ANTONIO SEGUI, RECENT WORKS. Paintings, Sculptures, Prints.
Edward Lucie-Smith.
(...) Seguí’s work shows not only the nature of his artistic roots in Argentina, but the remarkable originality and verve of his own contribution to Latin American Modernism. One of the true distinguishing marks of Seguí’s work is its wonderful sense of humour. In the catalogue of an exhibition called «À vous de faire l’histoire», shown in 1998 at «La Maison de l’Amérique Latine» in Paris, he comments: «A sense of humour is the only thing that can save us... Yes, I’m for the globalisation of humour! In art, too, this is something that can save us. In France, humour is sarcastic, sometimes cynical. In Argentina, and above all in Córdoba (the city of Seguí’s birth), which is a city of students, humour is derisive - it deals with the absurdity of daily life. People will say of someone that he’s "as use¬ess as an ashtray on a motor-scooter..."».
(...) Meanwhile, how are we to place that Seguí does in the complex artistic situation that now prevails at the beginning of the 21st century? Seguí is a veteran of 20th century Modernism, and he is one of the few artists of his generation (he was born in 1934) who has survived with his reputation intact and who is still creating work of great originality. The reason for this survival is, in my view, his populism, his keen sense of what is likely to communicate immediately with the ordinary spectator, the proverbial «man in the street». He is keenly aware of the way in which the supposedly experimental avant-garde has in fact been transformed into a kind of academy, and he is determined not to be caught in this trap. At the same time, he remains keenly aware of what the original Modernists achieved, and is not afraid to incorporate some of their discoveries in his own work.
(Edward Lucie-Smith, in Antonio Seguí, Frissiras Museum, Athens, Greece, 2003).
