Deira, Ernesto – Argentina

The life of Ernesto Deira

Ernesto Deira was born in Buenos Aires in 1928. After graduating as a lawyer, a profession he practised for four years, he began his painting studies in 1954 with Leopoldo Torres Agüero, and later continued with Leopoldo Presas (1956).

He had his first individual exhibition at a Buenos Aires gallery in 1960. A year later he held a group exhibition with Luis Felipe Noé, Rómulo Macció and Jorge de la Vega entitled “Other Figuration”, lending its name to this group of artists.[1]  The group dissolved in 1965, but Deira’s career was to continue to flourish. In 1966 he was awarded the second prize for painting at the 3^rd Biennale of American Art in the Argentine city of Córdoba (IKA Biennale), and in 1967 he won the prestigious Premio Palanza from the Argentine National Academy of Fine Arts, the Konex Prize, and the first prize for painting awarded by the Fundación Fortabat.

As well as having a great impact on Argentine art, Deira exhibited in other Latin American countries, as well as the United States and Europe, where he was also to reside.

He died in Paris in 1986.

The work of Ernesto Deira

His language corresponds to the New Figuration movement, both when he was a member of the Other Figuration and subsequently. This group, of which Deira was a co-founder, aimed to reject abstraction and traditional forms of painting alike, and this would continue to define his work.

Deira focuses his work on the human figure and takes certain features from informalism and expressionism that allow him to play with materials, forms and colour to distort the human figure and represent Man’s most destructive aspects.

By depicting figures from different eras who have suffered various catastrophes, Deira addresses conflict as part of the human condition, although he does not fail to highlight the individual responsibility of each of us in the face of this reality.

He uses the inherent characteristics of the materials to create a specific effect in his works. Despite the chaotic appearance of his works, Deira took extreme care with their composition and colours, using both in his search to convey restlessness and anguish.

Characteristics of his paintings are his depiction of figures that occupy the entire painting – even going beyond the frame – the use of flat and bright colours – although black also takes on great importance in his work – the use of patches of colour, and expressiveness in the line.

Silvia Sánchez
Curator

[1] According to the thesis TAMBURRINO CABRERA, Estefanía. Análisis crítico-descriptivo de la Nueva Figuración Argentina 1961-1964. Ernesto Deira, Rómulo Macció, Jorque de la Vega y Luis Felipe Noé, p. 16, the first exhibition in which they were named “other figuration” was at the Peuser gallery in 1961, although many studies stated this began with the previous exhibitions of 1957 and 1958, which were more closely linked to Informalism than to the New Figuration, as precedents or early manifestations of the new movement.