Martha Boto

MARTHA BOTO
[1925 - 2004, Argentina / France]

Born in Buenos Aires, Martha Boto was drawn to art as a young child, and her family supported her studies. Between the end of the 1930s and the beginning of the 1940s, she joined the first abstract art movements in Buenos Aires, including the Asociación Arte Nuevo. In 1944, she attended La Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes Ernesto de la Cárcova, where she took classes in drawing and painting.

In the 1950s, Boto showed her work at several Buenos Aires galleries, including Van Riel Galería and Galería Galatea. She began to create structures and transparent mobiles in Plexiglas, with colored water, perhaps in dialogue with works being made around the same time by Gyula Kosice. In 1956, she (along with Gregorio Vardanega) co-founded the group Agrupación de "Arte no Figurativo Argentino."

In 1959, Boto and Vardanega moved to Paris, and she began a new phase of her career. In 1960, she participated in the first La Biennale Paris and began to explore movement in sculpture. She developed her kinetic works during this time, adding a motor or colored lights to her sculptural practice and focusing upon the effects of movement, illumination, and color; of special interest was the ability to modify, absorb, and reflect light. To this end, she also began experimenting with different industrial materials, including aluminum and stainless steel. In 1961, she showed her works for the first time at the Galerie Denise René, in the group exhibition Art abstrait constructif international.  Art critics of the time described her works in relation to the genre of science fiction and with the seeming magic of space travel. Her first solo exhibition at Galerie Denise René was in 1969.

2022
MOUVEMENT | Hommage à Denise René, Centre d’art contemporain Bonisson, Rognes, Aix-en-Provence, France 
Light & Darkness, Power Collection, Chau Chak Wing Museum, The University of Sydney, Camperdown, Australia
Tercer ojo, Colección Costantini en Malba, Transformar el dispositivo, Museo de Arte Latinoamerica de Buenos Aires (MALBA), Argentina

2020
Color into Light, Connecting Currents: Contemporary Art at the Fine Arts Museum Houston in the inaugural installation of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Building, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, (MFAH), TX, USA

2017
An Open Mind, Maddox Arts, Mayfair, London, UK
Kinesthesia: Latin American Kinetic Art, 1954–1969, Palm Springs Art Museum, CA, USA

2016
Let's move, Patinoire Royale, Brussels, Belgium

2015
Un tournant | A turning point: Antonio Asis, Martha Boto, Horacio García Rossi, Hugo De Marziani, Gregorio Vardanega, Sicardi Gallery, Houston, TX, USA
60 ans de Mouvement, 1ères Générations, Galerie Denise René, Paris, France

2013
Sculptrices, Villa Datris, Isle-sur-Sorgue, France
Les Sud américains, Galerie Denise René, Paris, France
Hommage à Denise René, Espace Expression, Miami, FL, USA

2012
Constructed Dialogues: Concrete, Geometric, and Kinetic Art from the Latin American Art Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), TX, USA
Real/Virtual, Arte Cinético Argentino de los Años Sesenta, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Réflexion forme lumière, Galerie Denise René, Paris, France

2009
North Looks South: Building the Latin American Art Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), TX, USA

2007
Lo[s] Cinetico[s], Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain

2006
Contact: Le cyber-cosmos de Boto et Vardanega, Sicardi Gallery, Houston, TX, USA
Light and Shadow, Galerie von Bartha, Basel, Switzerland
Formal Exchange, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, USA and Latin America

Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, USA

Centro de Artes Visuales del Instituto Torcuato di Tella, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Paris, France

Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, Australia

Los Angeles County Museum of Art collection (LACMA), CA, USA

Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI, USA

Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville, Paris, France

Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France