The painter and art critic from Buenos Aires, Luis Felipe Noé (born 1933), began his training under Horacio Butler in the early 1950s, mounting his first exhibition in 1959. In 1961, he participated in a group show at the Galería Peuser along with Ernesto Deira, Rómulo Macció, and Jorge de la Vega. After this debut of Otra Figuración [the Another Figuration movement], the group exhibited their work together until 1965 using also the name Nueva Figuración. Noé was also distinctive for his theoretical meditations on art in contemporary society. One of his central tenets was of “caos como estructura” [chaos as structure] of the artwork. His most significant books include Antiestética [Anti-Aesthetics] (Buenos Aires: Editorial Van Riel, 1965) and Una sociedad colonial avanzada [An Advanced Colonial Society] (Buenos Aires: Editorial La Flor, 1971). In the late 1950s, there was a major revival of the visual arts in Argentina, and art critics had to update their understanding of art languages. This document is one of a set of art criticisms written by Noé in 1956 and published in the newspaper, El Mundo [The World]. (Published between 1928 and 1967 as the first tabloid in Argentina, this newspaper was especially popular for its comic strips.) Horacio Butler, in whose studio Noé began his training, was a figurative artist active since the 1930s and was linked to the movement called the School of Paris.In this document, Noé raises a question that is central in his ideas: the drama between abstraction and human being, which is the subject of abstract art. From that perspective, he analyzes the work of Rómulo Macció, who was later his colleague in Otra Figuración.
