Antonio Berni
Juanito va a la ciudad

Juanito va a la ciudad

© Luis Emilio De Rosa, Argentina

Juanito va a la ciudad
Juanito va a la ciudad
ArtistArgentinean, 1905–1981
CultureArgentinean
Titles
  • Juanito va a la ciudad
  • Juanito Goes to the City
Date1963
PlaceArgentina
MediumWood, paint, industrial trash, cardboard, scrap metal, leather, and fabric on wood
Dimensions129 × 79 × 15 in. (327.7 × 200.7 × 38.1 cm)
Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by the Caroline Wiess Law Accessions Endowment Fund
Object number2007.1167
Current Location
The Nancy and Rich Kinder Building
Atrium Floor 2
On view

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Object Type
Description

Juanito va a la ciudad is a monumental collage documenting the life of Juanito Laguna (Johnny Lagoon), an archetype for a poor boy from the villa miserias, or slums, of Buenos Aires. Intent upon depicting the plight of the urban working class, Antonio Berni invented this character as a tribute to boys from all over Latin America whose lives are determined by the squalor in which they live. The series highlights the contrast between the life of these children and unbridled modernization.


Juanito initially appeared in Berni's paintings as oil-painted images with an expressionistic spirit. One day, however, as the artist walked through Juanito's neighborhood, a radical change in the conception of the character took place. Berni realized that if he really wanted to convey the misery that surrounded Juanito's life, he had to do it not with paint but with the discarded materials and pieces of scrap that made up Juanito's universe. From then on Berni bought fewer cans of paint and began to accumulate a veritable reservoir of nontraditional materials.


Between 1960 and 1964, Berni created approximately 15 monumental assemblages and a series of very large woodcut prints based on the story of Juanito. The accumulation of refuse in these works functions to convey the disparity between poverty and modernization while at the same time creating a nontraditional work of art in which the material itself is fraught with meaning. Juanito va a la ciudad remains one of the outstanding moments in the Juanito story and in Antonio Berni's art. The work combines all the elements of the Juanito story: the character of the street urchin walking against the urban backdrop combined with a sophisticated and textured style that simultaneously recalls an abstract landscape and a Cubist composition.


ProvenanceThe artist; [Moeller Fine Art Ltd.]; Jorge Helft and Marion Helft, Buenos Aires; sold to MFAH, 2007.

Exhibition History"Mythologies quotidiennes," Museé d'art Moderne de la Ville de París, 1964.

"Artistas Argentinos," Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, Obras de París y Buenos Aires para alquilar o vender, Buenos Aires, November 29–December 31, 1968.

"Art from Argentina," Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, England, October 3–December 31, 1994; Sudwestdeutsche Landesbank, Germany, March 7–March 30, 1995; Royal College of Arts Galleries, London, April 13–April 23, 1995; Fundacao das Decobertas, Centro Cultural de Betlem, Lisbon, July 17–September 17, 1995.

"Arte de Argentina, 1920-1994," Centro Cultural Borges, Buenos Aires, October 18–December 22, 1995.

"North Looks South: Building the Latin American Art Collection," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, June 7–September 27, 2009.

“Antonio Berni: Juanito and Ramona,” Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, November 10, 2013–January 26, 2014; Phoenix Art Museum, June 28–September 28, 2014; Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, October 29, 2014–February 25, 2015.

"HOME - Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA," LACMA, Los Angeles, June 11–October 15, 2017; "HOME—So Different, So Appealing," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, November 19, 2017–January 21, 2018.

"Loved, Lost and Loose: Foreign Artists in Paris 1944-1968," Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, November 20, 2018–April 22, 2019.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
Signed recto lower left: "BERNI 63"
Printed shipping label on verso: "Expreso VICTORIA ... "

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

If you have questions about this work of art or the MFAH Online Collection please contact us.

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