Art galleries run by women in 1956 Buenos Aires

Abstract

The origin of this tour of the Buenos Aires art galleries run by women during the 1950s is precisely Juan Navarro Ramón and the exhibition he held in 1956 in one of them, the Pizarro Gallery. For the writer of this, an awakening of this Altean artist and his connection with women took place in the first five years of the 20th century, both in his personal and daily life and in his pictorial work. Without a doubt, a subsequent trip to Buenos Aires would lead my steps to try to walk his and his wife's steps almost seven decades later.

Navarro Ramón visited many places in Spanish and European geography, spaces to which he returned or visited only once. Among the latter is Buenos Aires, where he arrived, together with his wife, Josefa Fisac, in August 1956 from the port of Barcelona. Five years earlier, in 1951, his work Femme et guitarre was acquired by the Musée d'Art Moderne, in Paris, thus making Navarro Ramón's name begin to be heard around the world. Femme et guitarre is precisely the image that appears in the invitation to the exhibition that opened on September 10th, 1956, at the Galería Pizarro, in Buenos Aires. Navarro then had the intention of visiting Argentina and Brazil —the São Paulo Biennial was born in 1951—. This article is going to focus on the first part of that trip and, within this, to travel with Navarro and Fisac ​​through the streets of Buenos Aires and the galleries run by women until reaching the above-mentioned Pizarro Gallery, where he exhibited with two women artists: the painter, writer, puppeteer and engraver Mane Bernardo and the self-taught sculptor Josefina Zamudio. The Pizarro Gallery, founded at the end of 1955, is the first one run by a single woman in the Argentine capital.

Among the galleries that are related is the Peuser Gallery (1944-late sixties), having been directed by Antonio Chiavetti, an artist who has work deposited in the Castagnino+Macro Museum —in the Argentine city of Rosario—, such as Navarro Ramon; the Van Riel Gallery —created in 1924—, which has had a room since 1952—V, dedicated to Modern Painting— directed by María Sara de Jiménez, and the Antígona Gallery (1954-1979), directed by three women: Mabel and Mary Castellano and Nelly Freire.