This is an open letter written to Jorge Romero Brest, director of the magazine Ver y estimar [See and Ponder], in which Margherita Sarfatti expresses her opinions on Abstract art. Based on the epigraph that introduces the letter, this debate originated in a private letter in which Romero Brest reacted to the Italian critic’s opinions about the Venice Biennial. (The reasoning in the private letter can be reconstructed from the statements and questions set forth by Sarfatti.) The writer contends that she has not rejected modern art en bloc (as suggested by Romero Brest). However, she does accuse some Abstract painters of being “una grey anárquica, tiranizada por la uniformidad de un exceso de pretensiones individualistas. Desenfrenado individualismo sin personalidad.” [An anarchic flock, tyrannized by the uniformity of excessive individualistic pretensions. This is individualism unbridled, yet completely lacking in personality.]

Margherita Sarfatti (née Grassini) was born in 1880 into a Jewish Venetian family and married attorney Cesare Sarfatti in 1898. In 1902, [the Sarfattis] moved to Milan, where Margherita began her career as an art critic in L’Avanti!, La voce,  La difesa delle lavoratrici, and other publications. Toward the end of World War I, she joined the editorial staff of a newspaper with a fascist stamp, Popolo d’Italia, founded by Benito Mussolini, with whom she formed close ties in the early 1920s. Convinced that Milan could assume a central role in Italian culture, Sarfatti, along with the Jewish gallery owner, Lino Pesaro, fostered the group Novecento. In spite of her special relationship with Mussolini, Sarfatti was unable to escape the anti-Semitic laws decreed in 1938, and she had to go into exile in Argentina, where she remained until 1947.Jorge Romero Brest (1905–1989) was a professor, critic, and promoter in the visual arts world in Argentina. During the first administration of Juan Domingo Perón (1895–1974), he was dismissed from his position as professor. Later, the de facto government that defeated Perón on September 16, 1955, which called itself the Revolución Libertadora [Liberating Revolution], appointed him administrator of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires. In 1956, Romero Brest assumed the post of museum director, which he held through 1963. In the 1960s, he was head of the Centro de Artes Visuales [Visual Arts Center] at the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella. Following his dismissal as professor, Romero Brest directed the publication of the magazine Ver y estimar [See and Ponder], working with followers who had taken art history courses with him. This document is an open letter to which Romero Brest responded in Ver y estimar (shown in doc. no. 742904.) This magazine stimulated critical thought and disseminated a renewal of artistic languages, based on the director’s point of view, in support of modernization. Thirty-four issues were published between April 1948 and December 1953. After an interruption that lasted a few months, ten more issues were published in a second period, which ended in October 1955. The editor-in-chief was Damián Carlos Bayón (1915–1995).This source is evidence of the debate between two art critics, one Latin American (Romero Brest) and the other European (Sarfatti), regarding statements made by the Italian critic about Abstract art.