Episodes from the pirovano collection I: George Vantongerloo and his echoes in argentine art

Dr. Ignacio Pirovano was a lawyer, painter, Director of the Museo de Arte Decorativo for nineteen yars (1937-1955), a member of the Argentine Association of Art Critics and the International Association of Art Critics, an agricultural and technological businessman who was able to combine bovine genetics with canonical Greek concepts of proportion, an essayist and educator, conference speaker, editor, advisor to the Museo de Arte Moderno de Río de Janeiro, patron and the first collector of Concrete Art in the country.

Through different curatorial approaches that will be periodically renewed under the title Episodes from the Pirovano Collection, the Museo offers multiple different readings of the Ignacio Pirovano Lezica Alvear (Buenos Aires, 1909-1980) legacy, which was donated to this institution between 1980 and 1981. The first chapter, titled George Vantogerloo and his Echoes in Argentine Art focused on pieces by Víctor Magariños D., Eduardo Mac Entyre and Miguel Ángel Vidal.

In 1959, inspired by Vantongerloo’s writing, Eduardo Mac Entyre and Miguel Ángel Vidal, accompanied by Pirovano, founded the Arte Generativo group in Buenos Aires. It was dedicated to working with the superimposition of points and straight lines to develop geometric and colour forms. The cosmological art of Víctor Magariños D. is also closely related to Vantongerloo’s research into art and science.