Ursula Davila-Villa – författare

In this first comprehensive presentation of art from the 1990s in Argentina, Recovering Beauty places the Centro Cultural Rojas (CCR) at the core of this creative period. The CCR, or "El Rojas" as it was later known, opened in 1989 as a venue for emerging artists. The "El Rojas" artists epitomized a collective will to move beyond a grim recent past by creating introspective narratives that looked towards the ordinary as a source of inspiration. Artists such as Feliciano Centurión, Sebastián Gordin, Jorge Gumier Mier, Miguel Harte, Graciela Hasper, Benito Laren, Marcelo Pombo, Cristina Schiavi and Omar Schiliro espoused conceptions of beauty, color and fantasy, and the projection of psychology as artistic expression. Recovering Beauty is the first sustained examination of this fascinating moment in Argentine culture, which chimes with trends towards the fantastical and the decorative in American art of the late 1990s and 2000s.