1. Frida Kahlo. Self-Portrait with Monkey and Parrot, 1942
Frida Kahlo portrays herself alongside two of her animals, a monkey and a parrot, surrounded by vegetation. Her clothing and hairstyle allude to Mexican traditions and form part of a carefully constructed personal image, where identity, daily life, and painting intertwine.
Demonstration (1934) by Antonio BerniMALBA – Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires
2. Antonio Berni. Demonstration, 1934
In a context of economic crisis and intense social conflict, Berni made the reality of workers and the unemployed the protagonists of his paintings. With works like this, he promoted New Realism, a movement that sought to connect art with the problems of its time.
Details
The crowd is made up of very different faces. Some express worry or sadness; others, anger and rebellion. Instead of representing an anonymous mass, Berni gives identity to his protagonists and brings together different emotions within the same protest.
3. Tarsila do Amaral. Abaporu, 1928
This fantastical figure gave rise to the Anthropophagic movement, a central part of Brazilian modernism: taking influences from other cultures, transforming them, and creating something of its own. The work thus became a key image for understanding Brazil's cultural identity.
4. Emilio Pettoruti. The Song of the People, 1927
A trio of street musicians stars in this scene of modern urban life. Pettoruti combines the geometric forms he encountered in Europe with a popular Buenos Aires theme, creating a painting that participates in new international trends without abandoning its context.
5. Diego Rivera. Portrait of Ramón Gómez de la Serna, 1915
Rivera constructs the writer's portrait in the Cubist style, fragmenting the figure into planes, shapes, and intense colors. Among them appear gestures and objects that speak of his personality and his profession: writing, smoking, collecting, and creating.
6. Joaquín Torres. Universal Symmetrical Composition, 1915
Torres García combines abstraction and recognizable figures within an ordered and symmetrical structure. For the artist, these elements could form a universal language capable of bringing together different dimensions of human experience, nature, and the world.
7. Fernando Botero. The Widower, 1968
Botero's characteristically exaggerated figures populate a family scene that blends sadness and humor. The artist transforms a painful theme—the absence of the mother—into an image where grief coexists with irony regarding family roles.
Women with Fruits (1932) by Emiliano Di CavalcantiMALBA – Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires
8. Emiliano Di Cavalcanti. Women with Fruit, 1932
Di Cavalcanti sought to represent Brazil through its people, customs, and popular culture. The monumental figures, the colors, and the exuberance of the scene form part of a unique language, with which he became a central figure of Brazilian modernism.
9. Alice Rahon. Self-Portrait, 1951
Before dedicating herself to painting, Alice Rahon was a poet and part of the Surrealist movement in France. Upon settling in Mexico, her contact with pre-Columbian and popular cultures transformed her work and led her to explore new ways of uniting art, imagination, and spirituality.
Details
Rahon was interested in rituals, symbols, and forms of expression that existed before the arrival of Europeans in America. In them, she found a way of thinking about art beyond representing the visible, as a path to approaching the imagination and the spiritual.
George Gershwin, an American in Paris (1929) by Miguel CovarrubiasMALBA – Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires
10. Miguel Covarrubias. George Gershwin..., 1929
Covarrubias brings George Gershwin's music and his experience of Paris to his paintings. With humor and a style close to caricature, he surrounds the composer with cafés, characters, and symbols of the city to convey its rhythm and movement.
11. Remedios Varo. Harmony (Suggestive Self-Portrait), 1956
Varo imagined worlds where art, science, magic, and nature could form part of a single understanding. In this work, music serves as a key to unlocking that hidden order and, in the artist's words, finding "the invisible thread that connects all things."
Detail
A musical staff spans the room as if music occupied a real space. The figure strings crystals, leaves, flowers, and papers onto it, combining very different elements in a single composition. The search for harmony thus becomes a concrete and mysterious task.
12. Wifredo Lam. The Green Morning, 1943
Lam combined resources from the European avant-garde with elements of Afro-Cuban culture to create his own unique language. The scene evokes a Santería ceremony on a sugarcane plantation, where bodies, spirits, and nature seem to transform into one another.
13. Antonio Berni. The Great Temptation, 1962
Berni created Ramona Montiel to explore desire, consumerism, and the inequalities of urban life. His world blends the Buenos Aires slums with images from film, advertising, and mass culture, constructing a critical perspective laden with irony.
Detail
Sheet metal, cardboard, fabrics, coins, feathers, and other real objects accumulate on the surface. Berni replaces some of the traditional paint with found and discarded materials, making Ramona's world also constructed from the city's remnants.
14. Rafael Barradas. Canaletas Kiosk, 1918
Barradas made modern city life one of the central themes of his painting. In this urban scene, people, signs, and architecture overlap in a fragmented rhythm that seeks to convey the movement and energy of the street.
15. María Martins. The Impossible, 1945
Martins imagines two figures drawn to each other but unable to unite. Their bodies transform into hybrid forms, part human, part animal, and part plant. The sculpture converts the desire and the impossibility of the encounter into a physical tension.
By His Cross He Swears (1923) by Alejandro Xul SolarMALBA – Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires
16. Xul Solar. By His Cross He Swears, 1924
Xul Solar constructs an enigmatic scene where religion, astrology, and personal symbols coexist. Instead of following a clear narrative, he combines images and words to create his own universe, open to different interpretations.
17. Leonora Carrington. Dagobert's Distractions, 1945
Carrington constructs a fantastical scene where the everyday coexists with impossible creatures and situations. As in much of her work, the visible world seems to be merely a gateway to another universe, permeated by magic, dreams, and transformation.
Detail
The scene brings together multiple actions and small figures that seem to follow their own rules. Instead of explaining what is happening, Carrington leaves clues and enigmas. Each detail expands a narrative that remains open and transforms the painting into a world to be explored.
18. Frida Kahlo. Diego and I, 1949
Diego Rivera's face appears on Kahlo's forehead like a third eye. The image transforms the self-portrait into a scene of intense emotion, where the artist's identity seems intertwined with the complex relationship she had with her husband.
19. Gyula Kosice. Röyi No. 2, 1944
Kosice created a sculpture that doesn't have a single form. Its eight articulated wooden pieces can be moved and combined in different positions. The work thus incorporates play and transformation, breaking with the traditional idea of a fixed sculpture.
20. Diego Rivera. Dance in Tehuantepec, 1928
Rivera depicts a popular celebration in Tehuantepec, a region in southern Mexico whose culture sparked great interest among the artists of his time. The traditional dance and clothing become a monumental image of Mexican cultural identity.
21. Pedro Figari. Candombe, 1921
Figari revives a celebration of Afro-descendant culture from the Río de la Plata region. Dance, music, and collective gatherings allow him to construct an image of memory and popular traditions, central themes in his painting.
22. Candido Portinari. Feast of Saint John, 1936-1939
A rural community prepares to celebrate the Feast of Saint John, a popular Brazilian tradition. Portinari brings together work, landscape, and celebration in a scene featuring the people who live in the countryside, their houses sprawling across the hillside.
23. Jorge de la Vega. Puzzle, 1969
The artwork consists of 17 panels that can be combined in different ways to create a continuous image. Like a puzzle without a single solution, the pieces can be rearranged to create new configurations.
24. Lygia Clark. Untitled, from the series “Bichos”, 1960
Clark abandoned the idea of sculpture as a fixed form and created objects capable of transformation. Her Bichos are made of articulated metal plates: each movement modifies their shape and proposes a more active relationship between artwork, space, and body.
25. Remedios Varo. Sympathy (The Cat's Rage), 1955
A woman pets her cat, and this everyday gesture unleashes a fantastical phenomenon. Varo transforms the relationship between them into a current of energy that connects them, in a world where the domestic and the supernatural coexist naturally.
Meta-scheme (1958) by Hélio OiticicaMALBA – Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires
Twenty-five years after its opening, the Malba Collection continues to grow and create new dialogues between artists, eras, and ways of imagining Latin America. Learn more at the museum's profile.
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