Cooper Hewitt says...
Born in Santa Fe, Argentina, Edgardo Giménez (b. 1942) is one of the country’s most dynamic and prolific artists of his generation. Working in an array of mediums and scales, throughout his career he produced paintings, sculptures, posters, product design, film and theatrical sets, fashion, and architectural structures. Although Giménez is largely self-taught, in the 1950s he gained drawing and graphic design skills while working at an advertising agency.
By the 1960s, Giménez emerged as the poster-maker of artists and intellectuals, creating posters for cultural events such as gallery exhibitions and theatrical productions. He was a central figure within the Argentine Pop Art scene, becoming a member of the Instituto Torcuato di Tella, an influential cultural center for the Argentinean avant-garde. In 1969, together with the art critics Marta and Jorge Romero Brest and Raquel Edelman, he founded Fuera de Caja-Centro de Arte para Consumir (Out of the Box-Art Center for Consumption), a storefront gallery that sold artist-designed objects produced by manufacturers for everyday life—one of the first of its kind in Argentina. Giménez worked on a variety of architectural projects throughout the 1970s, including Casa Azul (Blue House), which was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition Transformations in Modern Architecture in 1979. In the 1980s he became the art director for Teatro San Martín and created the graphic identity for the Teatro Colón-- the two most prestigious theater companies in Buenos Aires. From 2000-2006, he served as the director of visual communication for the Ministry of Culture in Buenos Aires.
While Giménez engaged with a variety of creative pursuits throughout his career, graphic design remained a mainstay of his practice for over forty years. His posters, paintings, and sculptures can be found in international public and private collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Denver Art Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Chile, among many others.
