Painting by Antonio Segui, 2009

Born in Córdoba, Argentina in 1934, Antonio Seguí currently lives and works in Paris. He studied at the San Fernando Academy in Madrid, Spain as well as the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France. His first solo exhibition was in Argentina at age 23. Antonio Seguí is one of the most internationally renowned Argentinian artists. He began his artistic endeavors at a young age after leaving Argentina to travel the world and study art. His journeys through Latin America, Europe and Africa exposed him to new ideas and encouraged his culturally diverse approach to art. Influenced by artists like Fernand Leger and Diego Rivera, Seguí’s work is generally satirical, critiquing society and human nature. In a pre-computer age, the artist created a vocabulary that is now being explored by a new generation of artists through comics and Manga, yet his visual language and social commentaries remain poignant, both symbolically and literally. Throughout his career, Seguí has developed a fascination for urban life, creating in his work the idea of the “everyman.” The city movement, the fast pace at which life happens and the people who live in these urban spaces are some of the elements that constitute the world depicted in his paintings. It is a prototypical realm inhabited by speedy automatons that take immutable routes leading nowhere. Up close, each figure is an individual, walking down dark alleys, pointing, waving and emerging from potholes. But from a distance, the individuals morph into complex patterns swallowed up in a labyrinth of buildings and cookie-cutter trees. Utilizing cubist techniques, Seguí’s repeated elements give shape to the cities causing planes to vibrate between line and color. Numerous perspectives unfold with each vibration and reflect the many angles of life of the urban man. Always in action, the little figures trample, tip-toe, dodge and advance through Seguí’s imaginary metropolis of life. His work is representated on a series of narratives and criticisms reflected on paintings that show many little men, dressed in 20's style clothes. He uses his own recourse based on comic strip characters, texts, arrows and various signs, juxtaposed onto the figures that resemble comic strip style language. Seguí’s work is collected and exhibited worldwide in places such as the MoMA, New York; Art Museum of the Americas, Washington, D.C.; Frissiras Museum, Athens, Greece; Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Argentina; Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Austria; Museum of Modern Art Dubrovnik, Croatia; and Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico. The Musée National d´Art Moderne, Paris organized a retrospective of his works on paper in 2005. A monograph on the artist by Daniel Abadie was published in 2010 by Hazan.