Kenneth Kemble (Buenos Aires, 1923–1998) was one of the principal artists in the Informalist movement in Argentina. Beginning in 1956, Kemble experimented with collages, assemblages, reliefs, informal paintings, and signs. Kemble frequently participated in the exhibitions of the Asociación Arte Nuevo, a hotbed for abstract art. In 1959, Kemble was part of the exhibition Movimiento Informal at the Galería Van Riel. In 1961, the artist was the motivating force behind a show that presented “destructive art.” Kemble also worked as an art critic, principally between 1960 and 1963 at the Buenos Aires Herald (a newspaper for the British community in Buenos Aires, founded in 1876). In the following decades, he continued his reflective work with an emphasis on the theory of the creative process.
Cayetano Córdova Iturburu was a writer and art critic with a strong leftist political orientation, who acted—from the 1930s on—as one of the main defenders of modern art as well as Modernism. He opposed (Social) realism for being the dominant aesthetics of Communism. Córdova Iturburu was a key figure within the realm of art criticism until the late 1970s.
This document is a negative critique of the 1960 Kenneth Kemble’s show at Galería Peuser. Deeply influenced by the work of Robert Motherwell, Kemble exhibited a series of huge canvases with the prevailing black and white proposal. Kemble’s inclusion of fragments of gestural paintings—previously executed on paper—is consistent with his interest in Eastern calligraphy. This document is seminal as a turning point implying the radical shift in Córdova Iturburu’s criticism about Kemble’s production (see documents 741878 and 741619).