Born in Buenos Aires in 1942.
Learns to draw by copying constructive details from books belonging to his architect father. In his library discovers Romanesque and Byzantine art. Somewhat later, first contacts with abstraction through the works of Poliakoff and Nicholson.
His art teacher at school is the painter Ignacio Colombres, at whose workshop he takes painting lessons after school.
After finishing high school, he travels to Europe with the aim of studying at the School of Ulm (Hoschschule für Gestaltung), then directed by Tomás Maldonado, and combine the disciplines that interest him most: art and architecture.
Arrives in Barcelona. Visits the Museo de Arte Románico de Cataluña -now Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya- gets his first direct exposure to a style foremost among his interests.
Travels to Madrid, where he finally takes up residence. Enrols in the Real Academia de Arte de San Fernando. Walking by the Academy’s Zurbaráns every morning and the constant visits to the Museo del Prado exerts a strong influence and takes his work in directions he had never expected.
In 1964 rents a workshop near the Plaza Mayor, where he meets the American artist Robert Janz. Together they start Equipo Ñ and produce a series of works experimenting with interchangeable forms. They show them in Córdoba (Spain) in an exhibition called Continuum.
First grids and squares. The colours are flat. The textures characteristic of his early works disappear.
Moves to the seaside town of Cadaqués (Girona), never again to live in a city.
Meets American architect Peter Harnden, who with absolute simplicity transforms into open spaces the interiors of traditional village houses, showing him a different way of doing architecture. At Harnden’s home, he is exposed to works by Calder, Max Bill, Bertoia and Rickey among others.
First works conceived of as series. His main interest is the relationship established between them. He will never abandon this way of working. The linear schemes disappear and the structure of the compositions is simplified. The colour, less strident and more subtle, applied in small brushstrokes, lends the surface a certain texture.
In 1975 moves to Sant Martí Vell, Girona, where he still lives. Engages in his interest in “architecture without architects” refurbishing country houses.
During the 80’s, produces mainly works on paper and “constructions”. These, conceived as autonomous volumes, combine different materials -wood, concrete, marble or stone- often coloured or painted.
Hereafter, wood becomes his preferred support because it can be sanded after each layer of paint. First transparencies.
Builds his house-workshop with help from the architect Lanfranco Bombelli. For several years lives without electricity, relying on natural light to work by. His routine still follows the same cycle today.
From 1989 on, large paintings and reliefs, nearly monochromatic, sometimes breaking the strict limits of the rectangle in the manner of a “shape-canvas”.
Starts titling his works according to the technique followed by a four or five-digit number indicating the year of execution (first two digits) and the production number for that year.
References to the silhouettes and floor plans of medieval Pyrenean architecture begin to appear in his works.
In 1993 returns to Argentina after twenty-year absence.
In 1996 introduces gold leaf, which he will later use in a series of paintings he refers to as “icons”, the colours of which recall Russian icons.
Tea spilt accidentally on a sheet of paper gives rise to a series in which chance becomes the point of departure in each work. The background is no longer neutral.
Small reliefs and collages, made out of bits of wood and paper, very often painted by the artist himself, are sometimes the origin of works that he later produces on a larger scale.
New paintings, articulated in certain cases, in the manner of altarpieces or screens.
In 2002, executes his first site-specific work. A mural -2 x 13 metres- for the Hospital Universitario de Santiago de Compostela (Spain). It’s the first time he combines his two main interests: art and architecture.
Trip to Japan in 2005. Encounter with an aesthetic that had always attracted him. Due to the size of works, he goes back to working on canvas.
In 2008 travels through Patagonia, a project long delayed. The horizontality of his works accentuate. The relationship with the inmensity of the landscape he has just experienced is unquestionable.
New trip to Buenos Aires, in 2012, to work on a mural painting commissioned by a private collector.
Shapes and colours are simplified. In constructions and reliefs, he now only works with wood or metal. Use of gold leaf again in a new series of icons.
The square shape reappears in 2017. In some cases the square rotates on its central axis.
In 2019 he is commissioned the paintings for the altar of a chapel in a private estate in Toledo. During the months of confinement he shuts himself up in his workshop in Sant Martí Vell to work. The paintings are installed in May 2021.
Since 2016 he lives and works between Sant Martí Vell (Girona) and Madrid.
Public Collections
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain
Haus Konstructiv, Zürich, Switzerland
Espace de l’Art Concret, Mouans-Sartoux, France
Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Latinoamericano, La Plata, Argentina
Fundació Vila Casas, Barcelona, Spain
Col.lecció Testimoni, Fundació La Caixa, Barcelona, Spain