Presentation of Rómulo Macció’s work in which the critic maintains that Macció’s most valuable contribution is creative liberty, a stance the artist kept from his first Surrealist paintings to his Free Abstraction period. Although, when Macció felt himself imprisoned by a new academicism, he immediately returned to figuration. According to Pellegrini, in Macció’s works, themes diversify with the overlapping of images, and, even though they may represent multiple dissimilar and contradictory circumstances, he achieves synthesis through a free plastic structure in which color becomes the chief character.

Aldo Pellegrini (Rosario, 1903–Buenos Aires, 1973) was a very prominent poet, playwright, essayist, and art critic in the Argentinean cultural milieu. Linked from the beginning to the development of Surrealism, he directed several editorial projects. Likewise, he supported and helped spread Abstract art’s different trends, promoting several groups, such as Artistas Modernos de la Argentina [Moderns Artists of Argentina] and Asociación Arte Nuevo [New Art Association]. Rómulo Macció is an Argentinean artist born in 1931. In 1961, he became part of the group Otra Figuración [Another Figuration], together with Luis Felipe Noé, (1933), Jorge de la Vega (1930–71), and Ernesto Deira (1928–86). Currently, he lives and works in Buenos Aires. 

In 1960, after several months of the creation of the Centro de Arte del Instituto Torcuato Di Tella (ITDT) [Torcuato Di Tella Institute Art Center]—directed by a council made up of Leonardo Venturi, Ricardo Camino, Guido Di Tella, and Jorge Romero-Brest—the Torcuato Di Tella Institute Prize was constituted. The purpose of this institute was to cooperate in the spreading and promotion of the visual arts, in addition to maintaining open contacts with other centers linked to both national and international production. Within this scope, the ITDT Prize was created with the intention of providing young Argentinean artists with an opportunity to enrich their experiences in foreign countries. However, the award’s creation not only allowed the issuing of the prize-scholarship, but it promoted the circulation of international art in the local milieu, becoming an important referent for the artistic renovation at the time. In 1963, Romero-Brest resigned from his post as director of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes [National Museum of Fine Arts] and agreed to become the director of the ITDT’s Visual Arts Center. That same year, the ITDT Prize was both national and international, and the jury members were Jorge Romero-Brest, Jacques Lassaigne, and William Sandberg. The participating artists were Clorindo Testa, Rómulo Macció, Mario Pucciarelli, Maryan, Hans Plastchek, Achile Perilli, Paul Rebeyrolle, R. B. Kitaj, Janez Bernik, Pierre Alechinsky, Larry Rivers, and Antonio Saura. 

The presentation of Macció’s work by Pellegrini has been selected because it documents the latter’s critical judgment, especially regarding his support to the most innovative trends in the pictorial area around the ITDT.