Luis F. Benedit

Renowned for his long career both as a painter and an architect, Luis F. Benedit (Buenos Aires, 1937) died at the age of 73 in his native Buenos Aires. While Benedit was associated with Informalism and Art Brut at the beginning of his career as a visual artist, his work is actually closely associated to conceptual and experimental art, and it is also tied to ecology, rural tradition -from the Gaucho of the Pampas to the indigenous people of South America- and to reflections on the national identity and history. In 1961, Benedit presents his first solo show in Buenos Aires entitled New Faces at the prestigious Galería Lirola, at a time when he was still working at the architectural firm of Alberto Prebish- a rationalist architect, art critic, and friend of the intellectuals behind the Martin Fierro periodical. Three year later, Benedit travels to Spain where he studies architecture. In 1967, under a scholarship from the Italian embassy, he travels to Rome to study landscape architecture with Francesco Fariello. At the beginning of the 1970s, Benedit experiments with scientific and artistic elements to produce artificial habitats for animals and plants. A good example of such representations was his renowned work entitled Biofon. Presented at the Venice Biennale, it consisted of 4,000 bees that interacted both in an artificial garden and in a natural one. In 1972, he became the first Latin American artist to exhibit his work in the "Projects" program at the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art, New York). Together with Clorindo Testa and Jacques Bedel, in 1979 Benedit won the competition to renovate the Centro Cultural Recoleta, formerly a convent, jail, and asylum that today is one of the most important exhibition spaces in Buenos Aires. In 2009, speaking about the exhibition -of his then 60 most recent works inspired by the equestrian culture- entitled Equinus Equestris, at the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano (MALBA), Benedit has this to say: "I dig into the past looking for modest data -true or ambiguous- that is meaningful in that it is ours and that I want to rescue from oblivion." (press release, MALBA, April 22, 2009) "Almost my entire iconography comes from an equine anatomy manual," explains the artist, who uses bones a visual element "that suited for designing," as he also confesses that "sometimes I would exchange a bag of bones for a bottle of wine." (Revista Noticias. May 2009) According to Argentine art historian, Laura Malosetti, Benedit "was an artist who succeeded in revising in a very critical manner the common places of Argentine culture. He critically worked and discussed the concept of tradition based on materials." (La Tercera, Cultura, April 12, 2011). Benedit leaves five children and four grandchildren. He was laid to rest at Parque Memorial in the city of Pilar, some 33.5 miles from Buenos Aires.