarely was manifested. Shortly afterwards its geometry obtained references of the New Abstraction with resources of the optical artists, like the offset of geometric forms, with which it produced a strong effect of instability. He worked with painting, engraving and acrylic objects capable of generating optical effects that decompose the image. He made numerous solo exhibitions, including the Pan American Union in Washington in 1961, the Museum of Fine Arts in Caracas in 1966 and 1968, the Visual Arts Center of the Torcuato Di Tella Institute in 1969, the Museum of Modern Art in Bogotá and National Museum of Fine Arts of Buenos Aires in 2000, in others. He also carried out interdisciplinary works related to architecture, the intervention of public spaces, advertising, environmental and textile design. He received the First Prize Georges Braque, the Grand Prize of Honor of the National Salon of the Arts and the First Prize ESSO Hall, in other distinctions. In 2015 the Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires made an anthological exhibition of his works.
His work is included in public and private collections such as the Museum of Latin American Art (MALBA), the National Museum of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires, the Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires (MAMBA) and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Buenos Aires (MACBA), Argentina; the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMa), the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington, the Blanton Museum in Austin and the Lowe Museum of Art in Miami, USA; the Museum of Modern Art in Bogotá and the Art Collection of the Bank of the Republic of Bogotá, Colombia and the Fine Arts Museum of Caracas, Venezuela, among many others.

Argentine sculptor and painter

Rogelio Polesello (26 July 1939 – 6 July 2014) was an Argentine painter, muralist and sculptor. He was best known for making Op art (or optical art) known in Latin America. He won two Konex Awards; one in 1982 and another in 2012. He was born in Buenos Aires.

Rogelio Polesello studied at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Manuel Belgrano and the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Prilidiano Pueyrredón, both in Buenos Aires. In 1959, he joined the Asociación Arte Nuevo, founded by Aldo Pellegrini and Carmelo Arden Quin. The paintings he included in his first solo exhibition at the Galería Peuser (Buenos Aires, 1959) followed the aesthetics of Op Art and were based on Gestalt theories. Their geometric forms, generally in black and white, added to or subtracted from the whole according to perceptive principles that produced specific optical effects.

Polesello died from a heart attack on 6 July 2014 in Buenos Aires. He was 75.

Solo exhibitions

• Galería Peuser, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1959
• Galería Pizarro, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1960
• Galería Lirolay, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1961
• Galería Rubbers, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1962
• Galería Bonino, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1966
• Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, Venezuela, 1966
• Pinturas laicas, Galería del Techo, Caracas, Venezuela, 1966
• Centro de Artes Visuales del Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1969
• Museo de Arte Moderno, México D.F., Mexico, 1974
• Progresiones, Salas Nacionales de Cultura, Palais de Glace, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1995
• Galería Ruth Benzacar, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1997
• Muestra antológica, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2000
• Imanes, Sala Cronopios, Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2005

Group exhibitions

• Premio De Ridder a la joven pintura, galeria Pizarro, Buenos Aires, 1959
• Grupo Boa, Galería Van Riel, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1962