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Biography

GRACIELA HASPER  (b. 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.

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Selected Solo Exhibitions

2019

Intemperie, Fundación Banco Santander, Buenos Aires, Argentina

2018

Graciela Hasper: Proximities, Dot Fiftyone Gallery, Miami, FL, USA

2014

Trabajo Reciente, Oscar Cruz Gallery, São Paulo, Brasil

2013

Graciela Hasper: Gramática del Color, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (MAMBA), Buenos Aires, Argentina 

2012

Galería Zavaletalab, Buenos Aires, Argentina

2011

Sicardi Gallery, Houston, TX, USA 

 

Galería Sur, Punta del Este, Uruguay 

2010

Galería Ruth Benzacar, Buenos Aires, Argentina

2007

Galería Art-Cade, Marseille, France

2006

Galería Ruth Benzacar, Buenos Aires, Argentina

2004

Galería Ruth Benzacar, Buenos Aires, Argentina

2003

Annina Nosei Gallery, New York, NY, USA

2002

Fondo Nacional de las Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina

 

Locker Plant, Chinati Foundation, Marfa, TX, USA

 

2001

Geografía, Instituto de Cooperación Iberoamericano, Buenos Aires, Argentina

2000

Annina Nosei Gallery, New York, NY, USA

1999

Galería Ruth Benzacar, Buenos Aires, Argentina

 

Mi Hermano y Yo, Alianza Francesa, Buenos Aires, Argentina

1997

Annina Nosei Gallery, New York, NY, USA

1995

Es roja, Centro Cultural RicardoRojas, Buenos Aires, Argentina

     

Galería Mun, Buenos Aires, Argentina

 

Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, Argentina

1992

Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas, Buenos Aires, Argentina

1991

Instituto de Cooperación Iberoamericana, Buenos Aires, Argentina

1990

Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina

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Selected Public Collections

Banco Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Argentina

Banco Supervielle, Buenos Aires, Argentina

The 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 Eduardo Costantini, 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

Museo Arte Contemporáneo de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Museo Castagnino de Rosario, Argentina

Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Madrid, Spain

Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires - Fundación Costantini, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Argentina

Museo de Bellas Artes – Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Bahia Blanca, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Argentina

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

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, USA

Telefonica Argentina, Buenos Aires, Argentina