Estate of León Ferrari

In 1965, an exhibition including Ferrari’s La civilización occidental y cristiana (Western Christian Civilization) was censored and then closed by the Catholic Church. His subsequent work would challenge the policies of the church and the role of religion in the history of art. In the late 1960s, Ferrari participated in the collective known as Tucumán Arde. The group intended to draw attention to the conditions of the Tucumán Province through an intervention into the circuits of mass communication, countering the official news media of the Argentine dictatorship. During this period of increasing political activism, Ferrari published what would become a famous manifesto and call-to-arms for artists, in which he wrote, “Art is not beauty or novelty, art is effectiveness and disruption…”

With the persecution, murder, and disappearances of family members and friends during the Guerra Sucia (Dirty War) in Argentina, Ferrari fled to São Paulo, where he remained from 1976 to 1991. During this political exile, Ferrari created metal sculptures, photocopies, postal art, heliography, and art books, and he continued his explorations in drawing. Upon his return to Buenos Aires in the early 1990s, Ferrari created a series of collages to illustrate the official report about the disappearance of Argentineans during the war; the report, created by the National Commission for the Disappearance of Persons, was titled “Never Again” and it was published in 1984 and reissued with Ferrari’s collages in 1996. The imagery condemns the relationships between the repressive military regime and the religious establishment.  

Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Argentina

Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA), Argentina

Museo de Arte Moderno de Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City, Mexico

Museo del Grabado, Argentina

Museo La Tertulia, Cali, Colombia

Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes Juan B. Castagnino, de Rosario, Argentina

Museo Salvador Allende, Santiago, Chile

Museo Sívori, Museo de Arte Moderno, Argentina

Museu de Arte Brazileira, Pinacoteca do Estado Brazil

Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil

Museu de Arte de São Paulo, Brazil

Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, Brazil

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), TX, USA

Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, NY, USA

Nagel Collection Argentina

Rosenkrantz Collection, Argentina

Tate Modern, London, UK

University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA, USA