Introductory Text

“For the woman of our time who is a creator, who is an enlightened artist, capable of assuming both her social responsibility and her responsibility as an artist, there is an imperative: (...) to search for an integral path where a truthful expression of her surrounding reality coexists with a conscious and solid knowledge of the form or means of expression. In this way, our creator woman, armed with a solid artistic language, will be able to express in depth the vision of her world.” - Cecilia Marcovich, Annotation from the artist's personal journal, Buenos Aires, 1971

Cecilia Marcovich was a painter, sculptor, teacher, and women's rights activist. The development of her career was marked by the need to confront conventional roles that were assigned to a wife and a mother, and in doing so, to break free from gender expectations so that she may design her own itineraries. Like so many other women artists, her career was invisibilized in the history of Argentine art. The exhibition "Women on the March" opens a new chapter in that history with the intent of repositioning Cecilia Marcovich in the development of modern art.

The exhibit's title alludes to a work by Cecilia Marcovich entitled "Women on the March". The scene depicted in the artwork synthesizes the themes explored by the artist throughout her career. In also serves as the exhibition's hypothesis and curatorial point of view where each axis focuses on the main themes of Marcovich's production. Without adhering to a strict chronology, the exhibit reflects her time in Rio de Janeiro, her studies in the province of Rosario, learnings alongside the great masters in Paris, trips to the North, and her role as an arts educator in Buenos Aires.

Each of the episodes in Marcovich's trajectory brings together all these other women, observed with empathy and portrayed in their daily struggles, in their beauty and diversity.

Cecilia Marcovich's early studies began in the province of Rosario, at a time when the city's art scene was flourishing with workshops and academies of visual arts, as well as the presence of Italian artists who specialized in decorative arts, music and theater. Mateo Casella, Cecilia's first teacher, was a Neapolitan set designer and decorator who arrived in the city in 1904 and a year later founded Academia Domenico Morelli, considered a milestone in the history of art education. During this time, the first generation of painters based in Rosario emerged; including Alfredo Guido, Emilia Bertolé and Augusto Schavoni, as well as César A. Caggiano, with whom Marcovich eventually continued her studies.

In 1909, when Cecilia's mother died, the young artist was forced to interrupt her studies in order to tend to all the household chores and care for her three younger siblings. She was only 14 years old.

A few years later, Cecilia was awarded a scholarship to Caggiano's art school where she attended evening classes -- most likely between the years of 1912 and 1915. During this time, Marcovich also frequented the Petit Salon that Caggiano, Emilia Bertolé and Alfredo Guido organized, where she familiarized herself with the works of other artists, including Ramón Silva, Valentín Thibón de Libian, Walter de Navazio, Pedro Delucchi, Eugenio Daneri, Luis Falcini, Nicolás Lamanna, among others.

In 1925, Marcovich arrived in Paris, the Mecca where the great masters taught, and avant-garde artists, such as Picasso, Modigliani, Chagall and Soutine, found a home. If for most Argentines the trip meant having to make significant financial sacrifices, competing for a scholarship, or seeking support from one's family, for Cecilia it had additional implications from the moment she embarked to France with her three- and five-year-old children, a couple of suitcases, and the pension that her ex-husband Moisés Tubert, sent her from the province of Mendoza in Argentina.

She settled in Montparnasse and spent her days studying at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, considered one of the most popular academies by Latin Americans. She also attended Antoine Bourdelle's and André Lhote's workshops, and later continued her studies with Charles Despiau and Paul Baudouin, from whom she learned fresco painting.

Her time in Europe, until 1931, was marked by a new twist. Marcovich not only confronted the conventional roles assigned to women in general, and to mothers in particular, but she also designed a life-project that went against the grain of men's patriarchal gaze in order to pursue a professional career in the Arts.

“I am so happy!! 

After several months of serious study, I realize today that I have made progress! Throughout the process of creating a composition, I find myself playing freely with my figures. My God! What profound pleasure! I am not a believer, but I often have the impulse to get down on my knees and thank someone for the divine joy in the face of beauty. Ah! From this point of view life is so beautiful!” – Cecilia Marcovich,  Annotation from the artist's personal journal, Paris 1928

Towards the late 1940s and during the 1950s, Marcovich began a series of trips throughout northern Argentina. She traveled to the provinces of Salta and Jujuy, and reached the country of Bolivia. 

These travels were not uncommon during a time when other artists of Cecilia's generation were encouraged to familiarize themselves with other people's realities in other parts of the country. Based on photographic records, Ramón Gómez Cornet, Gertrudis Chale, Lino E. Spilimbergo, Raquel Forner, Antonio Berni, Grete Stern and Annemarie Heinrich were among those who shared this interest.

The trips marked an extremely productive period for Marcovich in which she created an important body of work, mostly pencil and pastel drawings, including a stand-out series of renderings of men working inside the steel mill Altos Hornos de Zapla in Jujuy. 

In addition, similarly to the series created in Brazil, the works that Cecilia produced during her trips to the north mainly focus on the mestizo woman who is represented in scenes of her daily life -- at work and as an expression of her maternity.