After briefly training in Paris (1954–56), Alberto Greco (1931–65) settled in Brazil (1957–58), where he drew closer to the informalist aesthetics that he promoted later in Buenos Aires. In 1960, he exhibited his work at Galería Pizarro under the title Pinturas negras [Black Paintings] and, thereafter, in the Buenos Aires city center, he positioned billboards featuring his name on them. In 1961, he exhibited Las Monjas [The Nuns] at the Galería Pizarro. In 1964, he settled in Madrid; he had traveled throughout Europe since 1961, during which time he had produced works in tandem with Antonio Saura and Manolo Millares; in this manner he continued both his informalist and conceptual experimentation, beginning in the late-1950s. During a brief return to Buenos Aires on December 9, he produced at Galería Bonino Mi Madrid querido [My Beloved Madrid], a performance piece from a genre he called Vivo-Dito [The Living-Finger], on this occasion with the participation of flamenco dancer Antonio Gades. The performance ended at the Plaza San Martín, a square in Buenos Aires downtown. Greco had previously incorporated girls in flamenco dress in his solo exhibition in May at Galería Juana Mordó in Madrid. This was his last work in Argentina; he committed suicide in Madrid on October 12, 1965.
In 1961, his last year in Buenos Aires before establishing himself mainly in Paris and Madrid, he exhibited Las Monjas [The Nuns] at Galería Pizarro, with a brief epistolary text by Manuel Mujica Láinez (1910–84), with whom he had associated from his beginnings as writer in the 1950s. Having been regulars at the Juan Cristóbal Bookshop, a meeting place for literary clientele, they were both considered existentialists from the city of Buenos Aires.
The brief letter by artist Pérez Celis (1939) is a good testimony on the impact Greco’s exhibition Las Monjas had on artists at the time; through this, it is possible to gauge the influence of the latter on the course of Argentinean art.
