Roiger, Jorge

Jorge Roiger was born in Buenos Aires in 1934 and passed away in July 2024. He studied Photography with Pedro Otero and Vision with Héctor Cartier. In the late 1950s, he experimented with photography in the creation of non-figurative images. He soon became involved with the Argentine Informalist Group, which, in parallel, was exploring abstraction through material accumulation. In late 1959, he participated with the informalists in an exhibition at the Sívori Museum, sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art. Although he exhibited photography, his connection with the visual arts led him to experiment with textures and pigments. During this exhibition, his works caught the attention of Georges Mathieu, who was visiting Buenos Aires, and this was reflected in three articles he published in Ring des Arts (1960), which were later republished in the books Au-delà du Tachisme (1963) and De la revolt à la renaissance (1973 - Gallimard).

In 1960, he learned new techniques alongside Antonio Seguí, with whom he later collaborated on the exhibition La metamórfosis de Felicitas Naón (Lirolay Gallery, 1962). Roiger then participated, along with Luis Wells, Kenneth Kemble, Silvia Torrás, and others, in the exhibition Arte Destructivo (1961), marked by an anti-rationalist spirit. The use of automatism and the distortion of images through drippings, additions, and aggressions was shared by Roiger in his photography, in which he incorporated color into his work. In 1978, his works were included in the informalist retrospective presented at the Sívori Museum.

Starting in 1978, in celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the Informalist Group, Jorge Roiger held numerous exhibitions in various galleries in Buenos Aires and across the country. In 2007, he exhibited his show at the Centro Cultural Recoleta. In 2009, he did so at the Encontré Art Gallery, and later, in 2010, he exhibited at the Arte y parte gallery. Since 2011, he established his studio in the Central Park building in the Barracas neighborhood, which he opened to the public each year. This new chapter in Jorge Roiger's career featured a series of photographs of stains the artist discovered in various places he visited with his camera. The resulting images were intervened with acrylic paint to complete the artwork. He also added to his production by creating works on canvas with acrylic.