Buenos Aires
Art

Buenos Aires has a thriving arts culture, with "a huge inventory of museums, ranging from obscure to world-class." The barrios of Palermo and Recoleta are the city's traditional bastions in the diffusion of art, although in recent years there has been a tendency of appearance of exhibition venues in other districts such as Puerto Madero or La Boca; renowned venues include MALBA, the National Museum of Fine Arts, Fundación Proa, Faena Arts Center, and the Usina del Arte. Other popular institutions are the Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art, the Benito Quinquela Martín Museum, the Evita Museum, the Museo de Arte Hispanoamericano Isaac Fernández Blanco, the José Hernández Museum, and the Palais de Glace, among others. A traditional event that occurs once a year is La Noche de los Museos ("Night of the Museums"), when the city's museums, universities, and artistic spaces open their doors for free until early morning; it usually takes place in November.

The first major artistic movements in Argentina coincided with the first signs of political liberty in the country, such as the 1913 sanction of the secret ballot and universal male suffrage, the first president to be popularly elected (1916), and the cultural revolution that involved the University Reform of 1918. In this context, in which there continued to be influence from the Paris School (Modigliani, Chagall, Soutine, Klee), three main groups arose. Buenos Aires has been the birthplace of several artists and movements of national and international relevance and has become a central motif in Argentine artistic production, especially since the 20th century.

Examples include: the Paris Group – so named for being influenced by the School of Paris – constituted by Antonio Berni, Aquiles Badi, Lino Enea Spilimbergo, Raquel Forner and Alfredo Bigatti, among others; and the La Boca artists – including Benito Quinquela Martín and Alfredo Lazzari, among others – who mostly came from Italy or were of Italian descent, and usually painted scenes from working-class port neighborhoods. During the 1960s, the Torcuato di Tella Institute – located in Florida Street – became a leading local center for pop art, performance art, installation art, conceptual art, and experimental theater; this generation of artists included Marta Minujín, Dalila Puzzovio, David Lamelas, Clorindo Testa and Diana Dowek.

Buenos Aires has also become a prominent center of contemporary street art; its welcoming attitude has made it one of the world's top capitals of such expression. The city's turbulent modern political history has "bred an intense sense of expression in porteños ", and urban art has been used to depict these stories and as a means of protest. However, not all of its street art concerns politics, it is also used as a symbol of democracy and freedom of expression. Murals and graffiti are so common that they are considered "an everyday occurrence," and have become part of the urban landscape of barrios such as Palermo, Villa Urquiza, Coghlan and San Telmo. This has to do with the legality of such activities —provided that the building owner has consented—, and the receptiveness of local authorities, who even subsidize various works. The abundance of places for urban artists to create their work, and the relatively lax rules for street art, have attracted international artists such as Blu, Jef Aérosol, Aryz, ROA, and Ron English. Guided tours to see murals and graffiti around the city have been growing steadily.
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