Martha Boto was born December 27, 1925 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In the 1930s, she and her partner Gregorio Vardanega, an artist of Italian origin, were active participants in the era's lively art scene. The period was typified by forays into various schools and styles, including Impressionism, Expressionm, Surrealism, and abstraction, leading eventually to Optical and Kinetic Art. The first artists in Argentina to create works of art that involved movement, Vardanega and Boto chose to move to France in 1959 to further their artistic pursuits. During this time both artists were constructing plexiglas works, which were most often mobiles suspended in space.

Boto would soon play a key role in the evolution of Optical and Kinetic art. In 1961 she presented her works at the Galerie Denise René in an exhibit entitled Art Abstrait Constructif International. Focussing her work around the concepts of movement, illumination, and color, Boto explored the potential of materials that could modify, absorb, and reflect light, i.e. plexiglas, aluminum, or stainless steel. In 1964 she approached upon an even more articulated aesthetic, utilizing electric mechanisms and projected light on objects in movement. creating the first kinetic-light boxes.

Mirrors, multiangular surfaces, or reflective metal played a fundamental role in the artist's ability to distort space and to transform the appearance of each ordinary element of an object in order to suggest an undefined depth. In the same year, Boto exhibited works at La Maison des Beaux-Arts in Paris and once more at the Galerie Denise René in 1969. Throughout the course of the 1990s, her works were exhibited in France at l’Espace Bateau Lavoir in 1993, la Galerie Argentine in 1996, and the Saint-Lambert Post Office in 1997. Martha Boto died in Paris, on October 13, 2004. In 2006, the Sicardi Gallery in Houston dedicated an exhibition to both Boto and Vardanega, entitled Contact. Le cyber Cosmos de Boto et Vardanega.


Artworks