Oscar Bony

Oscar Bony was born in June 1941, in the city of Posadas, province of Misiones, Argentina. At the age of 17, he began to study painting with a hometown professor until traveling to Buenos Aires in 1959 to attend the Escuela Preparatoria de Bellas Artes Manuel Belgrano on a scholarship. However, he always considered himself a self-taught artist. Between 1959 and 1963 he attended classes at the studios of Demetrio Urruchúa and Juan Carlos Castagnino, while working as an assistant for Antonio Berni. His imagery during this initial phase reveals a certain expressive realism, along the lines of the new figuration movement. In 1964, his Anatomías series allowed him to enter the contemporary art circuit, where he was invited to participate in the Premio de Honor Ver y Estimar along with holding his first solo exhibition in one of the most important galleries in Buenos Aires, the Galería Rubbers. He formed part of the group of artists who frequented the Bar Moderno, where he befriended Rubén Santantonín, Pablo Suárez, Emilio Renart, and Ricardo Carreira.
From 1965 to 1968, his experiences with Pop Art, Minimalism, Conceptual Art, and objects positioned him amongst the most radical avant-garde movements then taking place in alternative galleries, like the previously mentioned Premio de Honor Ver y Estimar and also the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella. Bony exhibited installations, short films, objects, primary structures, and a sound piece. In May 1968, he hired a working-class family, exhibiting them “live” on a museum plinth for the Experiencias ’68 show at Instituto Di Tella. The reaction from the critic, the public, and the official art world was strong and grew stronger, as did divisions within the avant-garde movement itself. Exacerbated by tensions between art and politics, and the social, economic, and political crises of the time, the divisions became increasingly extreme and the fronts on which these struggles were being waged multiplied. Finally, in response to a court order to close down Roberto Plate’s piece in the show, the rest of the show´s artists decided to destroy their works and throw the remains onto Florida Street as a way of publicly denouncing the infringing act of censorship. It was the end of an era as Bony and several of his colleagues left their activity in the art field.
For almost six years, from 1968 onward, Bony worked as a photographer in the music industry. It was just at the time when the Argentine rock music scene was becoming a popular phenomenon, gaining access to mass communications media such as television, a product consumed by a young and rapidly expanding audience. Record companies had incorporated sales and publicity methods from other markets. Each album release was linked to concerts, festivals, and promotional campaigns. The albums included extensive liner notes, song lyrics, and photographs from special photo shoots and posters for the most popular icons. Each band’s profile was planned by designing wardrobes, hairstyles, and scenographies for their photo sessions and presentations, while various specialty magazines, film, radio, and television stations served as distributors. Bony played an active part in the rock scene and became one of the creators of its visual imagery during the time that he worked with the RCA record label. A certain Bony style became identifiable and distinguishable. The public image of rock bands such as Los Gatos, La Joven Guardia, Manal and Almendra was shaped through the lenses of his camera.
In 1974, Bony returned to the “high art” world, to his “professional” career. He produced paintings and photographs, had a few exhibitions, and finally made the decision he had considered but postponed for years: to leave the country and go into exile. He resided in Milan from 1977 until 1988, maintaining a constant presence in the Italian art scene for ten years, including shows in Spain, Ireland, France, and trips to the United States, and occasional contact with Buenos Aires. Once again, Bony was making installations, objects, montages, interventions, paintings, and mixed media pieces. He was invited to participate in the Milan Triennial and the Venice Biennial, where he began to flirt with styles like the trans avantgarde. And in February 1986 he opened two simultaneous solo shows in two of Milan’s most important galleries, Galleria Zeus Arte and Galleria Fac-Simile.
In 1988 Bony returned to Argentina. He explored, he worked; he waited patiently.
By 1993 he gained recognition once again with his De memoria show. Bony was yet another survivor of the 60s who dazzled younger artists, was respected by critics, and was intensely active. His 1994 golden- framed glasses, paper and lead pieces with bullet holes, together with his first photographs with glass and gunshots from 1996 on, upheld his eccentricity, his intensity, his rigour, his nomadic nature and magical gift for being one and many an artist at a time. He created installations and performances, such as Il limite, presented un-invited at the XLVI Biennale di Venezia; he handed out flyers, made declarations, and held exhibitions. In 1997 he was invited to participate in the 6ª Bienal de La Habana. El individuo y su memoria, in the I Bienal de Artes Visuais do Mercosul in Puerto Alegre, and the 5th International Istanbul Biennal. He said farewell to the century with considerable presence in the specialized press, providing a number of journalistic notes and talks thanks to the impact achieved with the series of “las baleadas” with El triunfo de la muerte exhibition presented at Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (MNBA)in 1998.
La familia obrera from 1968, was reconstructed in Buenos Aires, New York, Madrid, and Ljubljana, and was widely recognized by the international contemporary art history community. Bony died in April of 2002 in Buenos Aires while still in full activity.
With the retrospective titled Oscar Bony. El Mago. Obras 1965-2001, which took place at the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (Malba) in 2007; curated by chief curator Marcelo Pacheco, a phase of a decade of privileged circulation and diffusion of Bony’s art opened in the regional as well as the international world: Bony’s work participated in large exhibitions dedicated to the revisionism of conceptual art and minimalism and the early days of contemporary art in the United States and Europe; At the same time, his position was established even more by high-profile purchases by the Museum of Modern Art of New York (MoMA), the Kunsthaus in Zürich, and the Bengolea and Costantini collections in Buenos Aires.
In 2010 La familia obrera (1968/1999) participated in the 29th Biennale in São Paulo and one year later in Radical Shift, Political and Social Upheaval in Argentinean Art since the 1960s at the Museum Morsbroich (Germany), where the installation 60 Square Meters and Its Information (1967) also appeared. In 2014, for the exhibition Other Primary Structures at the Jewish Museum in New York, the Museum of Latin American Art in Buenos Aires (MALBA) lent Bony’s piece Sinusoide (1967) from their collection.
In 2015 La familia obrera (1968/1999) was shown in Mensajes de una nueva América. The Mercosur’s 10th Biennale (Puerto Alegre, Brazil); and in The Great Mother, Women, Maternity, and Power in Art and Visual Culture, 1900-2015, at the Palazzo Reale (Milan). During the same year, both La familia obrera (1968/1999) and 60 Square Meters and Its Information (1967) joined the permanent collection at MoMA Ney York, where each participated in Transmissions: Art in Eastern Europe and Latin America, 1960-1980.
In 2016 La familia obrera (1968/1999) took part in the Manifesta 11, The European Biennale of Contemporary Art, What People Do for Money (Zürich), and in 2017 Bony participated in the exhibition Naturaleza: refugio y recurso del hombre at the Centro Cultural Kirchner (Buenos Aires) with some pieces from his 1990s series of photographs shot at with a 9 mm gun: Naturaleza muerta (1996), Pantano (1998) and an intervened photograph Amazónico (1997). During that same year La familia obrera (1968/1999) and the photo performance sequence with Pablo Suarez (C. 1964) took part in A Tale of Two Worlds – A Dialogue between the MMK Collection and the History of Experimental Latin American Art, in Frankfurt and later in The Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires (MAMBA). In 2017 La familia obrera (1968/199) participates in Extra Bodies – The Use of the «Other Body» in Contemporary Art at the Migros Museum of Contemporary Art (Zürich).
In 2020 Oscar Bony Estate was officially formed and the conditioning of its own space began. In the month of July 2021, a series of unpublished photographs from mid-seventies is presented with research and curatorship by Marcelo Pacheco in waldengallery titled Eróticas 70´s, one of the complete series of the edition of almost 350 photographs along with La familia obrera (1968/1999) enters Institute for Studies on Latin America´s (ISLAA) collection.
In May 2023, the Homenajes Urbanos art collective took several streets of San Telmo neighbourhood by surprise with replicating posters of the artwork from 1967 Ejercicio semántico o Erótico.