Graciela Hasper

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.”

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    
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    
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

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