Martín Malharro
Encyclopedia
Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism is the term coined by the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe the development of French art since Manet. Fry used the term when he organized the 1910 exhibition Manet and Post-Impressionism...
school.
Life and work
Martín Malharro was born in the central Buenos Aires Province
Buenos Aires Province
The Province of Buenos Aires is the largest and most populous province of Argentina. It takes the name from the city of Buenos Aires, which used to be the provincial capital until it was federalized in 1880...
city of Azul
Azul, Buenos Aires
Azul is the head city of the Azul Partido, located at the center of the Buenos Aires Province in Argentina, 300 km south of Buenos Aires. It has 63,000 inhabitants as per the ....
in 1865. His childhood interest in painting led to domestic violence at home, from which he left for Buenos Aires
Buenos 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 1879. The struggling young artist was mentored in 1885 by publisher Roberto Payró
Roberto Payró
Roberto Jorge Payró was an Argentine writer and journalist.Payró founded the newspaper La Tribuna in the city of Bahía Blanca, where he published his first newspaper articles. He then moved to the city of Buenos Aires where he worked as an editor at the newspaper La Nación...
, who encouraged him to enroll at the Society for the Stimulus of Fine Arts, where he received formal training by Francisco Romero, an Italian Argentine
Italian Argentine
An Italian Argentine is a person born in Argentina of Italian ancestry. It is estimated up to 25 million Argentines have some degree of Italian descent...
Realist painter, and others prominent in the genre locally, such as Ángel della Valle and Reynaldo Giudici. Malharro was invited to the Córdoba Province
Córdoba Province (Argentina)
Córdoba is a province of Argentina, located in the center of the country. Neighboring provinces are : Santiago del Estero, Santa Fe, Buenos Aires, La Pampa, San Luis, La Rioja and Catamarca...
ranch of José María Ramos Mejía in 1887, where, as an artist-in-residence, he gained experience as a landscape art
Landscape art
Landscape art is a term that covers the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, and especially art where the main subject is a wide view, with its elements arranged into a coherent composition. In other works landscape backgrounds for figures can still...
ist.
An 1892 excursion into Tierra del Fuego Territory
Tierra del Fuego Province (Argentina)
Tierra del Fuego is an Argentine province entirely separated from mainland Argentina by the Strait of Magellan. It includes:* The eastern part of the Isla Grande of Tierra del Fuego archipelago and the Staten Island.* Argentina's claims to the Falkland Islands and to...
introduced him to lithographer
Lithography
Lithography is a method for printing using a stone or a metal plate with a completely smooth surface...
Antonio Bosco, who trained Malharro in an art which proved to be the young artist's first reliable source of income. His presentation at the Second National Atheneum in 1894, which consisted mainly of landscapes, particularly wheat fields, was well-received by critics. This relative success allowed him to travel to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
in 1895, where he befriended Realist sculptor and fellow Argentine Rogelio Yrurtia
Rogelio Yrurtia
Rogelio Yrurtia was a renowned Argentine sculptor of the Realist school.-Life and work:Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina to Basque immigrants in 1879, Rogelio Yrurtia enrolled in the local Society for the Promotion of Fine Arts in 1899. A talented student, he quickly earned a scholarship on which...
. Malharro also drew on his experience at the Ramos Mejía ranch to refine his skill as a landscape impressionist, drawing influences from Camille Pissarro
Camille Pissarro
Camille Pissarro was a French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas . His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, as he was the only artist to exhibit in both forms...
, Claude Monet
Claude Monet
Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. . Retrieved 6 January 2007...
and the Naturalist
Naturalism (art)
Naturalism in art refers to the depiction of realistic objects in a natural setting. The Realism movement of the 19th century advocated naturalism in reaction to the stylized and idealized depictions of subjects in Romanticism, but many painters have adopted a similar approach over the centuries...
Barbizon School
Barbizon school
The Barbizon school of painters were part of a movement towards realism in art, which arose in the context of the dominant Romantic Movement of the time. The Barbizon school was active roughly from 1830 through 1870...
.
Returning to Buenos Aires in 1901, he secured an exhibition at the Witcomb Gallery in the following year. Conservative Argentine audiences, who still preferred Realist work, were won over by the 1902 art show, which popularized Impressionism in the then-remote South American nation. His noctural scenes became particularly coveted by buyers and lauded by critics. Malharro's work took an increasingly Symbolist direction and away from earlier studies on wheat fields, a common subject among Impressionist artists in Argentina at the time. Malharro, Fernando Fader
Fernando Fader
Fernando Fader was a French-born Argentine painter of the Post-impressionist school.-Life and work:Fernando Fader was born in Bordeaux, France in 1882. His father, of Prussian descent, relocated the family to Argentina in 1884, settling in the western city of Mendoza before returning to France a...
, Cesáreo Bernaldo de Quirós
Cesáreo Bernaldo de Quirós
Cesáreo Bernaldo de Quirós was an Argentine painter of the post-impressionist school.- Life and work :De Quirós was born in Gualeguay, Entre Ríos Province, in 1879. He began to paint at age eight, and shortly afterwards, created a facial composite sketch that resulted in a fugitive criminal's...
and other artists following the same trend became the first prominent Post-impressionists
Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism is the term coined by the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe the development of French art since Manet. Fry used the term when he organized the 1910 exhibition Manet and Post-Impressionism...
in Argentina, where they were known as the Nexus group.
The sudden renown secured malharro a post in the prestigious University of La Plata as Dean of the School of Art, as well as in the National Fine Arts Academy. His atelier in the northside Buenos Aires district of Belgrano
Belgrano, Buenos Aires
Belgrano is a leafy, northern barrio or neighborhood of the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina.- Location :The barrio of Palermo is to the southeast; Nuñez is to the northwest; Coghlan, Villa Urquiza, Villa Ortúzar and Colegiales are to the southwest....
became increasingly sought-after, though a second exhibition in 1908 drew scorn from Argentine critics, who still rejected most work associated with the Nexos group. Malharro died in Buenos Aires on August 17, 1911, at age 46.
Museo Castagnino: Martín Malharro