About the Artist
Jack Vanarsky
Jack Vanarsky (1936 - 2009) was born in General Roca, Argentina, a small town in the north of Patagonia, where his family of Jewish Lithuanian and Bielorussian origins had settled. As a teenager, he moved to the capital to attend secondary school at the Colejio Nacional de Buenos Aires, and later studied architecture at the University of Buenos Aires. At the same time, he frequented the fine arts studios of Cecilia Marcovitch, Juan Carlos Castagnino, Antonio Berni and Lino Eneas Spilimbergo, and contributed articles and caricatures to opposition journals. At that time, in Latin America the legacy of Mexican muralism addressed the question of political art, Jack Vanarsky, in his production of drawings and paintings, was closer to an individual expresionism accompanied by a strong social criticism. In 1962, he visited several European countries: Spain, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Finland and Tchekoslovakia, after which he settled in Paris with his partner Cristina Martinez.
In 1965, Vanarsky produced his first mobile sculptures. From 1968 onwards, they are made of lamellae animated by a hidden mechanism, a system which he maintained, with adaptations, for the rest of his future work. He has received several prizes and his works are found in numerous public and private collections.
