Claudia del Río was a child when she started studying theatre and took private painting lessons with Mario Albea (1908–1998). She trained in the visual arts at Universidad Nacional de Rosario (1975–1980). After graduation she was invited by Jorge Orta (1953–) to join an experimental group called Hacia un arte grupal (HUAG, 1981–1983) and the Centro experimental de arte contemporáneo (CEAC, 1981–1983) where she took part in interventions and performances and worked on graphic publications. At an exhibition at Sociedad Argentina de Artistas Plásticos (SAAP) in 1981 she met Graciela Gutiérrez Marx (1945–2022) and Edgardo Antonio Vigo (1928–1997), and through them became associated with the mail art movement between 1983 and 1992. In 1984, in the city of Rosario, she helped found the Asociación Latinoamericana y del Caribe de Artistascorreo. This medium led her to experiment with the collective and online production of artworks.

In the 1990s she started trying out multiple techniques (collage, drawing, painting and embroidery) and formats ranging from sketchbook paper to set design, installations and other ways of appropriating spaces, interweaving tensions between popular culture, the local and the global. Amongst her creative procedures was the collection of visuals from the Argentine and international press depicting constructed mental images and visual identities, which she altered or juxtaposed. For example, the series Carne [Meat, 1992], consists of 49 collages in which pictures of raw beef are inserted into Coca-Cola ads. In Untitled (2004), she used the brand’s signature typeface to produce a sign that says, “Coca-Cola es un ejército” [Coca-Cola is an army]. Her collecting of news items regarding local murders, which she began in 1998, led her to think about a variety of acts of violence taking place in Rosario, especially against women. The result was the series Bordados policiales [Police embroideries, 2008–2018], consisting of 36 pieces with embroidered newspaper headlines.

In the wake of the economic crisis that shook Argentina in 2001, C. del Río, Mario Gemin (1960–) and América Sánchez (1939–) founded the Club del Dibujo (2002). This platform for interchanges between professional artists, amateurs and the merely curious set out to create social links through drawing, and at the same time to promote the discipline as a carrier of ideas through the production of collective imaginaries and moments of pure enjoyment with no pretences. This project led to the making of the installation Pieza pizarrón [Blackboard piece], an interactive spatial intervention that has undergone various versions and formats since 2006.

As a tutor and artist, C. del Río has taken part in multiple clinics, residencies and other art training programmes, including at VI Bienal de La Habana (1997), the 7ª Bienal do Mercosul (2009) and the Encuentro Internacional de Medellín (2011). Her work is on view in private collections in Argentinian and international museums and art galleries. In 2022 she won the Konex prize for drawing and the lifetime artistic career prize given by the Palais de Glace and the Museo de Bellas Artes, in Buenos Aires.