Pettoruti

Often conceived as one of the precursors to Modernism, Argentine painter Emilio Pettoruti's work regularly refers to the tenets of Cubism, Futurism and abstract painting. Yet, in spite of his critical importance, Pettoruti remains a comparatively under-studied figure within the development of modern art in Argentina and throughout Latin America. Like a number of his Argentine, Brazilian, Uruguayan, Mexican and Cuban contemporaries, he participated in many of the fundamental avant-garde movements in Europe, but strongly opposed the impressionist characteristics and the prevailing regionalism in Buenos Aires of the early 1900s. Through their works, Pettoruti and his fellow artists created methods of understanding and acceptance of the new modes of vision in the cities from which these idea had originated. Artist Luis Felipe Noa defined Pettoruti as a classicist of Modernism who was obsessed by order and harmony, and Pettoruti himself once said that, for him, painting was only about color and construction. This extensive monograph examines Pettoruti's significant visual output through many color plates, a chronology and several texts that present the reader with the formal aspects of his oeuvre--paintings, drawings, collages and mosaics--while they place these works in a broader international context.