Graciela Gutiérrez Marx

1945 — 2022 | La Plata, Argentina

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Graciela Gutiérrez Marx — AWARE Women artists / Femmes artistes

Portrait of Graciela Gutiérrez Marx

Argentine educator and multidisciplinary artist.

Graciela Gutiérrez Marx studied for her bachelor’s degree in teaching and sculpture (1962–1967) and her master’s in aesthetics and art theory (2007) at the Universidad Nacional de la Plata. She began teaching in 1967. Until the end of the 1980s she worked at the Ministerio de Educación de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, where she carried out and coordinated design projects and research.
She began making art in 1967–1968, producing sculptures out of discarded and rusted materials, which she exhibited at Galería Lirolay in Buenos Aires. She became active in the academic and artistic circles of those years. In 1968 she met the artist Edgardo Antonio Vigo (1928–1997) who introduced her to the mail art movement and visual poetry. Together they embarked on experimental visual poetry and mail art endeavours, jointly signing their work G.E. MarxVigo (1977–1983). In 1975 the artist Horacio Zabala (1943–) invited her to participate in a rubber stamps exhibition organised by Ulises Carrión (1941–1989) in the Netherlands, which allowed her to join a network of international mail art exchanges. She undertook a series of interventions and projects meant to challenge the prevailing modes of production and circulation of art in a period marked by fear, censorship and forced disappearances under a military dictatorship (1976–1983).

In 1979, inspired by a classroom exercise involving mail at Escuela No. 38 in the city of La Plata where her son went to school, she organised Estafeta Postal Lateral [Horizontal Post Office] for an exhibition of stamp designs shown in the school’s lobby, with the participation of teachers, children and their family members, as well as invited mail art practitioners from other countries. These activities were meant to demonstrate that making art is not a question of age or professional status. This kind of collective work reflected her convictions about the fusion between art and life, the role of art in a democracy and strategies of collective memory. Other examples of this approach include Mamablanca Treasure (1981), El Tendedero. Poema colectivo colgante [Clothesline. Collective hanging poem, 1984], Grupo de familia-reconstrucción del mito [Family Group – Reconstruction of the myth, 1980] and Maratón de los antihéroes [Antiheros’ marathon, 1980].

In 1984, during the Primer encuentro de arte experimental y mail-art, along with Jorge Orta (1953–), Clemente Padín (1939–), Susana Lombardo (1954–), Claudia del Río (1957–), Marina Rothberg (1957–) and Mamablanca (Blanca Marx, 1905–1991), she founded the Asociación Latinoamericana y del Caribe de Artistascorreo. For this occasion she issued a manifesto entitled Por un arte de base sin artistas [For a basic art without artists], aiming to strengthen the dialogue between artists and non-artists, their solidarity and equal status, and their collective creative production. This philosophy encompassed and synthesised her life’s work.

One of Latin America’s most outstanding mail artists, G. Gutiérrez Marx distinguished herself in many national and international exhibitions and projects. Her work is found in public and private collections such as the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano in Buenos Aires, the Archivo La Fuente in Spain and the Zurich Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst.

Karime García Martínez

Translated from Spanish by Leo Stephen Torgoff.

A notice produced as part of the TEAM international academic network: Teaching, E-learning, Agency and Mentoring