He was born in Buenos Aires in 1919 and died in the same city in 1969. Self-taught, he began his artistic production with abstract paintings. He produced what he called Thing Art. Works of notable originality, more or less spherical objects that generally hung from the ceiling, built with poor and rudimentary materials such as wood and scrap cardboard, painted fabric, wires. Santantonín’s ideas went beyond the artistic object. He exhibited Collages and things at Galería Lirolay in 1961 in the company of the text-manifesto Hoy a mis mirones. In 1962 at the Lirolay Gallery, together with other artists, in the exhibition El collage. That year, and in 1963, he participated in the See and Estimate Honor Award. In 1963 he was also part of the Argentine submission to the VII São Paulo Biennial, and was invited to the National Prize of the Torcuato di Tella Institute. In 1964 he held group shows Buenos Aires 64 in New York, Object 64 at the Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires and New Art of Argentina in several North American cities. In 1964 Lirolay Gallery in the exhibition Death. In 1965 he La Menesunda with Marta Minujín at the Instituto Torcuato di Tella and that same year he burned almost all of his work. In 1963 he screened his Rolling Thing Art, First Time in America. “Among the texts he wrote, some point out his aesthetic purposes: “While the art of galleries and salons dies, we make this unsaleable form of art. The Paflecosa is: Pamphletarian, Proletarian; Lonely; Unmarketable; “It is the incorruptible image that is given.”

More information: https://artedelaargentina.com/disciplinas/artista/escultura/ruben-santantonin