Julio Barragán (1928 – 14 January 2011) was an Argentine painter of the Concretist and Cubist schools.

Life and work

Barragán was born in Buenos Aires. He began studying art at age 12, creating reproductions of Renaissance art masters such as

El Greco Domḗnikos Theotokópoulos ( el, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος ; 1 October 1541 7 April 1614), most widely known as El Greco ("The Greek"), was a Greek painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El G ...

. He studied at the National School of Ceramics, where he graduated in 1945 with a technical degree and met his future wife, María de las Nieves Adeff (born 1926); Adeff, became an accomplished potter. His work was first exhibited at the National Fine Arts Exhibition in 1946. His early work was Realist, and he rejected the contemporary genres that had already marked the careers of, among others, his elder brother, Luis Barragán. Barragán traveled to Paris, France, in the late 1940s, however, and was influenced by

Georges Braque Georges Braque ( , ; 13 May 1882 – 31 August 1963) was a major 20th-century List of French artists, French painter, Collage, collagist, Drawing, draughtsman, printmaker and sculpture, sculptor. His most notable contributions were in his all ...

and Pablo Picasso. He joined the "Twenty Painters and Sculptors" group with his brother, Bruno Venier, and Oscar Capristo, among others. The group, active in Argentina between 1952 and 1963, exhibited works in a number of Abstract genres, although Julio Barragán's Concrete phase contrasted with much of the group's more surreal work. His style of painting then shifted to

Cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...

, adopting a chiaroscuro tone that would become his trademark. The landscapes and cityscapes he painted in subsequent decades were marked by Cubist and

Impressionist Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...

influences. These became his best-known works, and to meet growing demand, he adopted an " assembly line" routine at his Villa Urquiza atelier, whereby several easels were assembled in a row that allowed Barragán to alternate randomly from one work to another. Barragán's work was exhibited in most of the nation's leading art galleries, including the Gutiérrez y Guad, Sotheby's, Wildenstein, and Witcomb galleries, as well as in the

Eduardo Sívori Museum The Eduardo Sívori Museum (Museo de Artes Plásticas Eduardo Sívori) is a municipal art museum in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Overview Founded on the initiative of city councilman Fernando Ghio, who proposed the creation of a municipal museum de ...

and others. His work earned the Braque Prize at the

Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art The Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art known locally as the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires or MAMBA is a modern art museum located in Buenos Aires, Argentina. History The museum opened on April 11, 1956, and resulted from an initiative by ...

(1964), the Grand Prize in Painting at the Belgrano Municipal Salon (1970), and First Prizes at the National Salon in 1976 and 1978. Local art critic Mauricio Neuman described him as a ''"solitary aristocrat of beauty."'' He retired from Buenos Aires' art shows in 2005, and died in his

Almagro Almagro () may refer to: People *Diego de Almagro (1475–1538), Spanish explorer *Diego Almagro II (1520–1542), assassin of Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro *Luis Almagro (born 1963), Uruguayan lawyer, diplomat and politician *Nicolás ...

neighborhood home in 2011 at age 82.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Barragan, Julio 1928 births 2011 deaths Artists from Buenos Aires Argentine people of Spanish descent Argentine painters Argentine male painters Cubist artists