Alejandro Puente

Alejandro Puente was a towering figure in Argentinean art.

He imprinted a note of originality on every aspect of his work; this is why critic Aldo Pellegrini dubbed his constructivist orientation a "sensible geometry" already in 1964, when Puente exhibited alongside César Paternosto in the now-historic Lirolay gallery.

During the period of his "chromatic geometry" (1965-1966), Puente exacerbated objectivity by emphasizing the chromatic element in highly saturated planes.

The originality of his Estructuras Visuales Modulares was equally disconcerting for viewers and critics. In them, identical modules with specific chromatic articulations were placed on the floor. When, thanks to a Guggenheim Fellowship, Puente exhibited these works in New York, programmed color had never before been seen in the United Sates, neither in sculpture nor in paintings projected towards a third dimension. During his US stay (1968-1971), Puente continued to investigate systems for the organization of color, and in 1970 he was invited to participate in Information, a show featuring the most salient conceptual artists in the international scene.

It was around the same time that his identification with Latin America truly exploded. As the artist said, "I assumed my condition as a South American person, and discovered in my paintings and sculpture projects a connection with the staggered fretwork and the horizontal-vertical grid sequence that are symbolic constants in pre-Columbian art".

Puente also found, through pre-Columbian art's concepts of two-dimensionality and frontality, a new was of legitimizing geometric abstraction. He began to use names rooted in indigenous languages, to include connotations of place, and to exalt sensorial stimuli in his work. He created works using feathers and used cotton thread to build a chromatic system inspired in the quipu (knotted chords used by ancient Peruvians to communicate messages).

Upon returning to Buenos Aires, Puente structured his paintings on the basis of a math-based modular reticule.

Alejandro Puente was from the beginning situated in a geometry that reached beyond an austere, succinct modernist rationalism. His thirst for knowledge drove him to explore systems art in order to push even deeper the exactitude that was his constant aspiration, and to value the process of materialization of the work and everything connected to a dialog with the materials and their handling as a sensorial and sensible enrichment. Puente's investigation of the ancient art of the Americas and his ability to entwine its image with contemporary geometry, joined to his technical mastery, turned him into an outstanding presence in the landscape of Argentinean and international art.

It is hard for us to bid him farewell.