Jorge Gumier-Maier is one of the unavoidable figures inside the panorama of the 1990s Argentinean art. An artist and art critic, he directed the Galería del Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas (Buenos Aires) since inception in 1989 until 1997.
What began as an underground space within the Buenos Aires artistic scene immediately developed great visibility between 1991 and 1992. The artists from “El Rojas” (Fabián Burgos, Graciela Hasper, Feliciano Centurión, Martín Di Girolamo, Alberto Goldestein, Sebastián Gordín, Miguel Harte, Agustín Inchausti, Luis Lindner, Nuna Magiante, Emiliano Miliyo, Esteban Pagés, Ariadna Pastorini, Marcelo Pombo, Cristina Schiavi, Enrique Marmora, Sergio Vila, Benito Laren, Omar Schiliro, and Alfredo Londaibere, Liliana Maresca, among many others) began to be incorporated into the programs of key exhibition spaces, such as the ICI (Instituto de Cooperación Iberoamericana), the Centro Cultural de España, and the Galería Ruth Benzacar.
The reference to poetics of the past, such as Pop art, minimalism, Concrete art (under extremely personal reformulations), besides elements of kitsch, have helped to characterize the resources of expression of such artists. Toward the end of the decade, the artists who made up “el grupo del Rojas” were grouped, in a generic manner, as the representatives of the “1990s Argentinean art.”
Art critic Fabián Lebenglik reviewed the exhibitions that the Galería del Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas housed from inception through his articles in the visual arts section of the Página/12 newspaper.