Adolfo NIGRO

Adolfo Nigro was born in Rosario City, Argentina, on September 22, 1942. He started painting when was about ten years old, together with his twin brother, Jorge, a painter himself, "under the pleased eyes and encouragement of my parents", in his own words. He recalls from Rosario, his hometown, the relationship to the river, as well as country images like haystacks, farms, cartwheels; stubborn presences of Water and Earth in his work, which will never leave him. The look in his eyes directed to the river unveil him the idea of change, of the erratic, of the come and go, of the failure to stop. Many years later, he would refresh these personal experiences when he visited Barcelona.

Nigro's painting has always kept apart from the customary patterns sanctioned by established circles. He has never worried about coming into contact with powerful groups acting at international level or within Argentina's cultural milieu. Nor has he been interested in drawing the attention of well-known characters. His painting has always been alien to changing fashions and wordly trends. Although receptive, his oeuvre has always paid heed to its own inner coherence, to the rigourous pursuit of the artist, at all times eager to grasp the sole, peculiar vibration which made him feel the flow of life and art.

Yet fairly abreast of the times, this circumstance made Nigro's oeuvre appear to be lonely, restrained, deprived of a context rendering it self-evident. Nigro is an epitome of the artist who keeps aloof, who protects his creative privacy. For such reason, only if we examine his works consistently with their continuity and coherence, shall we discover their spiritual stature as a whole, and their current significance as complete oeuvre. Nigro has attained a pictorial language which draws its raison d'etre from itself. It needn't come out of its contextual autonomy to assert its strength. Its assertion originates in a code which, handled vigorously and meaningfully, was acquired by the artist after long years of looking attentively upon the pulse of life.