The genesis of the Big Bang: Malba pays tribute to Luis Felipe Noé with little-known works

In the most intimate room of the Malba Museum , a chapel as described by its artistic director Rodrigo Moura, and behind an enlarged photograph of Luis Felipe Noé in his studio in 1960 – a portrait by the photographer Sameer Makarius – there are five works of his that were seen on very few occasions and that are essential to understanding his extensive career .

In the photo, Noé is barely 27 years old and is far from understanding the place he will occupy in the history of contemporary art in our country , granted thanks to his disruptive vision, his dissatisfaction with obeying any established canon and a generous spirit with colleagues, friends and artists of other generations.

This tribute, sponsored by Malba and the Noé Foundation, brings the public closer to the creative power of this complex and well-rounded artist through these works he created between 1962 and 1965, a pivotal period and the genesis of the Big Bang. Although he worked tirelessly for seven decades and until he was 90 , the beginning of his rupture is concentrated here.

In 1960, Rafael Sqirru, director of the brand-new Museum of Modern Art, presented the First International Modern Art Exhibition in Argentina, which included works by the young Noé alongside Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Antoni Tàpies, Candido Portinari, and Lygia Clark , in addition to many other local artists of the new generation. The internationalization of art from our continent was on the agenda.

Two years later, the Bonino gallery, one of the most solid and pioneering of the time, creator of an ambitious plan that included branches in Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro and New York, organized an exhibition in Brazil that contributed to the dialogue between the regions and the avant-garde movements that were establishing themselves with force, and where artists such as Antonio Díaz or Rubens Gerchman said "Worship Noah because he is dirty" , referring to his ability to recover the strength of materiality and pictorial destruction, as explained by Malba's chief curator, Marita García .

In that decade, Noé became a father and took important steps after his first exhibition at the Witcomb gallery in 1959, where he became friends with Jorge de la Vega and Alberto Greco , with whom he shared visions around the idea of ​​dismantling art, or Romulo Macció, who also worked in the workshop portrayed by Makarius, on Avenida Independencia in the heart of the San Telmo neighborhood.

They were friends, witnesses and creative accomplices, something that was demonstrated in the exhibition "Otra Figuración" that they presented at the Salón Peuser in 1961 and that would give rise to the New Figuration group, where Noé, de la Vega and Macció joined forces with Ernesto Deira to create a proposal that sought to overcome abstraction and figuration, that placed man at the center of the issues, not as representation but as presence, and invited us to see the world with different eyes.

On that occasion , they also invited Makarius and Carolina Muchnik, although the group was ultimately made up of the four of them, who worked side by side for four years, even when they went into exile in Paris.

In Noé's work , the material charge, the crisis of the pictorial object, and the notion of the divided painting or broken vision began to appear, in addition to gestures of chaos, violence, and the explosion of the very core of art. As Marita García emphasizes, both he and the other members of the group decided to return and invest in their country , a decision that bore fruit with exhibitions they developed together in Bonino, Lirolay, the National Museum of Fine Arts, in addition to their participation in the Di Tella Prize. The rupture of painting was well received.

At the end of this short time span, between March and December 1964, Noé won a scholarship that allowed him to choose where in the world he wanted to settle. The city he chose was New York , where he created works such as "Newport Festival," one of five that form part of the tribute and which demonstrates the use of everyday materials such as wood, plastic, metal, acetate, and epoxy putty, as well as the emergence of three-dimensionality, where figures emerge and create a conjunction between the planes.

Noé explained that "the awareness that I had only assumed a chaos with reassurance, immersed in an enveloping atmosphere, when the world around me only offered me tensions and ruptures as a spectacle , led me to speak of broken vision, a divided picture and, for the first time consciously, of the assumption of chaos."

This work refers to the famous folk music gathering where, a year later, Bob Dylan would be accused of treason for using an electric guitar live for the first time, even though he was merely bringing the future closer to transforming the scene. Yuyo, our rebel and promoter of new visions , included in this painting a small portrait, a map of the region—or at least that's how Rodrigo Moura understands it—a landscape reminiscent of the area, and materials like acetate.

With this title, he alludes to representative moments in popular culture to offer a critique and, above all, to invite debate. Did he attend the festival? How much did American culture impact his work during those months? Is this a self-portrait? A work that raises more questions than it answers , as all great works do.

The same thing happens with "Christ of Sin" from 1963 , a huge painting that also features anonymous figures, crowded into the lower corner of the canvas, while the center is occupied by a large, imposing hole caused by a fire that takes over the composition, leaving only the skeleton (a charred frame) exposed. A piece of paper is glued to it, almost impossible to read, although some letters similar to the acronym INRI can be seen. Perhaps it's that or an optical illusion, since the figure present is that of a cross. Again, questions and more questions...

During those years, Noé also ventured into writing , a very valuable branch of his thinking, so the first five years of the 60s concluded with the presentation of his first book, Antiestética , considered a bible by many , which he presented with the help of the Van Riel gallery and which sets out his thesis on chaos as a structure.

Many other titles would follow, such as Assuming Chaos and In Therapy , which demonstrates his return to painting thanks to therapy and was published in conjunction with the Rubbers gallery, with whom he worked for decades. While Yuyo managed to conquer virtually every field in the art world in the decades that followed, there is still much to share about this shooting star who left an infinite trail.

Tribute to Yuyo Noé at Malba will be on view until September 29 at the Museum of Latin American Art in Buenos Aires (Av. Figueroa Alcorta 3415).