Phoenix Art Museum: 'Antonio Berni: Juanito & Ramona'

• Antonio Berni was regarded as one of the best and most famous Argentinean artists.
• Berni pioneered his own strain of New Realism.
• His fictional characters Juanito and Ramona have become folk heroes in Argentinean culture.
• Many of his works include materials gleaned from the slums of Buenos Aires.

Juanito Laguna migrated from the Argentinean countryside with his family to seek work in Buenos Aires but wound up in the capital city's shantytowns.

Ramona Montiel is a middle-class teen who struggled as a seamstress and was lured by promises of luxury into the life of a high-end prostitute.

Among Argentineans who seek social change, Juanito and Ramona are folk heroes, and they're the subject of many songs, poems, stories, YouTube videos and fan fiction.

They're also not real.

The characters were created in the 1950s by Antonio Berni, who's widely considered one of the best and most influential Argentinean artists of the 20th century. Berni pioneered his own strain of Nuevo Realismo (New Realism), an extension of social realism, and won a number of international awards for his thought-provoking yet accessible works.

Yet the artist, who died in 1981, remains relatively unknown in the U.S. Aside from a retrospective at the New Jersey State Museum and the Huntington Hartford gallery of Modern Art in New York City, his work has not been shown in America — until now.

The Phoenix Art Museum is displaying 111 Berni works portraying Juanito and Ramona in a narrative about the effects of industrialization in Argentina and the widening gap between wealthy aristocrats and the rural poor who flooded the cities. The extensive exhibit comes to Phoenix from the Museum of Fine Art, Houston.

"We brought an exhibition of contemporary Argentinean art here in 1999, and there were six or eight pieces by Berni, who I had never heard of," said Jim Ballinger, director of the Phoenix Art Museum. "He blew everyone out of the water, and I wondered how terrific he must be based on the little bit we received. ... There has never been a show of Berni's like this in North America, and we jumped at the chance."

Berni utilized progressive techniques to portray Juanito and Ramona, including assemblages and sculptures crafted from found materials, and intricate woodblocks to create incredibly detailed xylo-collages and xylo-collage reliefs.

Berni had long created works to express his concerns about social injustice, beginning with his paintings in the 1930s and '40s in his innovative New Realism style. In the mid-'50s, he was struck by the social injustice and poverty in his native country and turned to a different medium, assemblage.

In 1958, Berni began his works depicting Juanito and Ramona. They constituted the bulk of his works until 1977, but only once do they appear together.

The assemblages featuring Juanito use materials Berni found while scouring the dumps of Buenos Aires.

"Berni told the life of migrant workers in the truest way he knew how to do this, by incorporating the materials from those people's lives in order to speak to the living conditions that people like Juanito lived in," said Michael Wellen, assistant curator of Latin American and Latino Art for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

The Phoenix exhibit was a major undertaking that took several years to arrange. The Houston museum has a relationship with the Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires, and with their help and assistance from Berni's family, they were able to locate a number of privately owned works.

"This is an amazing opportunity for us to showcase the hallmarks of Berni's creativity," said Vanessa Davidson, curator of Latin American art at the Phoenix Art Museum. "Berni communicated a social message in such an interesting way through his radical artistic vision."

In "Juanito Va a La Ciudad," the ominous sky is created from scrap metal, looming above Juanito as he trudges through a dump. In "Las Vacaciones de Juanito," he travels with his family on vacation in a beat-up automobile made of real car parts. Corporate logos are displayed in many of the scenes with dumps to reflect the effects of consumerism.

Although Juanito's life seems depressing, there is a sense of hope in many of the works in which he appears.

"Berni said once that Juanito is a boy who is poor; he is not a poor boy," Wellen said. "He exists not to simply elicit sympathy, because we want him to succeed. Berni gives a certain degree of maturity and respect to his character, who finds way to entertain himself and find moments of joy and pleasure in a desolate world."

In several, a young Juanito is enjoying such childhood pleasures as fishing, flying a kite and playing with a spinning top, all amid the trash heaps of the slums. Eventually you see consumerism enter the slums in "Juanito y Su Familia Mirando el Televisor," a 1974 work depicting a grown Juanito with his own family, watching television.

Berni brought the character of Ramona Montiel to life while living in Paris. He often visited flea markets and antiques shops, and he found inspiration in Parisian courtesans and showgirls. Ramona is shown performing for her escorts, lured into prostitution so she can enjoy expensive clothing and jewelry, the affluent life. Her suitors appear as well: military leaders, politicians, clergymen, all with grotesque visages.

Ramona is seen in xylo-collage works and xylo-college-reliefs, intricately cut woodblockcreations, many of which are displayed next to the finished prints. Berni used found materials for various effects: coins and bottle caps for the eyes of Ramona's wealthy suitors, delicate lace for her sultry outfits, machine parts for such details as Ramona's high heels and garter belts.

The exhibit also features a number of monster sculptures that haunt Ramona's dreams. "La Sordidez" ("Sordidness"), a monster from the series "Cosmic Monsters," features old flash-camera reflectors for eyes, rusty nails and screws protruding from its cheeks, tree roots and scrap-metal spikes on its back.

"Historical documentation has shown that the monsters are the embodiment of Ramona's nightmares," Wellen said. "They symbolize the societal pressures and influential figures in Ramona's life who run the whole gamut of Argentinean society, from those high in office to lowly pickpockets. These trash-assembled figures take advantage of Ramona."

Juanito and Ramona live in parallel universes, never meeting except in the 1962 painting "Carnaval de Juanito," which Davidson calls an anything-goes celebration bringing together people of all social classes.

Ballinger hopes visitors are inspired by the exhibition, and realize that the social issues Berni addressed still exist around the globe.

"I hope people come away with a better sense of what life was like, and what it continues to be in a certain degree to live in Latin America, and also how it relates to people in all urban areas, even Phoenix," Ballinger said.

The exhibit will travel to Buenos Aires, and curators are working on taking it to Bogata, Colombia, and Mexico City as well.

'Antonio Berni: Juanito and Ramona': Through Sunday, Sept. 21. Phoenix Art Museum, 1625 N. Central Ave. $10-$15; $6 for ages 6-17; free for age 5 or younger and for museum members. 602-257-1880, phxart.org.

Reach the reporter at kellie.hwang@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8690.