Sarah Grilo

SARAH GRILO (Buenos Aires, 1917 - Madrid, 2007)
Untitled, c- 1958-1960.
Oil on paper.
Attached certificate of authenticity issued by the artist.
Provenance: Gallery Jorge Mara- La Ruche (Argentina)
Measurements: 52 x 37 cm; 63 x 79 cm (frame).
This work corresponds to his period of lyrical abstraction in the late 1950s and early 1960s, just before his move to New York. At this stage, his technique moved away from rigid geometrism to embrace a more intimate palette, rich textures and a control of color on dark backgrounds. The painting is articulated as a field of tension between order and disruption. Far from illustrating literal content, the figures and color generate a symbolic confrontation between drive and norm. Sarah Grillo's New York period is one of the most significant and transformative moments of her artistic career. Her stay in New York coincided with a period of extraordinary cultural effervescence, marked by the consolidation of abstract expressionism, the rise of minimalism, the development of conceptual art and the irruption of new forms of visual experimentation. In this context, Grillo developed a profoundly personal pictorial language that, while dialoguing with the international trends of the time, always maintained a poetic sensibility and his own identity linked to his Latin American roots. His painting evolved towards increasingly open and atmospheric compositions, characterized by the superimposition of signs, linear structures and chromatic stains of great subtlety. In many of her works from this period, the artist incorporated visual references from the New York urban landscape: signs, street graphics, illuminated signs and architectural rhythms that she transformed into an abstract vocabulary charged with lyrical resonance.

Sarah Grilo was a key figure in international post-war abstraction. Initially trained with Vicente Puig, in 1952 she joined the Group of Modern Artists of Argentina, together with artists such as Tomás Maldonado and Enio Iommi, participating in exhibitions in key institutions in America and Europe and in the 1956 Venice Biennale. After obtaining a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1961, he settled in New York, where his work evolved from post-cubist figuration towards a gestural abstraction enriched by the use of language and sign. He later lived in southern Spain, Paris and Madrid, where he settled definitively in 1985. His work is part of important international collections and has been revisited in recent exhibitions at MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitechapel Gallery, consolidating his place as a singular and anticipatory voice in 20th century abstract art.