Juan Batlle Planas (1911 - 1966) was one of the most influential figures of Argentine Surrealism and a pioneering force within twentieth-century Latin American modernism. Born in Torroella de Montgrí, Spain, and raised in Buenos Aires, Batlle Planas developed a singular visual language informed by psychoanalysis, Zen philosophy, automatism, and contemporary scientific thought. His enigmatic compositions, marked by dreamlike architectures, symbolic figures, and metaphysical landscapes, established him as a central figure of the Buenos Aires avant-garde.
Largely self-taught, Batlle Planas explored painting, drawing, collage, printmaking, murals, and theoretical writing throughout a career dedicated to the investigation of form, perception, and the unconscious. His celebrated series, including Radiografías paranoicas (1936) and Noicas (1946-50), expanded the possibilities of Surrealism beyond European precedents and contributed to the development of a distinctly Argentine modernity.
A mentor to artists including Roberto Aizenberg, Batlle Planas profoundly shaped subsequent generations of Latin American artists. In 1960 he received the Palanza Prize from the Argentine National Academy of Fine Arts, one of the country's highest artistic distinctions. Today, his work is held in major public and private collections and is widely recognized for its enduring influence on the history of Surrealism and experimental art in Argentina.
PROJECTS
Group exhibition reconsiders Argentina’s surrealist artistic legacy from the unstable terrain of the contemporary world, displacing the human as its privileged subject and tracing agency across bodies, technologies, ecologies, matter, other forms of life, and invisible forces.