Luis Felipe Noé (born May 26, 1933) is an Argentine artist, writer, intellectual and teacher. He is known in his home country as Yuyo. In 1961 he formed Otra Figuración (another figuration) with three other Argentine artists. Their eponymous exhibition and subsequent work greatly influenced the Neofiguration (Neo-figuration, New figuration) movement. After the group disbanded, Noé relocated to New York City where he painted and showed assemblages that stretched the boundaries of the canvas.
In 1965 he published his groundbreaking theoretical work, Antiestética. He then took a ten-year hiatus from painting and upon return to Buenos Aires opened a bar, taught, wrote and created installations with mirrors. A military coup coincided with his painting comeback, and in 1976 Noé migrated to Paris where he continued to experiment, both with canvas re-texturing and the drawing process. His later paintings move away from the figure and focus on elements of landscape.
Noé lives and works in Buenos Aires. His son, Gaspar Noé is a Franco-Argentine filmmaker.
Education
Luis Felipe Noé studied painting with Horacio Butler from 1950 to 1952 but is “essentially considered self-taught.” He also studied law at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and wrote art reviews for various newspapers prior to his first exhibit in 1959 at the Galeria Witcomb.
Career
Otra Figuración (1960−1965)
Painting
In 1960 the artists of Otra Figuración began to live and work together in an apartment building that doubled as a studio in Carlos Pellegrini Street in Buenos Aires. The collective included Rómulo Macció, Ernesto Deira, Jorge de la Vega, Luis Felipe Noé and for a short while, Antonio Seguí who exhibited briefly with the group but is not generally considered a member of Otra Figuración since his style quickly diverged. The “violent, disturbing” work that emerged from the group's first exhibition at the Galeria Peuser in 1961, also titled Otra Figuración “reflected a nation whose history and everyday life were so marked by violent occurrences.”
His two seminal paintings from this period are Introduccion a la esperanza (Introduction to Hope) and Cerrado por brujería (Closed for Sorcery), both from 1963. Esperanza won the prestigious Premio Palanza given by the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella in 1963. The painting depicts an amorphous, riotous mass of open-mouthed figures proffering signs that read “Champion, do not leave us,” and “Vote for blind force,” while additional signs set on plywood stems sprout from the top of the canvas and display portraits of political candidates. The work embodies nine separate canvases, communicating a sense of the overwhelming anarchy and continual unrest that defines Argentina's political process. The crowd forms one massive animal that blindly jostles and lobbies for some low level of survival, complicit in elevating the oppressors who cynically grin and bob far above them. In contrast, Cerrado depicts the people not as an indistinguishable mass but as individual grimacing visages trapped within a grid of boxes. The cloaked figure of a sorcerer looms above, nullified by a crucifix, surrounded by ferocious, fantasy animals. The iconography and structure of the painting suggest ideological incoherency and social chaos, belief systems or regimes continually supplanting one another and in flux while the citizens remain caged.
Drawing
An exhibition composed exclusively of drawings by the group in 1962, titled Esto at Galeria Lirolay in Buenos Aires had a significant impact on autonomous, experimental drawing in Latin American art. Otra Figuración emphasized process over technique. They influenced contemporaries Alberto Heredia, Cildo Meireles, Rubens Gerchman and Antonio Dias among others. The exhibit emerged from the political climate in 1962, one Noé likened to “social dislocation” and then linked to the “structural dislocation” apparent in the drawings. With the president of Argentina deposed by the military, Buenos Aires was once again in chaos and facing civil war. Emblematic of the exhibit, Noé's Sin titulo (Untitled) uses black India ink on pulp to create an artwork defaced with random slashes and blots, featuring rotund, distorted figures gathered around a black exploding center. Although the work appears to contain surreal elements, it's a true, psychological and emotional expression of Argentina's then current and seemingly perpetual social and political disorder.
Otra Figuración was officially discontinued in 1963, although the group continued to exhibit together until 1965.