Antonio Asís
b. 1932, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Antonio Asís began studying art at the National School of Fine Arts when he was 14 and subsequently at the Prilidiano Pueyrredón Fine Art School. Throughout the 1940s, Asís explored abstraction and non-representational art in Buenos Aires.
In the spring of 1956, Asís moved to Paris, where he quickly became part of an international circuit of kinetic artists; among others Jesús-Rafael Soto, Jean Tinguely, and Victor Vasarely. Surrounded by this dynamic and aspirational group, he began a series of work in which he considered how the phenomena of light could be mediated through photography. Shortly afterward, he began to study vibrations between colours and the many possibilities within monochromatic compositions. Throughout the 1960s, Asís exhibited regularly across Europe and in 1971, he co-founded the artist group Position with Argentine artists living in Paris who were interested in movement, light and kinetic experimentations.
Since then, he has continued to produce his evocative abstract works from his studio in Paris, and he has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions around the world. Asís’ works are in major institutional collections, including the Cisneros-Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO), Miami; Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Latinoamericano (MACLA), Argentina; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas.
“The trajectory of Antonio Asis is in itself a summary of the history of optical-kinetic art,” Arnauld Pierre, philosopher and writer observed, “and in the artist’s early inquiries into the limits and nature of visual perception we see already the sophistication of his understanding of colour and space.”
