Raquel Forner

You are looking at the works Monstre spatial avec des mutants (“Space Monster with Mutants”) and Faune labyrinthe (“Pan’s Labyrinth”), by the Argentine artist Raquel Forner.

Raquel Forner was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1902.

She was a key figure in the development of the Argentinian avant-gardes in the 1920s and 1930s, playing a decisive part in developing the New Figuration. She also had an important role in the European avant-garde art scene due to her presence in the Paris Group.

Forner’s work, with some links to cubism and expressionism at the beginning, marks the world’s biggest historical and political events of the time. After spending time in Paris then settling in Buenos Aires as an international artist in 1938, she started to group her works into series in which she explores different themes and disasters related to humanity, such as Spain’s Civil War, the Second World War, and other great tragedies of humanity and their consequences. She uses expressionist language loaded with symbolic content, bringing in a significant surrealist component.

After this period marked by pessimism, Forner introduced a new stage from 1957. Her theme was space, with a language marked by the New Figuration. From this moment on, bright colours and an expressive use of material were predominant. Her compositions became flatter, eliminating references to perspective, and forms emerged from lines and patches of colour. Her work was strongly influenced by informalism but rarely lost references to form.

This can be seen in the works Monstre spatial avec des mutants and Faune labyrinthe. In the first, from 1975, she depicts an imaginary and decontextualised scenario in which the figures occupy almost the entire frame. This is typical of works from the New Figuration. Human beings continue to be the protagonist in her work, now sharing the spotlight with space beings she called “cosmonauts”.

As we can see in this work, Forner uses pure and intense colours to depict mutant beings, in contrast to the grey tones used to represent humans. Her figures are imbued with a symbology based on colour, showing that the future lies in this new world that is yet to be discovered.

In her work Faune labyrinthe from 1968, part of her Labryrinths series which was painted between 1967 and 1969, we see how the artist uses the same linguistic and thematic resources as in previous series, but this time everything is emphasised. Her work takes on an expressionist tone that is close to abstraction, due to the speed of her strokes and the application of colours that are less defined than in Monstre spatial avec des mutants, as well as in the jumble of figures that become more monstrous in this work, even though they are arranged in a similar way.

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  Monstre spatial avec des mutants, 1975

  Space Monster with Mutants
  Raquel Forner
  Litography
  Ed. 40×50
  65 x 50 cm

  Ralli Collection

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  Faune labyrinthe, 1968

  Pan’s Labyrinth
  Raquel Forner
  Serigraphy
  Ed. 32/40
  63 x 48 cm

  Ralli Collection

Silvia Sánchez Ruiz
Curator