Jorge Romero Brest
Encyclopedia
Jorge Aníbal Romero Brest (October 2, 1905 — February 12, 1989) was an influential art critic
in Argentina who helped popularize avant-garde art in his country.
in 1905, Romero Brest enjoyed multiple interests in his youth, and excelled in a variety of sports. His father, Enrique Romero Brest, established the National Institute of Physical Education, and he began writing for his father's sports magazine
, Revista de Educación Física. His research for these articles familiarized him with André Dunoyer de Segonzac's illustrations on the subject, and he developed an intellectual interest in art. He enrolled at the University of Buenos Aires
in 1926, earned a Law degree
in 1933, and married the former Amelia Rossi.
His interest in art theory as a hobby resulted in his first book, El problema del arte y del artista contemporáneos (The Problems of Contemporary Art and Artists), in 1937. Brest was a talented speaker, and first gained renown as an art critic and commentator in a 1943 conference entitled "The element of rhythm in film and sports." He wrote columns on the philosophy of sport for the socialist newspaper La Vanguardia at the invitation of its editor, Mario Bravo
, in 1939 and 1940.
Romero Brest became known as a confrontational art critic, and was initially disdainful of Surrealism in art, writing highly critical reviews of an exhibit by Orion Group painter Luis Barragán
and others (recommending they first "learn to paint"). He then published a biography of the renowned Argentine Realist painter Prilidiano Pueyrredón
, in 1942, and a study of Michelangelo
's famed David
, in 1943. He published the first two volumes of his History of Art in 1945 (publishing the third and fourth in 1946 and 1958, respectively), and this latter work was subsequently used as a textbook in several Latin American universities.
The affiliation of many in the arts to the Socialist Party led to their harassment by government officials, particularly by the populist President Juan Perón
. Perón ordered the Altamira Art Academy dissolved in 1947, leaving, among others, painters Emilio Pettoruti
and Raúl Soldi
, sculptor Lucio Fontana
, and Romero Brest (who served as the academy's art history
professor), without a teaching post. Romreo Brest continued an active schedule of conferences and workshops, however, and founded the art review magazine Ver y Estimar (Look and Consider). He taught a course in Aesthetics and Art History at the Fray Mocho bookstore, and drew large numbers of students. His 1952 text, La pintura europea contemporánea (Contemporay Painting in Europe), was a success, and a series of international seminars followed.
The military dictatorship
that overthrew Perón in 1955 named Romero Brest director of the National Museum of Fine Arts
. Both the museum itself and its collections were modernized and expanded during his tenure as director. A temporary exhibits pavilion was opened in 1961, and the museum acquired a large volume of modern art
though its collaboration with the Torcuato di Tella Institute
, a leading promoter of local avant-garde artists.
Among the artists whose work Romero Brest introduced to the museum were those of Raúl Soldi
, Héctor Basaldúa, Guillermo Butler, Lino Enea Spilimbergo
, Emilio Pettoruti
, and Ramón Gómez Cornet, as well as painters from the same Orion Group whose work he lampooned in the 1940s. He organized the museum's first Abstract Art
exposition in 1960, exhibiting works by Sarah Grilo, José Antonio Fernández Muro, Octavio Ocampo
, Kazuya Sakai, and Clorindo Testa
, and its first exhibit of Neo-figurative
art in 1963, with works by Jorge de la Vega
, Luis Felipe Noé
, Ernesto Deira, and Rómulo Macció
(known among local art circles as the "four horsemen of the apocalypse").
Romero Brest resigned from his post at the National Fine Arts Museum in 1963, and was named director of the Center for Visual Arts at the Torcuato di Tella Institute. The institute then became the leading Argentine center for pop art
, experimental theatre
, and conceptual art
, drawing artists such as León Ferrari
, Nacha Guevara
, Gyula Kosice
, Nicolás García Uriburu
, and Antonio Seguí
. Romero Brest also promoted the center's famed Happening
s, notably those of Marta Minujín
, whose interactive displays and mazes helped make the institute Buenos Aires' mazana loca (city block of madness).
The director's often challenging style did not endear him to all whose work bore his scrutiny, and some became his enemies over the years. These conflicts were satirized by a Happening staged by Federico Manuel Peralta, in which a tug-of-war was arranged on Florida Street
with many of the institute's artists on one end, and the unflappable Romero Brest on the other.
The 1966 military coup limited freedom of expression at the institute and elsewhere; facing conditions such as this, numerous avant-garde artists (and others, particularly in academia) left Argentina, many never to return. Romero Brest's tenure ended in 1969, and the institute closed shortly afterward. He published Ensayo sobre la contemplación artística (Essay on Artistic Cntemplation), and explained that his promotion of avant-garde art at the center had been based on creative input from the artists, and "a certain objective quality, not just a belated imitation of European movements."
He also served as a jurist in numerous international biennale
s, notably for a number of Venice Biennale
s and for Documenta
IV (Kassel
, Germany
), in 1968. He retired upon the closure of the Center for Visual Arts, though his byline would appear in occasional reviews for art magazines in Argentina and Colombia
.
Romero Brest lived during this period in a distinctive blue house in suburban City Bell
designed for him by one of the artists made famous at the Di Tella Institute: Edgardo Giménez. The residence was peculiar also for Romero Brest's bed, which was suspended five feet (1.5 m) off the ground, and could only be accessed by a ladder.
He was frank when discussing the neurosis
which had earned him notoriety among colleagues, and admitted to having benefited as much from psychotherapy
as he did from his second wife, Marta Bontempi, who chastised his irascible moments by ordering him to "be quiet, Enrique!" (in reference to Romero Brest's disciplinarian father).
He later relocated to a northside
Buenos Aires apartment, and died in 1989, at age 83.
Art critic
An art critic is a person who specializes in evaluating art. Their written critiques, or reviews, are published in newspapers, magazines, books and on web sites...
in Argentina who helped popularize avant-garde art in his country.
Life and work
Born in Buenos AiresBuenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
in 1905, Romero Brest enjoyed multiple interests in his youth, and excelled in a variety of sports. His father, Enrique Romero Brest, established the National Institute of Physical Education, and he began writing for his father's sports magazine
Sports magazine
A sports magazine is usually a weekly, monthly, biweekly magazine featuring articles or segments on sports. Some may be published a specific number of times per year.Major sports magazines in print include:...
, Revista de Educación Física. His research for these articles familiarized him with André Dunoyer de Segonzac's illustrations on the subject, and he developed an intellectual interest in art. He enrolled at the University of Buenos Aires
University of Buenos Aires
The University of Buenos Aires is the largest university in Argentina and the largest university by enrollment in Latin America. Founded on August 12, 1821 in the city of Buenos Aires, it consists of 13 faculties, 6 hospitals, 10 museums and is linked to 4 high schools: Colegio Nacional de Buenos...
in 1926, earned a Law degree
Law degree
A Law degree is an academic degree conferred for studies in law. Such degrees are generally preparation for legal careers; but while their curricula may be reviewed by legal authority, they do not themselves confer a license...
in 1933, and married the former Amelia Rossi.
His interest in art theory as a hobby resulted in his first book, El problema del arte y del artista contemporáneos (The Problems of Contemporary Art and Artists), in 1937. Brest was a talented speaker, and first gained renown as an art critic and commentator in a 1943 conference entitled "The element of rhythm in film and sports." He wrote columns on the philosophy of sport for the socialist newspaper La Vanguardia at the invitation of its editor, Mario Bravo
Mario Bravo
Mario Bravo was an Argentine politician and writer.-Life and times:Born in La Cocha, Tucumán Province, in 1882, Bravo enrolled at the University of Buenos Aires, and earned a Law Degree in 1905 after submitting his thesis on labor legislation...
, in 1939 and 1940.
Romero Brest became known as a confrontational art critic, and was initially disdainful of Surrealism in art, writing highly critical reviews of an exhibit by Orion Group painter Luis Barragán
Luis Barragán (painter)
Luis Barragán was an Argentine painter of the Abstract figurative and Surrealist schools.-Life and work:Luis Barragán was born in Buenos Aires in 1914, and studied at the National Art School and the Ernesto de la Cárcova School of Fine Arts.He secured his first gallery exhibition in 1939 as a...
and others (recommending they first "learn to paint"). He then published a biography of the renowned Argentine Realist painter Prilidiano Pueyrredón
Prilidiano Pueyrredón
Prilidiano Pueyrredón was an Argentine painter, architect, and engineer. As one of the country's first prominent painters, he was known for his costumbrist sensibility and preference for everyday themes....
, in 1942, and a study of Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...
's famed David
David (Michelangelo)
David is a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture created between 1501 and 1504, by the Italian artist Michelangelo. It is a marble statue of a standing male nude. The statue represents the Biblical hero David, a favoured subject in the art of Florence...
, in 1943. He published the first two volumes of his History of Art in 1945 (publishing the third and fourth in 1946 and 1958, respectively), and this latter work was subsequently used as a textbook in several Latin American universities.
The affiliation of many in the arts to the Socialist Party led to their harassment by government officials, particularly by the populist President Juan Perón
Juan Perón
Juan Domingo Perón was an Argentine military officer, and politician. Perón was three times elected as President of Argentina though he only managed to serve one full term, after serving in several government positions, including the Secretary of Labor and the Vice Presidency...
. Perón ordered the Altamira Art Academy dissolved in 1947, leaving, among others, painters Emilio Pettoruti
Emilio Pettoruti
Emilio Pettoruti was an Argentine painter, who caused a scandal with his avant-garde cubist exhibition in 1924 in Buenos Aires. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Buenos Aires was a city full of artistic development...
and Raúl Soldi
Raúl Soldi
Raúl Soldi was an Argentine painter whose work treated various subjects, including landscapes, portraits, the theater and the circus, and nature. His theatrical figures are renowned for their melancholy appearance...
, sculptor Lucio Fontana
Lucio Fontana
Lucio Fontana was an Italian painter, sculptor and theorist of Argentine birth. He was mostly known as the founder of Spatialism and his ties to Arte Povera.-Early life:...
, and Romero Brest (who served as the academy's art history
Art history
Art history has historically been understood as the academic study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i.e. genre, design, format, and style...
professor), without a teaching post. Romreo Brest continued an active schedule of conferences and workshops, however, and founded the art review magazine Ver y Estimar (Look and Consider). He taught a course in Aesthetics and Art History at the Fray Mocho bookstore, and drew large numbers of students. His 1952 text, La pintura europea contemporánea (Contemporay Painting in Europe), was a success, and a series of international seminars followed.
The military dictatorship
Revolución Libertadora
The Revolución Libertadora was a military uprising that ended the second presidential term of Juan Perón in Argentina, on September 16, 1955.-History:...
that overthrew Perón in 1955 named Romero Brest director of the National Museum of Fine Arts
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Buenos Aires)
The National Museum of Fine Arts is an Argentine art museum in Buenos Aires, located in the Recoleta section of the city. The MNBA inaugurated a branch in Neuquén in 2004.-History:...
. Both the museum itself and its collections were modernized and expanded during his tenure as director. A temporary exhibits pavilion was opened in 1961, and the museum acquired a large volume of modern art
Modern art
Modern art includes artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of...
though its collaboration with the Torcuato di Tella Institute
Torcuato di Tella Institute
The Torcuato di Tella Institute is a non-profit foundation organized for the promotion of Argentine culture.-Overview:The di Tella Foundation and its institute were created on July 22, 1958, the tenth anniversary of the death of industrialist and arts patron Torcuato di Tella...
, a leading promoter of local avant-garde artists.
Among the artists whose work Romero Brest introduced to the museum were those of Raúl Soldi
Raúl Soldi
Raúl Soldi was an Argentine painter whose work treated various subjects, including landscapes, portraits, the theater and the circus, and nature. His theatrical figures are renowned for their melancholy appearance...
, Héctor Basaldúa, Guillermo Butler, Lino Enea Spilimbergo
Lino Enea Spilimbergo
Lino Enea Spilimbergo was an Argentine artist and engraver, and he is considered to be one of the country's most important painters....
, Emilio Pettoruti
Emilio Pettoruti
Emilio Pettoruti was an Argentine painter, who caused a scandal with his avant-garde cubist exhibition in 1924 in Buenos Aires. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Buenos Aires was a city full of artistic development...
, and Ramón Gómez Cornet, as well as painters from the same Orion Group whose work he lampooned in the 1940s. He organized the museum's first Abstract Art
Abstract art
Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an...
exposition in 1960, exhibiting works by Sarah Grilo, José Antonio Fernández Muro, Octavio Ocampo
Octavio Ocampo
Octavio Ocampo was born on 28 February 1943 in Celaya, Guanajuato, Mexico. He grew up in a family of designers, and studied art from early childhood. At art school, Ocampo constructed papier mache figures for floats, altars, and ornaments that were used during carnival parades and other festivals....
, Kazuya Sakai, and Clorindo Testa
Clorindo Testa
Clorindo Manuel José Testa is an Italian-Argentine architect and artist. He graduated from the School of Architecture at the Universidad de Buenos Aires in 1948....
, and its first exhibit of Neo-figurative
Neo-figurative
Neo-figurative art describes an expressionist revival in modern form of figurative art. The term neo and figurative emerged in the 1960s in Mexico and Spain to represent a new form of figurative art.-Neo-figurative artists:...
art in 1963, with works by Jorge de la Vega
Jorge de la Vega
Jorge de la Vega was an Argentine abstract painter. His wife was Pauleta de la Vega....
, Luis Felipe Noé
Luis Felipe Noé
Luis Felipe Noé is an artist, writer, intellectual and teacher from Buenos Aires, Argentina where he is known as Yuyo. In 1961 he formed Otra Figuración with three other Argentine artists. Their eponymous exhibition and subsequent work greatly influenced the Neofiguration movement...
, Ernesto Deira, and Rómulo Macció
Romulo Macció
Romulo Macció is an Argentine painter associated with the local avant-garde art movement that took shape in the 1960s.-Life and work:...
(known among local art circles as the "four horsemen of the apocalypse").
Romero Brest resigned from his post at the National Fine Arts Museum in 1963, and was named director of the Center for Visual Arts at the Torcuato di Tella Institute. The institute then became the leading Argentine center for pop art
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...
, experimental theatre
Experimental theatre
Experimental theatre is a general term for various movements in Western theatre that began in the late 19th century as a retraction against the dominant vent governing the writing and production of dramatical menstrophy, and age in particular. The term has shifted over time as the mainstream...
, and conceptual art
Conceptual art
Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
, drawing artists such as León Ferrari
León Ferrari
León Ferrari , is a contemporary conceptual artist.Born in Buenos Aires, Ferrari employs methods such as collage, photocopying and sculpture in wood, plaster or ceramics. He often uses text, particularly newspaper clippings or poetry, in his pieces...
, Nacha Guevara
Nacha Guevara
Nacha Guevara is an Argentine singer and actress from Mar de Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina.Trained as a dancer and actress, she discovered by chance a career as a singer becoming a symbol in the song of protest movement around 1968 in the avant-garde Instituto Di Tella in Buenos Aires, the...
, Gyula Kosice
Gyula Kosice
Gyula Kosice, born Fernando Fallik in Košice is a naturalized Argentine sculptor, plastic artist, theoretician and poet, one of the most important figures in kinetic and luminal art and luminance vanguard....
, Nicolás García Uriburu
Nicolás García Uriburu
Nicolás García Uriburu is an Argentine contemporary artist, landscape architect and ecologist.-Life and work:Born in Buenos Aires in 1937, García Uriburu began painting at an early age and, in 1954, secured his first exhibition at the local Müller Gallery...
, and Antonio Seguí
Antonio Seguí
- Biography :Seguí is the oldest son of a middle-class and has three siblings. In the years from 1951 to 1954 he traveled through Europe and Africa, was visiting student at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid and at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris,...
. Romero Brest also promoted the center's famed Happening
Happening
A happening is a performance, event or situation meant to be considered art, usually as performance art. Happenings take place anywhere , are often multi-disciplinary, with a nonlinear narrative and the active participation of the audience...
s, notably those of Marta Minujín
Marta Minujín
Marta Minujín is an Argentine Conceptual artist.-Life and work:Marta Minujín was born in the San Telmo neighborhood of Buenos Aires. She met a young economist, Juan Carlos Gómez Sabaini, and married him in secret in 1959; the couple had two children...
, whose interactive displays and mazes helped make the institute Buenos Aires' mazana loca (city block of madness).
The director's often challenging style did not endear him to all whose work bore his scrutiny, and some became his enemies over the years. These conflicts were satirized by a Happening staged by Federico Manuel Peralta, in which a tug-of-war was arranged on Florida Street
Florida Street
Florida Street is an elegant shopping street in Downtown Buenos Aires, Argentina. A pedestrian street since 1971, some stretches have been pedestrianized since 1913....
with many of the institute's artists on one end, and the unflappable Romero Brest on the other.
The 1966 military coup limited freedom of expression at the institute and elsewhere; facing conditions such as this, numerous avant-garde artists (and others, particularly in academia) left Argentina, many never to return. Romero Brest's tenure ended in 1969, and the institute closed shortly afterward. He published Ensayo sobre la contemplación artística (Essay on Artistic Cntemplation), and explained that his promotion of avant-garde art at the center had been based on creative input from the artists, and "a certain objective quality, not just a belated imitation of European movements."
He also served as a jurist in numerous international biennale
Biennale
Biennale is Italian for "every other year" and can be used to describe any event that happens every two years. It is most commonly used within the art world to describe an international manifestation of contemporary art, stemming for the use of the phrase for the Venice Biennale, which was first...
s, notably for a number of Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
s and for Documenta
Documenta
documenta is an exhibition of modern and contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. It was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgartenschau which took place in Kassel at that time...
IV (Kassel
Kassel
Kassel is a town located on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Kassel Regierungsbezirk and the Kreis of the same name and has approximately 195,000 inhabitants.- History :...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
), in 1968. He retired upon the closure of the Center for Visual Arts, though his byline would appear in occasional reviews for art magazines in Argentina and Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
.
Romero Brest lived during this period in a distinctive blue house in suburban City Bell
City Bell
City Bell is a small town located in the partido of La Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is located some 50 kilometers from Buenos Aires and 10 from La Plata. It forms part of the Greater La Plata urban agglomeration....
designed for him by one of the artists made famous at the Di Tella Institute: Edgardo Giménez. The residence was peculiar also for Romero Brest's bed, which was suspended five feet (1.5 m) off the ground, and could only be accessed by a ladder.
He was frank when discussing the neurosis
Neurosis
Neurosis is a class of functional mental disorders involving distress but neither delusions nor hallucinations, whereby behavior is not outside socially acceptable norms. It is also known as psychoneurosis or neurotic disorder, and thus those suffering from it are said to be neurotic...
which had earned him notoriety among colleagues, and admitted to having benefited as much from psychotherapy
Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy is a general term referring to any form of therapeutic interaction or treatment contracted between a trained professional and a client or patient; family, couple or group...
as he did from his second wife, Marta Bontempi, who chastised his irascible moments by ordering him to "be quiet, Enrique!" (in reference to Romero Brest's disciplinarian father).
He later relocated to a northside
Barrio Norte, Buenos Aires
Barrio Norte is the informal name given to a part of Buenos Aires centering around Santa Fe Avenue and the Recoleta district.Recoleta, Belgrano and Palermo, are within a region with a per capita immediately comparable with that of many European cities-Overview:An unofficial neighborhood, Barrio...
Buenos Aires apartment, and died in 1989, at age 83.