The work of Amadeo Azar (Mar del Plata, 1972) explores the constitutive elements of identity in a complex and hybrid culture such as the Argentinean one. In this search he has directed a longing and revisionist look on modernist utopias, particularly the way in which these ideals and their visual manifestations were embodied in Argentina and Latin America. It is a perspective on the history of visual forms which were influential in later artistic vocabularies that includes nostalgia for their headstrong faith in a teleological and progressive vision of history which generated those forms, but also a sense of humor about the absurdity of certain historical events.

In investigating the imagery of the modernist avant-garde, whose images he recreates, groups and intervenes, he employs different languages. “In this process of reproduction or intervention of the images, Amadeo Azar generates powerful displacements of meaning, which end up questioning or estranging those original pieces” writes art historian Lara Marmor.

For many of these works Azar has used the medium of watercolor, a difficult technique that he handles with ductility and that is perfectly in tune with his subject matter: watercolor itself possesses the lightness and transparency of water, of what flows and is unstable, nostalgic.

In more recent works Azar focused on establishing unexpected connections between historical events, which are presented diagram-like, aiming at a social critique through their absurdity. He is also looking at the indigenous landscape of the Pampas as it was encountered by the colonial perspective. A parallel line of work has focused on the interaction between visual art and sound art, another of his interests (Amadeo Azar is a member of an experimental music band).

BIO
Azar studied Photography in Mar del Plata, his hometown. He continued his training through scholarships sponsored by the Fundación Antorchas (2000-2002) and the Fondo Nacional de las Artes (2017). He was co-founder of MOTP, an alternative art space that operated in Mar del Plata between 2001 and 2006, where more than thirty exhibitions were held, in addition to having managed projects in Buenos Aires and Rosario.

He participated in the Open Sessions Program at The Drawing Center in New York (2015), and in The Fountainhead Residency in Miami (2014). In 2013 he created TBF Project, together with Nicolás Vázquez, a fusion of experimental music, image and video. In 2023 he presented an installation at Andreani Foundation, Buenos Aires.

In the last ten years he has had solo shows and has participated in numerous group exhibitions in galleries and museums in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, England, Belgium, Hungary, Spain, Costa Rica, Panama, Ecuador and the United States. His work is in the collections of Phoenix Art Museum; Cleveland Clinic, Cincinnati; Jorge Pérez Collection, Miami; Deutsche Bank Collection, New York; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Buenos Aires; Klemm Foundation and Supervielle Bank Foundation,
among others.