It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of artist Ides Kihlen on April 14, 2026, in Buenos Aires at the age of 108. She leaves behind an extraordinary legacy as a visual artist shaped by decades of continuous practice, active until the end of her life as the world’s oldest working artist. Kihlen spent the 20th century developing her own language of abstraction—festive, poetic, and spontaneous—in which music played a central role. Born in 1917 in Santa Fe, Argentina, she moved to Buenos Aires as a child, enrolling at the Escuela de Artes Decorativas (The National School of Decorative Arts) at the age of 14. Around 1937, Kihlen completed the five-year course and graduated as Professor of Drawing. She continued her studies at the school for two more years to earn a higher degree, and simultaneously took piano lessons at the Conservatorio Nacional (National Conservatory). Though she received early encouragement from key figures in Argentine modernism, including Emilio Pettoruti and Juan Batlle Planas, Kihlen ultimately chose to work outside the traditional art world, maintaining a long period of relative privacy in her practice. She is survived by her daughters, Silvia and Ingrid, and her granddaughter Marcella.
Kihlen worked primarily in painting and collage, engaging in ongoing experimentation that included a shift from canvas to hardboard and the use of acrylics, thread, cuttings, and other materials to construct layered surfaces. Her abstract compositions are a circus of pattern, color, and texture. Recurring references to music and the piano—such as clefs, staves, and keyboard forms—organize her visual language and reinforce its sense of movement and rhythm. She approached abstraction as a long-term process of reduction and refinement, limiting formal elements while drawing on her academic training, and remained committed to her autonomy and lyricism outside prevailing art world trends. Her work has been exhibited throughout South America, North America, and Europe. The Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes celebrated Ides Kihlen's 105th birthday with a survey exhibition of her work from the past five decades, including her Pandemic series.
Hutchinson Modern & Contemporary presented Ides Kihlen: Compositions, her first comprehensive solo exhibition in New York, in 2022.
Portrait of Ides Kihlen by Aldo Sessa
