| Dates: | born 1937
| | Biography: | (artist biography as of 1999)
1937 Born in Germany, emigrated to
Uruguay.
Lives and works in New York since 1964
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
1992 Cleveland State University Art
Gallery, Ohio
1991 Lehman College Art Gallery,
Bronx, New York
1988 Pavilion of Uruguay, XLIII
Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte, La
Biennale di Venezia, Venice
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
1996 Face a l'Histoire, Centre Georges
Pompidou, Paris
1993 Latin American Artists of the
Twentieth Century, Museum of Modern
Art, New
York
Lateinamerikanische Kunst des XX
Jahrhundert, Kunsthalle, Cologne
1982 Documenta 7, Kassel
FURTHER READING
Luis Camnitzer: Retrospective Exhibition
1966-1990 (exh. cat.), Lehman College,
New
York 1991
Kalenberg, A. Luis Camnitzer: XLIII
Biennale di Venezia (exh. cat.) Museo
Nacional
de Artes Visuales, Montevideo 1988
Lippard, L. Six Years: The
Dematerialization of the Art Object from
1966 to 1972,
Praeger, New York/Washington 1973
(artist biography as of 2004)
Born in Germany, 1937. Emigrated to
Uruguay in 1939. Citizen of Uruguay.
Has lived in USA since 1964
SELECTED EXHBITIONS
2003 Retrospective Exhibition,
Kunsthalle, Kiel, Germany
2002 Documenta 11, Kassel, Germany
2001 The Kitchen, New York, USA
Versiones del Sur, Museo Reina Sofía,
Madrid, Spain
2000 Whitney Biennial, New York, USA
1999 Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary
Art, Liverpool, UK
1997 Bienal de Mercosur, Porto Alegre,
Brazil
1996 Universalis, XXIII Bienal de São
Paulo
Face à l’histoire (1970s and 1980s
sections), Centre Pompidou, Paris,
France
PERMANENT COLLECTIONS
Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Metropolitan Museum, New York.
Whitney Museum, New York.
The Public Library, New York.
Museo de Arte Moderno,
Buenos Aires.
Museo del Grabado,
Buenos Aires.
Museo de Bellas Artes, Santiago de
Chile.
Museo Universitario, Mexico.
Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas.
Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Saão
Paulo.
Museo of Malmö. Museum of Trenton.
Yeshiva University, New York.
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
Biblioteca Communale, Milan.
National Library, Jerusalem.
RCA Corporation.
ARCO Corporation.
Wagstaff Collection, Getty Museum.
Museo de Arte Moderno, Bogotá.
Museo de Arte Moderno, Cartagena.
Museo La Tertulia, Cali. Museum
Wiesbaden.
National Museum of Modern Art,
Baghdad.
Casa de las Américas, Havana.
Blanton Museum, Austin, Texas.
Museum of Skopje.
Centro Wifredo Lam, Havana.
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes,
Havana.
The Jewish Museum, New York.
Museo Nacional de Artes Plasticas,
Montevideo.
Museo del Barrio, New York.
Cabinet of Drawings and Prints of the
Uffizi, Florence, Italy.
Queens Museum, New York. Museum
of Fine Arts, Houston
FURTHER READING
Arte y Enseñanza: La ética del poder,
Casa de América, Madrid, 2000
New Art of Cuba, University of Texas
Press, 1994/2003
Essays in Marcha, Montevideo, Third
Text, London, Art in America, New York,
New Art Examiner, Chicago, Art Nexus,
Bogotá,Brecha, Montevideo, Spiral, New
York, Nacla, New York, Trans, New
York, Lápiz, Madrid, Drawing Papers,
New York
| | | Source: | "Trace, 1st Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art", Festival catalogue | | | Date of source: | 1999 |
|
| | Personal Profile: | Artist's Statement:
Although I have been working on
installations since 1968, it is only since
1983 that I have started focusing on
imprisonment. That year I worked on
torture, particularly on the version
practiced by the Uruguayan dictatorship
during the 70s and early '80s. Through
the use of evocative rather than
descriptive stimuli, I tried to blend the
perceptions of the torturer, of the victim
and of the public with the purpose of
blurring borderlines between their
respective roles.
In 1988, with democracy restored, I was
invited to represent Uruguay at the
Venice Biennale. This time I explored
the parallel between the experience of a
political prisoner and that of an artist.
According to their disposi¬tion, viewers
could interpret the installation in one of
two ways. On the one hand, the pieces
might be seen as works by an artist who
believed himself to be free. He sought
originality, but failed in his quest,
imprisoned by stereo¬types and
aesthetic styles. On the other hand, the
installa¬tion could be compared to the
world of a political prisoner. The pieces,
from this viewpoint, were hallucinations
of freedom. Here too, they failed, since
the author remained
caught forever in his acute awareness of
the cell. The image of the jail as a
metaphor for the artist's self-deception
still preoccupies me and I continue to
explore it. Ultimately we live imprisoned
in our bodies, constrained by the strict
rules that determine our acquisition of
knowledge, and with our imaginations
confined by a web of cultural
conventions. Life in that sense is a jail
and physical prisons no more than
small, uncomfortable illustrations of that
congenital problem. Making art is
scratching traces on the wall to mark the
passing of time.
| | Personal Profile Source: | "Trace, 1st Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art", Festival catalogue | | Personal Profile Source Date: | 1999 | | Gender: | male | | Type: | person |
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