Culture of Argentina

The haystacks (1911) by Martín Malharro. He is considered the introducer of Impressionism in Argentina.[9]

Marta Minujín's Tower of Babel (2011)

Argentine painters and sculptors have a rich history, dating from both before and since the development of modern Argentina in the second half of the 19th century. Artistic production did not truly come into its own, until after the 1852 overthrow of the repressive regime of Juan Manuel de Rosas. Immigrants like Eduardo Schiaffino, Eduardo Sívori, Reinaldo Giudici, Emilio Caraffa, and Ernesto de la Cárcova left behind a realist heritage influential to this day.

Impressionism did not make itself evident among Argentine artists until after 1900, however, and never acquired the kind of following it did in Europe, though it did inspire influential Argentine post-impressionists such as Martín Malharro, Ramón Silva, Cleto Ciocchini, Fernando Fader, Pío Collivadino, Cesáreo Bernaldo de Quirós, Realism, and aestheticism continued to set the agenda in Argentine painting and sculpture, noteworthy during this era for the sudden fame of sculptor Lola Mora, a student of Auguste Rodin's.

As Lola Mora had been until she fell out of favor with local high society, monumental sculptors became in very high demand after 1900, particularly by municipal governments and wealthy families, who competed with each other in boasting the most evocative mausolea for their dearly departed. Though most preferred French and Italian sculptors, work by locals Erminio Blotta, Ángel María de Rosa, and Rogelio Yrurtia resulted in a proliferation of soulful monuments and memorials made them immortal. Not as realist as the work of some of his belle-époque predecessors in sculpture, Yrurtia's subtle impressionism inspired Argentine students like Antonio Pujía, whose internationally prized female torsos always surprise admirers with their whimsical and surreal touches, while Pablo Curatella Manes' sculptures drew from cubism.

The frescoed dome of Galerías Pacífico was painted by muralists Berni, Castagnino, Colmeiro, Spilimbergo and Urruchúa.[10]

Becoming an intellectual, as well as artistic circle, painters like Antonio Berni, Lino Enea Spilimbergo, and Juan Carlos Castagnino were friends as well as colleagues, going on to collaborate on masterpieces like the ceiling at the Galerias Pacifico arcade in Buenos Aires, towards 1933.

As in Mexico and elsewhere, muralism became increasingly popular among Argentine artists. Among the first to use his drab surroundings as a canvas was Benito Quinquela Martín, whose vaguely cubist pastel-colored walls painted in his Buenos Aires neighborhood of La Boca during the 1920s and 1930s, have become historical monuments and Argentine cultural emblems, worldwide. Lithographs, likewise, found a following in Argentina sometime after they had been made popular elsewhere. In Argentina, artists like Adolfo Bellocq, used this medium to portray often harsh working conditions in Argentina's growing industrial sector, during the 1920s and 1930s. Antonio Seguí, another lithographer, transferred his naïve style into murals in numerous nations, as did Ricardo Carpani, though in a realist style.

The vanguard in culturally conservative Argentina, futurists and cubists like Xul Solar and Emilio Pettoruti earned a following as considerable as that of less abstract and more sentimental portrait and landscape painters, like Raúl Soldi. Likewise, traditional abstract artists such as Romulo Macció, Anselmo Piccoli, Eduardo Mac Entyre, Luis Felipe Noé, and Luis Seoane co-existed with equal appeal as the most conceptual mobile art creators such as the unpredictable Pérez Celis, Gyula Kosice of the Argentine Madí Movement, and Marta Minujín, one of Andy Warhol's most esteemed fellow Conceptual artists.

The emergence of avant-garde genres in Argentine sculpture also featured Pablo Curatella Manes and Roberto Aizenberg, and constructivists such as Nicolás García Uriburu and Leon Ferrari, one of the world's foremost artists in his genre, today. In the 1960s and 1970s, many of these figures' abstract art found their way into popular advertising and even corporate logos.

Generally possessing a strong sentimental streak, the Argentine public's taste for naïve art and simple pottery cannot be overlooked. Since Prilidiano Pueyrredón's day, artists in the naïve vein like Cándido López have captured the absurdity of war; Susana Aguirre, and Aniko Szabó, the idiosyncrasies of everyday neighborhoods; Guillermo Roux's watercolors, a circus atmosphere; and Gato Frías, childhood memories. Illustrator Florencio Molina Campos's tongue-in-cheek depictions of gaucho life have endured as collectors' items.

To help showcase Argentine and Latin American art and sculpture, local developer and art collector Eduardo Constantini set aside a significant portion of his personal collection, and in 1998, began construction on Buenos Aires' first major institution specializing in works by Latin American artists. His foundation opened the Buenos Aires Museum of Latin American Art (MALBA) in 2001.

In the 1920s, Buenos Aires was overflowing with creative drawings and design. Argentine illustrators and sketchers were attracting worldwide recognition, including artists such as Jose Freire Segundo, creator of gráfica of Aikal (1940); Jose Luis Salinas, called upon by King Features to create a comic strip of worldwide fame, Cisco Kid; and Florencio Molina Campos, the brilliant sketcher of the Alpargatas Almanacs of rural life (1930), who collaborated on three Walt Disney films.

The culmination was the arrival, in 1927, of French painter, poster artist and sculptor Lucien Achille Mauzan, who was part of the artistic Art Deco movement. He settled in Buenos Aires and founded his own company Editorial Affiches Mauzan (Editorial Mauzan Posters) and created between 130 and 150 posters in the six years he spent in Argentina. He marks deeply in the poster art in Argentina,[11] where his reputation is enormous.[12] One of his well-known works is the amicably tortured head of Geniol.[13][14]

In the 1950s renowned Uruguayan-Argentine journalist, caricaturist Hermenegildo Sábat, portrayed political figures, as well as artists and other personalities. Many of his "Argentine cultural icons" are reproduced in ceramic tile in the Buenos Aires Underground.

Argentine comics were living its "Golden Age" between the 1940s and the 1960s. Cartoonists and comic creators have contributed prominently to national culture, including Alberto Breccia, Dante Quinterno, Oski, Francisco Solano López, Horacio Altuna, Guillermo Mordillo, Roberto Fontanarrosa, whose grotesque characters captured life's absurdities with quick-witted commentary, and Quino, known for the soup-hating Mafalda, and her comic strip gang of childhood friends, the theorist Oscar Masotta synthesized its contributions in the development of their own models of action comics (Héctor Oesterheld, Hugo Pratt), humor comics (Divito, Quino) and folkloric comics (Walter Ciocca) and the presence of four great artists (José Luis Salinas, Arturo Pérez del Castillo, Hugo Pratt and Alberto Breccia).[15]

The Barolo tower, arguably Argentina's best-known Art Nouveau building. Dolfines Guaraní skyscrapers in Rosario, the country's tallest outside Buenos Aires.

The architecture of Argentina can be said to start at the beginning of the Spanish colonization, though it was in the 18th century that the cities of the country reached their splendour. Cities like Córdoba, Salta, Mendoza, and also Buenos Aires conserved most their historical Spanish colonial architecture in spite of their urban growth.

The simplicity of the Rioplatense baroque style can be clearly appreciated in Buenos Aires, in the works of Italian architects such as André Blanqui and Antonio Masella, in the churches of San Ignacio, Nuestra Señora del Pilar, the Cathedral, and the Cabildo.

Italian and French influences increased after the war for independence at the beginning of the 19th century, though the academic style persisted until the first decades of the 20th century. Attempts at renovation took place during the second half of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th, when the European tendencies penetrated into the country, reflected in numerous important buildings of Buenos Aires, such as the Santa Felicitam Church, by Ernesto Bunge; the Central Post Office and Palace of Justice, by Norbert Maillart; and the National Congress and the Colón Opera House, by Vittorio Meano.

Curutchet House, World Heritage Site in La Plata

The architecture of the second half of the 20th century continued adapting French neoclassical architecture, such as the headquarters of the National Bank of Argentina, and the NH Gran Hotel Provincial, built by Alejandro Bustillo, and the Museo de Arte Hispano Fernández Blanco, by Martín Noel.

Numerous Argentine architects have enriched their own country's cityscapes, and in recent decades, those around the world. Juan Antonio Buschiazzo helped popularize Beaux-Arts architecture, and Francisco Gianotti combined Art Nouveau with Italianate styles, each adding flair to Argentine cities during the early 20th century. Francisco Salamone and Viktor Sulĉiĉ left an Art Deco legacy, and Alejandro Bustillo created a prolific body of Rationalist architecture. Clorindo Testa introduced Brutalist architecture locally, César Pelli's and Patricio Pouchulu's Futurist creations have graced cities, worldwide. Pelli's 1980s throwbacks to the Art Deco glory of the 1920s, in particular, made him one of the world's most prestigious architects.

Argentina cities have varied architecture. Commonly each house has an individual design, and is very rare to find any tract housing neighborhood.

Iconic Argentine actresses in the 1961 Berlin International Film Festival: Isabel Sarli, Olga Zubarry, Tita Merello and Mirtha Legrand

The Argentine film industry created around 170 full-length titles in 2012.[16] The world's first animated feature films were made and released in Argentina, by cartoonist Quirino Cristiani, in 1917 and 1918.[17] Argentine cinema enjoyed a 'golden age' in the 1930s through the 1950s with scores of productions, many now considered classics of Spanish-language film. The industry produced actors who became the first movie stars of Argentine cinema, often tango performers such as Libertad Lamarque, Floren Delbene, Tito Lusiardo, Tita Merello, Roberto Escalada, and Hugo del Carril.

More recent films from the "New Wave" of cinema since the 1980s have achieved worldwide recognition, such as The Official Story (Best foreign film Oscar in 1986), Man Facing Southeast, A Place in the World, Nine Queens, Son of the Bride, The Motorcycle Diaries, Blessed by Fire, The Secret in Their Eyes, winner of the 2009 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and Wild Tales. Although rarely rivaling Hollywood productions in popularity, local films are released weekly, and widely followed in Argentina and internationally. A number of local films, many of which are low-budget productions, have earned prizes in cinema festivals (such as Cannes), and are promoted by events such as the Mar del Plata Film Festival and the Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema.

The per capita number of screens is one of the highest in Latin America, and viewing per capita is the highest in the region.[6] A new generation of Argentine directors have caught the attention of critics worldwide.[18] Cinema is an important facet of local culture, as well as a popular pastime, and levels of cinema attendance are comparable to those of European countries.[19] Argentine composers Luis Bacalov, Gustavo Santaolalla, and Eugenio Zanetti have been honored with Academy Award for Best Original Score nods. Lalo Schifrin has received numerous Grammys, and is best known for the Mission:Impossible theme.

Tango, the music and lyrics (often sung in a form of slang called lunfardo), is Argentina's musical symbol. The Milonga dance was a predecessor, slowly evolving into modern tango. By the 1930s, tango had changed from a dance-focused music to one of lyric and poetry, with singers such as Carlos Gardel, Hugo del Carril, Roberto Goyeneche, Raúl Lavié, Tita Merello, and Edmundo Rivero. The golden age of tango (1930 to mid-1950s) mirrored that of jazz and swing in the United States, featuring large orchestral groups too, like the bands of Osvaldo Pugliese, Aníbal Troilo, Francisco Canaro, Julio de Caro, and Juan d'Arienzo. Incorporating acoustic music and later, synthesizers into the genre after 1955, bandoneón virtuoso Astor Piazzolla popularized "new tango" creating a more subtle, intellectual and listener-oriented trend. Today, tango enjoys worldwide popularity; ever-evolving, neo-tango is a global phenomenon with renowned groups like Tanghetto, Bajofondo, and the Gotan Project.

Known as the "voice of the voiceless ones",[21] Mercedes Sosa was one of the preeminent exponents of nueva canción.

Argentine rock, called rock nacional, is the most popular music among the youth. Arguably the most listened-to form of Spanish-language rock, its influence and international success are owed to a rich, uninterrupted development. Bands such as Soda Stereo or Sumo, and composers like Charly García, Luis Alberto Spinetta, Fito Páez and Andrés Calamaro are referents of national culture. Mid-1960s Buenos Aires and Rosario were cradles of the music, and by 1970, Argentine rock was well established among middle class youth (see: Almendra, Sui Generis, Pappo, Crucis, Pescado Rabioso). Serú Girán bridged the gap into the 1980s, when Argentine bands became popular across Latin America and elsewhere (Enanitos Verdes, Fabulosos Cadillacs and Virus). There are many subgenres: underground, pop-oriented, and some associated with the working class (La Renga, Divididos, Hermética, V8 and Los Redonditos). Current popular bands include Babasónicos, Los Auténticos Decadentes, Rata Blanca, Horcas, Attaque 77, Bersuit, Los Piojos, Catupecu Machu, Carajo and Callejeros.

European classical music is well represented in Argentina. Buenos Aires is home to the world-renowned Colón Theater. Classical musicians, such as Martha Argerich, Eduardo Alonso-Crespo, Daniel Barenboim, Eduardo Delgado, and Alberto Lysy, and classical composers such as Juan José Castro and Alberto Ginastera, and contemporary composers such as Osvaldo Golijov, Gerardo Gandini, and Oscar Edelstein are internationally acclaimed. All major cities in Argentina have impressive theaters or opera houses, and provincial or city orchestras. Some cities have annual events and important classical music festivals like Semana Musical Llao Llao in San Carlos de Bariloche, and the multitudinous Amadeus in Buenos Aires.

Payada in a bar. Painting by Carlos Morel.

Argentine folk music is uniquely vast. Beyond dozens of regional dances, a national folk style emerged in the 1930s. Perón's Argentina would give rise to Nueva Canción, as artists began expressing in their music objections to political themes. Atahualpa Yupanqui, folk musician, and Mercedes Sosa would be defining figures in shaping Nueva Canción, gaining worldwide popularity in the process. The style found a huge reception in Chile, where it took off in the 1970s, and went on to influence the entirety of Latin American music.[22] Today, Chango Spasiuk and Soledad Pastorutti have brought folk back to younger generations. León Gieco's folk-rock bridged the gap between Argentine folklore and Argentine rock, introducing both styles to millions overseas in successive tours.

Buenos Aires is one of the world's great capitals of theater.[6] The Teatro Colón is a national landmark for opera and classical performances; built at the end of the 19th century, its acoustics are considered the best in the world,[1] and is currently undergoing a major refurbishment in order to preserve its outstanding sound characteristics, the French-romantic style, the impressive Golden Room (a minor auditorium targeted to Chamber Music performances), and the museum at the entrance. With its theater scene of national and international caliber, Corrientes Avenue is synonymous with the art. It is thought of as the street that never sleeps, and sometimes referred to as the Broadway of Buenos Aires.[23] Many great careers in acting, music, and film have begun in its many theaters. The Teatro General San Martín is one of the most prestigious, along Corrientes Avenue, and the Teatro Nacional Cervantes functions as the national stage theater of Argentina. The Teatro Argentino de La Plata, El Círculo in Rosario, Independencia in Mendoza, and Libertador in Córdoba are also prominent. Griselda Gambaro, Copi, Roberto Cossa, Marco Denevi, Carlos Gorostiza, and Alberto Vaccarezza are a few of the more prominent Argentine playwrights. Julio Bocca, Jorge Donn, José Neglia, and Norma Fontenla are some of the great ballet dancers of the modern era.