Manuel Mujica Láinez described in a poetic manner the artistic history of the Galería Bonino, inaugurated in 1951, attaching the names of artists to it as if a journey had taken place. His words were delivered at the one hundredth exhibition, which was dedicated to painter Héctor Basaldúa.

A relevant document to understand the key role played by one of the most distinguished galleries of the 1960s renovation of Argentinean art. The Italian Alfredo Bonino at the end of World War II opened the Galería Domus in São Paulo in 1946; in 1949, he produced three exhibitions in Buenos Aires at Galería Samos; in 1951, he opened the Galería Bonino, which stayed in operation until 1979. In 1954, Bonino reinforced his projects through publications in Editorial de Arte Galería Bonino, by means of which modern art was disseminated. In the 1960s, the gallery branched out to Rio de Janeiro and New York. In Buenos Aires, Bonino was an innovator in the art market through the advertising management of exhibitions, the construction of specific locations, and the establishment of contracts with artists. In the 1950s, Bonino exhibited time-honored artists of the 1930s aesthetic renovation in Argentina. Nevertheless, the following decade, he marketed the works of Informalist artists and those from the Nueva Figuración [New Figuration], side by side with European, Asian, and American artists of the international circuit. See “Galeria Bonino” (document. no. 766390).  

Manuel Mujica Láinez was born in Buenos Aires in 1910 and died in 1984. He wrote more than twenty books (novels, short stories, biographies, poems, travel journals, and essays). Among those worth mentioning are Misteriosa Buenos Aires [Mysterious Buenos Aires], Los ídolos [The Idols], La casa [The House], Invitados en el paraíso [Guests In Paradise], Bomarzo, El unicornio [The Unicorn], El viaje de los siete demonios [The Journey of the Seven Demons], El brazalete [The Bracelet], and El escarabajo [The Beetle]; as an art critic, he was linked to important galleries, including Witcomb and especially Galería Bonino. 

This document allows for an understanding of the exhibition politics of the Galería Bonino, well before its international expansion and the exhibition of vanguard artists of the 1960s.

This is a file clipping of the Galería Bonino Archives, Fundacíon Espigas.