Luis Felipe Noé

Luis Felipe Noé (26 May 1933 – 9 April 2025) was an Argentine artist, writer, intellectual, and teacher. He was known in his home country as Yuyo. In 1961 he formed the group Otra Figuración (Another Figuration) with three other Argentine artists. Their eponymous exhibition and subsequent work greatly influenced the Neofiguration (Neo-figuration/New figuration) movement. After the group disbanded, Noé relocated to New York City, where he created and exhibited assemblages which stretched the boundaries of the canvas.

In 1965 he published his groundbreaking theoretical work, Antiestética. He then took a ten-year hiatus from painting and upon return to Buenos Aires opened a bar, taught, wrote and created installations with mirrors. His painting comeback coincided with the start of Argentina's last military dictatorship (1976-1983), and in 1976 Noé migrated to Paris to escape the dictatorship's widespread persecution and State-sponsored terrorism. In France he continued to experiment, both with canvas re-texturing and the drawing process. His later paintings move away from the figure and focus on elements of landscape.

Noé lived and worked in Buenos Aires, New-York and Paris. His son, Gaspar Noé, is a Franco-Argentine filmmaker. His daughter, Paula, is a painter. He died in Buenos Aires on 9 April 2025, at the age of 91.

Education Luis Felipe Noé studied painting with Horacio Butler from 1950 to 1952 but was "essentially considered self-taught." He also studied law at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and wrote art reviews for various newspapers prior to his first exhibit in 1959 at the Galeria Witcomb.

Career Otra Figuración (1960−1965) Painting In 1960 the artists of Otra Figuración began to live and work together in an apartment building that doubled as a studio in Carlos Pellegrini Street in Buenos Aires. The collective included Rómulo Macció, Ernesto Deira, Jorge de la Vega, Luis Felipe Noé and for a short while, Antonio Seguí who exhibited briefly with the group but is not generally considered a member of Otra Figuración since his style quickly diverged. work that emerged from the group's first exhibition at the Galeria Peuser in 1961, also titled Otra Figuración "reflected a nation whose history and everyday life were so marked by violent occurrences."

His two seminal paintings from this period are Introduccion a la esperanza (Introduction to Hope) and Cerrado por brujería (Closed for Sorcery), both from 1963. Esperanza won the prestigious Premio Palanza given by the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella in 1963. The painting depicts an amorphous, riotous mass of open-mouthed figures proffering signs that read "Champion, do not leave us," and "Vote for blind force," while additional signs set on plywood stems sprout from the top of the canvas and display portraits of political candidates. He also published Antiestética in 1965, a text explicating his theories on chaos, "the purpose of anti-aesthetics today is to split the concept of unity."

The paintings in the show were prefigured by his 1962 work, Mambo, a deconstructed painting that featured the front and back of the work, an "inverted painting...hinting at another side of painting...abandoning neo-figurative painting." Strikes, riots and economic collapse followed. The chaotic situation turned dire in 1974 when Isabel Perón took power and street fighting between right-wing death squads and guerillas surged. Bombings and atrocities became routine; riots were used as an excuse for military brutality and takeover. The coup in 1976 resulted in an estimated 9,000-30,000 "disappeared." He also began painting expressive landscapes that reflected both internal and external turbulence, such as The Storm in 1982.

He experimented further with drawing technique in Paris, creating a "progressive, narrative transformation of the original image" He doesn't demonize chaos but acknowledges and accepts the reality of its inescapable existence. The group's art reflects the political instability and uncertainty of life in Buenos Aires and also, in a larger sense, an awareness of the precarious situation of all human beings living in the incoherent modern world. Noé proposed that in such a world, chaos itself must become an organizing principle. Noé embraces both political and human chaos in his work, fearlessly entering the eye of the storm.

Influences Informalism was the predominant movement in Argentina at the time, and Noé's influences were the painters Sarah Grilo and José Antonio Fernández-Muro. Other acknowledged Argentine influences on both Noé and his fellow-artists who later comprised Otra Figuración, were the politically oriented neo-figurist Antonio Berni and the Boa group. The Europeans collectively known as Cobra, as well as Antonio Saura, Francis Bacon, Willem de Kooning and Jean Dubuffet may also have inspired the artists of Otra Figuración and are often referred to as comparable contemporaries in certain respects (de Kooning's brushwork for instance), although they obviously differ in others.

Awards and honours Noé was honored with a retrospective in 1995/1996 at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires and the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.

In 2002 Konex Foundation from Argentina, granted him the Diamond Konex Award for Visual Arts as the most important artist in the last decade in his country. In 2003, he collaborated with Nahuel Rando on the graphic novel, Las aventuras de Recontrapoder, re-imagining his anti-hero for a new generation.

Selected artworks Convocatoria a la barbarie (Summoning to a Barbarism) From the Federal series, 1961 Mixed media on canvas 58 ¼ X 87 ¾ (148 x 223 cm) Private collection, Buenos Aires

La anarquía del año XX, 1961 Oil on canvas 115 x 229 cm Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires

Sin titulo (Untitled), 1962 Ink on paper 11 ½ x 15 1/8 (29.5 x 38.5 cm) Collection Marcos Curi, Buenos Aires

Mambo, 1962 Mixed media on canvas and wood 98 3/8 x 87 ¾ (148 x 223 cm) Luis Felipe Noé, Buenos Aires

Introducción a la esperanza (Introduction to Hope), 1963 Oil on canvas: nine panels, overall approximately: 68 ¾ x 7 5/8 (205 x 215 cm) Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires

Cerrado por brujería (Closed for Sorcery), 1963 Oil and collage on canvas, 78 ½ x 98 ¼ (199.6 x 249.7 cm) Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art (formerly Archer M Huntington Art Gallery), The University of Texas at Austin

Algún día de estos (One of These Days), 1963 Mixed media on canvas 70 7/8 X 1181/8 (180 x 300 cm) Private collection, Buenos Aires

Nuestro Señor de cada día (Our Lord of Everyday Use), 1964 Mixed media 98 3/8 x 78 ¾ (250 x 200 cm) Private collection, Buenos Aires

That is Life, 1965 Collage with India ink and colored pencils, 13 7/8 x 16 13/16 Collection Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery

Balance. (fragment). Oil assemblage, 1964–65 Luis Noé papers, Buenos Aires.

Three doors. Oil on doors, 79 X 29, 79 X 30, 79 X 20, 1964 Luis Noé papers, Buenos Aires.

One Passion and Four Transformations, 1982 India ink and photocopy on paper 5 panels, one frame 17 6/8 x 58 3/8 (45 x 148 cm) Collection the artist

Tempestad (The Storm), 1982 En la Marana, 1986 Acrylic on Canvas 200 x 250 cm Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires

Tormenta de la Pampa (Storm of the Pampas), 1991 Tribute to a passage written by Sarmiento (Diptico) Mixed media on canvas 215 x 250 cm Collection Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat

Ominoso, 1997 Mixed media on canvas 79 X 98

Significant exhibitions Noé had more than 40 one-man exhibitions by the mid-1980s and also participated in numerous group shows. A few of the most notable are listed below.

One-man exhibitions 1959 Galeria Witcomb, Buenos Aires (his debut) 1965 Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires 1966 Galeria Bonino, New York 1987 Retrospective at the Museo de Artes Plasticas Eduardo Sivori, Buenos Aires 1995 Retrospective at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires 1996 Retrospective at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City 1997 Centro Cultural Borges, Buenos Aires

Group exhibitions: Deira, Macció, de la Vega, Noé 1961 Otra Figuración, Galeria Peuser, Buenos Aires (Otra Figuración debut) 1962 Esto (drawings), Galeria Lirolay & Galeria Bonino, Buenos Aires 1963 Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires 1965 Galeria Bonino, Buenos Aires

International group exhibitions 1964 Guggenheim International Award, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NYC 1964 New Art of Argentina, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis 1965 The Emergent Decade: Latin American Painters and Paintings in the 1960s, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NYC

Competition exhibition in Argentina 1963 Premio Nacional, Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires (awarded the Premio Palanza)

Writings Noé, Luis Felipe. Antiestética. Buenos Aires: Van Riel, 165 and De la Flor, 1988. Noé, Luis Felipe. Una Sociedad Colonial Avanzada. Buenos Aires: De la Flor, 1971 Noé, Luis Felipe. Recontrapoder. Buenos Aires: De la Flor, 1974. Noé, Luis Felipe. A Oriente por Occidente. Bogota: Dos Graficos, 1992. Noé, Luis Felipe. El Otro, la Otra y la Otredad. Buenos Aires: IMPSAT, 1994 Noé, Luis Felipe and Rando, Nahuel. Las aventuras de Recontrapoder. Buenos Aires: De la Flor, 2003. (Graphic novel Noé, Luis Felipe. Asumir El Caos. Buenos Aires: El Cuenco De Plata, 2024.