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Lot Essay
"If you don't do what you must in painting, then where are you going to do it?"[1] Poised at the crux of freedom and aesthetics, de la Vega's question epitomized the countercultural impulse that fueled the young Argentine avant-garde in the 1960s. Among the most remarkable artists of this generation, de la Vega improvised a highly idiosyncratic visual language based on transformation and anamorphosis, developing a new artistic syntax taken from the objects and symbols of the contemporary world--plastic tokens and children's toys, pop culture and psychedelia. De la Vega was a member of Argentina's Nueva Figuración group, active between 1961 and 1965, and alongside Luis Felipe Noé, Rómulo Macció, and Ernesto Deira he evolved an expressionist idiom rooted in new existential and (anti-)aesthetic freedoms.
The Rompecabezas series marked the culmination of de la Vega's work from the late 1960s, a time in which the expressive synergies of art and music reached their apotheosis in his practice. The project was originally intended for the X Bienal de São Paulo (1969), where the panels would have been shown alongside de la Vega's songs, but he withdrew from the Argentine envoy in the face of criticism over his selection and chosen presentational mode. The work was slightly reconceived, and it debuted in a solo exhibition in September 1970 at the Galería Carmen Waugh under the heading Exposición-Concert de Jorge de la Vega. Comprised of twenty-four interchangeable panels each measuring 100-cm. square, Rompecabezas was exhibited with a complementary "puzzle" of de la Vega's songs, which he performed three times a week. "I wanted to sing alongside my paintings," the artist explained during a monologue interwoven with the musical performance. "This is surely because when I paint, I sing, and when I sing, sometimes, I set about drawing or painting as well. And I wanted you to see me doing this, sharing these two things a little bit."[2]
The present work is one of the "puzzle pieces" that fit together to form Rompecabezas, and like the others it is painted in black-and-white acrylics and commingles the winsome, smiling faces of men and women alongside their sprawling, intertwining limbs. This panel is the only one of the set that portrays a couple; rendered in a happy, almost ecstatic embrace, they smile in defiance of the themes of maladjustment and isolation that course through de la Vega's songs. During one of his monologues, de la Vega drew a comparison between Rompecabezas and old-world cantastorie, theatrical performers who sang their stories while gesturing to images. "What they did was to sing inspired by a cartoon drawing of the most famous crime of the moment," he explained. "And seeing my own paintings, I think they could without a doubt tell a crime... Of course, what I'm going to give you in order to solve the puzzle is a puzzle of songs. That way there will be no other way to solve it, the problem, the mystery, if not by way of the absurd." [3]
Abby McEwen, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, College Park
1) Jorge de la Vega, quoted in Luis Felipe Noé, "Anti-Aesthetics," Listen, Here, Now! Argentine Art of the 1960s: Writings of the Avant-Garde (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2004), 66.
2) De la Vega, "Rompecabezas Concert," in Jorge de la Vega: Obras 1961-1971 (Buenos Aires: MALBA, 2004), 185.
3) Ibid., 186.
The Rompecabezas series marked the culmination of de la Vega's work from the late 1960s, a time in which the expressive synergies of art and music reached their apotheosis in his practice. The project was originally intended for the X Bienal de São Paulo (1969), where the panels would have been shown alongside de la Vega's songs, but he withdrew from the Argentine envoy in the face of criticism over his selection and chosen presentational mode. The work was slightly reconceived, and it debuted in a solo exhibition in September 1970 at the Galería Carmen Waugh under the heading Exposición-Concert de Jorge de la Vega. Comprised of twenty-four interchangeable panels each measuring 100-cm. square, Rompecabezas was exhibited with a complementary "puzzle" of de la Vega's songs, which he performed three times a week. "I wanted to sing alongside my paintings," the artist explained during a monologue interwoven with the musical performance. "This is surely because when I paint, I sing, and when I sing, sometimes, I set about drawing or painting as well. And I wanted you to see me doing this, sharing these two things a little bit."[2]
The present work is one of the "puzzle pieces" that fit together to form Rompecabezas, and like the others it is painted in black-and-white acrylics and commingles the winsome, smiling faces of men and women alongside their sprawling, intertwining limbs. This panel is the only one of the set that portrays a couple; rendered in a happy, almost ecstatic embrace, they smile in defiance of the themes of maladjustment and isolation that course through de la Vega's songs. During one of his monologues, de la Vega drew a comparison between Rompecabezas and old-world cantastorie, theatrical performers who sang their stories while gesturing to images. "What they did was to sing inspired by a cartoon drawing of the most famous crime of the moment," he explained. "And seeing my own paintings, I think they could without a doubt tell a crime... Of course, what I'm going to give you in order to solve the puzzle is a puzzle of songs. That way there will be no other way to solve it, the problem, the mystery, if not by way of the absurd." [3]
Abby McEwen, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, College Park
1) Jorge de la Vega, quoted in Luis Felipe Noé, "Anti-Aesthetics," Listen, Here, Now! Argentine Art of the 1960s: Writings of the Avant-Garde (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2004), 66.
2) De la Vega, "Rompecabezas Concert," in Jorge de la Vega: Obras 1961-1971 (Buenos Aires: MALBA, 2004), 185.
3) Ibid., 186.