
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.
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 |
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