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Artwork Description

Fernando Maza created paintings and works on paper with a distinctive style in which different trends in contemporary art converge and fuse abstraction with a language with a strong dreamlike content, very sui generis, without clear influences, just a certain affiliation with surrealism. Beyond his imagination, we would have to look for the roots of his art in the surroundings of the cities in which he lived, especially New York, which, by his own admission, left a strong mark on his visual world. Fernando travelled to New York in 1960 with the intention of staying there for just a few months: he ended up there for 13 years. It was a fruitful period of instruction and work. Around 1962 I traveled to Europe for the first time and upon returning to NY I realized that I was bored with the formal correction of my work. I began to look at the city and the buildings around me, and thus the architectural figures, letters and signs that I saw on the facades of the buildings appeared in my work. Fernando was born in Buenos in 1936. Between 1949 and 1953 he frequented Raúl Podesta's workshop, and since 1957 he dedicated himself exclusively to painting. In 1959 he joined "Los Informalistas", a group of Argentine abstract artists made up of Mario Pucciarelli, Luis Alberto Wells, Alberto Greco, Clorindo Testa, Kenneth Kemble, Silvia Torras, Noemí Di Benedetto, Kasuya Sakai, Olga Lopez, Enrique Barilari and Jorge Roiger. In 1960 he traveled to New York, which was a great shock for him and would later radically influence his work. That same year he received a scholarship from the Pan American Union and in 1971, another from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. In 1965 he obtained honorable mention at the VIII Sao Paulo Biennial. He was invited to the 36th Venice Biennale in 1972. From 1973 to 1977 he lived in London. In this last year he moved to Paris. Maza received the National Painting Prize of Argentina in 1985, won the prestigious Palanza Prize, awarded by the National Academy of Fine Arts, and in 1987 he was awarded the Grand Prize of Honor from the National Hall. Ten years later, the Fortabat Foundation in Paris awarded him the first prize for painting, ex æquo, with the sculptor Jack Vanarsky. Fernando Maza died in Nogent-sur-Marne, a town near Paris, on January 16, 2017, at the age of 79.