Marta Minujín

Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1943

            Since her first interventions in the 1960s to the present, Marta Minujín’s work has been synonymous with avant-garde and experimentation in contemporary Argentine art. Trained at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes, Minujín became known for her performances, happenings, and monumental installations that challenged the artistic conventions of her time. Her innovative approach led to international recognition, positioning her alongside figures such as Yves Klein and Allan Kaprow in the 1998 exhibition Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

            Throughout her prolific career, Minujín has created iconic works that invite the viewer to participate and reflect. From La Menesunda (1965), an immersive environment that plunged the public into a series of sensory experiences, to El Partenón de libros (1983), a monumental structure built with books banned during the Argentine dictatorship, her work has explored themes such as freedom, censorship, and mass culture.

            In the mid-1960s, Minujín began working with mattresses as the central material in her works, marking a shift in her exploration of the ephemeral and the soft, in contrast to the solidity of traditional sculpture. The artist collected old, used mattresses from hospitals and prisons, objects filled with anonymous stories, wear, and memory. These items, bearing the imprints of the bodies that had rested upon them, were recontextualized into pieces that questioned the materiality of art and its social function. In La destrucción (1963), performed in Paris, Minujín invited artists and spectators to dismantle and burn her mattress sculptures, emphasizing the transient nature of art and its potential for constant renewal. In El Batacazo (1964), the mattresses were used as pictorial surfaces that broke with the two-dimensionality of the canvas, incorporating the wear and textures of everyday use as part of the work. Through these works, Minujín embodied her concept of art that is not only observed but physically experienced, deconstructed, and reconstructed in a continuous cycle.

            During the 2020 pandemic, Minujín revisited the iconography of mattresses in a new series of collages, made with strips of mattress hand-glued onto paper. These works, created in her studio during lockdown, reflected introspection and resistance to the immobility imposed by the health crisis. The repetitive manual gesture of cutting and gluing evoked the fragility and isolation of the moment, transforming an object associated with rest into a metaphor for uncertainty, resilience, and creativity in times of crisis. Through this series, Minujín reaffirmed her ability to reinvent herself and turn art into a space for resistance and transformation, even in the most adverse times.

            Her work is characterized by a constant search for interaction with the public, blurring the boundaries between art and everyday life. With boundless energy and bold vision, Marta Minujín remains a central figure in the art world, inspiring new generations with her free spirit and commitment to innovation.