
GRACIELA HASPER (1966, Argentina)
“Abstraction is like connecting inwards. For me, painting happens with your eyes shut. It is not a representation of the world, it is a representation of ideas.”
During a trip to Europe in 1987, Graciela Hasper realized for the first time that she wanted to make art. She returned to Argentina and began her studies with other artists: between 1987 and 1991, she studied with Diana Aisenberg, while also pursuing independent studies of philosophy and art history. In part because of Argentina's dictatorship, Hasper never attended art school.
In 1993, Hasper participated in an exhibition curated by Jorge Gumier Maier, Nicolás Guagnini, and Pablo Siquier, held at the Centro Cultural Rojas de Buenos Aires. Titled Crimen y Ornamento, the exhibition subsequently was shown in New York, curated by Carlos Basualdo. This was one of the first exhibitions to explicitly link the generation of 1990s artists in Buenos Aires with mid-century abstraction, and the artists included became known as the Rojas group. “In Argentina, abstraction was repressed because it did not ‘explain’ national values. It had no value. So I adopted something that had no value and tried to make it valuable, an act of resistance. My work reflects the way a younger artist can respond to Madí, to the abstraction of the 1940s and 1950s,” Hasper says in a later interview with Lilly Wei.
Since the 1990s, Hasper’s painting aesthetic has been clean and direct, marked by sharp orthogonal lines and bright color. In 2000, she completed her first residency in the United States, at Apex Art in New York with a Fulbright / FNA Grant. In 2002, she participated in the Chinati Foundation residency. Her most recent work has expanded to a larger scale, even encompassing architectural interventions. “I’m trying to expand the boundaries of painting in order to include the body,” she notes. For her 2013 project for the city of Buenos Aires at Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (MAMBA), Nudo de Autopista, Hasper designed a painted mural for 100 columns of several intersecting highways in Buenos Aires. The resulting color scheme marked the different flows of traffic on the streets: “you experience the materiality of the work, and you’re surrounded by it.”
Hasper designed a large-scale mural, her most ambitious work to date, for Miami’s Faena Forum, designed by Rem Koolhaas of OMA. This site-specific wallpaper, Untitled, covers a four-story wall in bright color and geometric pattern. The same year, Hasper created Notas de Luz, a three-dimensional light installation in Buenos Aires, comprised of a screen in the ceiling of a 328-foot high public square. The piece changes with the passing of pedestrians, playing pre-recorded sequences and the music played in the Usina del Arte.
Graciela Hasper’s works are represented in several major collections including Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, New York, New York, USA; The Bruce and Diane Halle Collection, Scottsdale, Arizona, USA; Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires - Fundación Costantini, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Museo de Bellas Artes – Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Bahia Blanca, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Museo Arte Contemporáneo de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Museo Castagnino de Rosario, Argentina; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Madrid, Spain; Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Argentina; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Argentina and Telefonica Argentina, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), Houston, Texas, USA.
2022
Hasper. Antológica, Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes Franklin Rawson (MPBA | FR), San Juan, Argentina
Confluencias, Galería Vasari, Buenos Aires
2021
Sin Título, Galería del Paseo, Punta del Este, Uruguay
2019
Graciela Hasper: Unexpected, Sicardi | Ayers | Bacino, Houston, TX, USA
Intemperie, Fundacion Banco Santander, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2018
Graciela Hasper: Proximities, Dot Fiftyone Gallery, Miami, FL, USA
2016
Sin Título, Galería del Paseo, Punta del Este, Uruguay
2014
Trabajo Reciente, Oscar Cruz Gallery, São Paulo, Brasil
2013
Graciela Hasper: Gramática del Color, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (MAMBA), Argentina
Nudo de Autopista, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (MAMBA), Argentina
2012
Sin Título, Galería Zavaletalab, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2011
Untitled, Sicardi Gallery, Houston, TX, USA
Sin Título, Galería Sur, Punta del Este, Uruguay
2010
Sin Título, Galería Ruth Benzacar, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2007
Untitled, Galería Art-Cade, Marseille, France
2006
Sin Título, Galería Ruth Benzacar, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2004
Sin Título, Galería Ruth Benzacar, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2003
Untitled, Annina Nosei Gallery, New York, NY, USA
2002
Sin Título, Fondo Nacional de las Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Untitled, Locker Plant, Chinati Foundation, Marfa, TX, USA
2001
Geografía, Instituto de Cooperación Iberoamericano, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2000
Untitled, Annina Nosei Gallery, New York, NY, USA
1999
Sin Título, Galería Ruth Benzacar, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Mi Hermano y Yo, Alianza Francesa, Buenos Aires, Argentina
1997
Untitled, Annina Nosei Gallery, New York, NY, USA
1995
Es roja, Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Sin Título, Galería Mun, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Sin Título, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, Argentina
1992
Sin Título, Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas, Buenos Aires, Argentina
1991
Sin Título, Instituto de Cooperación Iberoamericana, Buenos Aires, Argentina
1990
Sin Título, Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Banco Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Argentina
Banco Supervielle, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Bruce and Diane Halle Collection, Scottsdale, AZ, USA
Colección Cesar Gaviria Washington
Colección Francis J. Greenburger, New York, NY, USA
Colección Jennifer Wooster, CA, USA
Colección Laurent Degryse, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Colección Oceana, Key Biscayne, FL, USA
Colleción Eduardo Constantini, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, New York, NY, USA
Deustche Bank, New York, NY, USA
Faena Collection, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Faena Forum, Miami, FL, USA
Jorge Perez Collection, Miami, FL, USA
Municipio de Tigre, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Madrid, Spain
Museo Arte Contemporáneo de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Bahia Blanca, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Museo Castagnino de Rosario, Argentina
Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA), Fundación Costantini, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Argentina
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Argentina
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), TX, USA
Perez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), Miami, FL, USA
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Rice University, Houston, TX, USA
Telefonica Argentina, Buenos Aires, Argentina