De Volder

De Volder (b. 1962) is an Argentine painter and sculptor whose work often examines the boundary between chaos and restraint. While the curving lines that comprise his compositions are finite – fixed in size, color, and weight – their dynamic loops and intersections imply motion that continues energetically and unhindered through space.

De Volder’s most recent oeuvre took a radical turn from his more figural work of the 1990s. It is mainly characterized by his employment of curved linear forms that bisect, unfurl, and overlap each other through a playful use of geometry as a formal language. Conflated with an ascetic yet also bold use of color (many times committing to only one single hue), De Volder’s forms unfold into three-dimensional space through either single or intertwining loops that appear to rest in the between space of randomization and restraint. De Volder creates works whose lines are static in color, size, and weight; yet their dynamic loops and overlappings imply a sense of energetic, swirling motion.

De Volder has participated in a number of solo and group exhibitions in the United States, France, Argentina, Uruguay and Peru. His artwork can be found in numerous internationally recognized cultural institutions and private collections, as well as in the public collections of the Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires (MALBA); Museum of Contemporary Art of Buenos Aires (MACBA); the Museum Castagnino of Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina.

"[De Volder's] papers, paintings, and objects always traveled unique paths within abstraction: they combined the formal and the informal, the mechanical and the random, construction and invention...his images seem like invertebrate shapes that shift to possible animated figurations or deformed projections of architectural designs, scientific models and fragmentary landscapes." 

Marcelo E. Pacheco ,"Beto De Volder: Between The Lines," in Beto De Volder: Poco Color, Zavaleta Lab, Buenos Aires, 2005

"His figurative practice of the 1990s was marked by a sense of liberation and irreverence. Considering that his generation was brought up during the repressive years of the dictatorship (1979 - 1983), his compositions can be understood as an attitude of rebellion. One of the works that epitomizes this demeanor is Untitled (1994), a large square canvas depiciting the country's blue-and-white flag with its golden sun at the center. Autocratic sovereign states have traditionally reguarded national symbols as sacred, which was the case during the military rule in Argentina. De Volder's work takes on this iconic image and transforms it into the background for a nonsensical scene saturated with elements reminiscent of comic strips. These illustrations are not denunciations, but rather satirical references imbedded in Argentine culture."

Ursula Davila-Villa on Beto De Volders Untitled (1994) in Recovering Beauty. The 1990s in Buenos Aires, The Balton Museum, Austin TX, 2011

Read artist Bibi Calderaro's survery of De Volder's work in Spanish and English