César Paternosto

b. 1931 La Plata, Argentina – lives in Segovia, Spain

Around 1957, César Paternosto started creating artworks based on Geometric Abstraction. After attending a serial music concert, he was enthralled by Anton Webern's pregnant silences, which influenced the next development in his art. By the end of the 1960s, Paternosto moved the emphasis of depicted matter in his paintings to the outer-sides of the canvas, leaving the front blank. By shifting the attention to the sides, he was questioning the traditional viewing of paintings frontally, and as the range of the pictorial field was expanded to the sides, the three dimensionality of the painting turned it into an object. His 2012 essay, “Painting as Object: Geometric Forms and Lateral Expansions,” explained the evolution and continuity of his idea, from the early lateral vision canvases, to his most recent work.
In 1977, Paternosto began to travel to Bolivia and Peru to study the archaeological sites Tiwanaku, Ollantaytambo, and Machu Picchu. These trips marked an important turning point in his work sparking new formal explorations in form, composition, and color. By rooting his art in American autochthonous traditions rather than in the modern European model, Paternosto created a new and original type of abstraction based on the centuries-old woven textiles and sculptural stones of the Inca.
Paintings by Paternosto are found in various prestigious collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid; the Kunstmuseum, Bern, Switzerland; and the Städtisches Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, Germany, amongst others.

Please click for CV and Chronology

Painting as Object: the Lateral Expansion. New Works.

CÉSAR PATERNOSTO
Painting as Object: the Lateral Expansion. New Works.

Gallery exhibition catalogue with essay by Edward J. Sullivan; extensive illustrated chronology, 90 pages fully illustrated.

$ 20.00 + postage

White/Red

César Paternosto
White/Red

This beautifully designed and printed catalogue of essays, large color plates, and illustrated chronology explores Paternosto's artistic contributions, influences and achievements over the last 4 decades.

Essays by Lucy R. Lippard, Ricardo Martín-Crosa & Toshiaki Minemura; printed on Fabriano paper by Lucini officina d'arte graffica, Milano, Italy; Hardcover, 24 color, 56 b&w illustrations, 144 pages

$40.00 + postage

The Stone and the Thread: Andean Roots of Abstract Art

César Paternosto
The Stone and the Thread: Andean Roots of Abstract Art

Challenging the notion that abstraction is a development of the modern West, Paternosto reveals its deep roots as an indigenous American tradition and shows how that tradition reverberates in the work of twentieth-century artists... In this major, paradigm-shifting book... César Paternosto offers the first comprehensive analysis of ancient Andean art - textiles, pottery, stone sculpture, and the famous lines in the Nazca desert - into one coherent whole...

César Paternosto; 272 pages; In English, University of Texas Press, hardcover, 172 photographs and illustrations

SOLD OUT

North and South Connected: An Abstraction of the Americas


North and South Connected: An Abstraction of the Americas

Catalogue of the 1998-99 gallery exhibition with a major essay by the artist and historian César Paternosto and the essay: Three Andean Tunics – Color and Geometry as Metaphor by Vanessa Drake & Andres Moraga. As reviewed by Holland Cotter in the New York Times, "... the show traces a line, or rather several lines, between pre-Columbian art and 20th-century American modernism, with some eye-opening results."

Cecilia de Torres, Ltd. 52 pages, 16 color plates, 42 black and white illustrations

$ 20.00 + postage

Madeline Murphy Turner, "Ex-Centricty: A Conversation with César Paternosto," MoMA (moma.org/magazinearticles/544), April 26, 2021.

César Paternosto, "The Ec-centric Gaze," The Brooklyn Rail, October, 2020

Mercedes Pérez Bergliaffa, César Paternosto, a los 88 años, el maestro del arte explica su obra, Clarín.com, 17/10/2019

"The time of César Paternosto, the artist who challenged the eye in art," at Infobae.com

The Fine Arts presents “César Paternosto: the eccentric gaze” at JotaPosta.com

Celina Chatruc, "César Paternosto: "Las artes visuales están invadidas por el espectáculo; la geometría te plantea otro tipo de reflexión," Diario La Nación, October 2, 2019

Victoria Verlichak, César Paternosto, María Calcaterra-Moderno & Contemporáneo, ArtNexus Review, Issue No. 111, December 2018-February 2019, pages 83-84.

Tortosa, Alina, "Cesar Paternosto: Recent Work," Arte Al Día

"El pintor Argentino Cesar Paternosto, el artista de siete vidas," Diario La Vanguardia, January 24, 2018

"César Paternosto presenta 'Hacia una pintura objetual' en el Museo Thyssen," latamuda.com, January 16, 2018

Paternosto dialoga en el Thyssen con los maestros del siglo XX para mostrar a la "pintura como objeto", Europa Press, Nov. 13, 2017

Guerrero, Benito, "La pintura objetual de Cesar paternosto se expone en Madrid," Cambio 16 (cultura) Nov. 12, 2017

Interview Elliot Bostwick Davis, Arte al Dia

Haiku Reviews by Peter Frank_Review of CDT Show 2012

Martin, Aurelio, "César Paternosto recupera en sus cuadros el silencio a través del color y la geometría," Diario El Pais, January 27, 2004

César Paternosto's New Book

César Paternosto's New Book

We are pleased to announce César Paternosto's new book:

"La irrupción del otro: la abstracción en la modernidad tardía (The Irruption of the Other – Abstraction in late modernity)"

Ediciones La Bahía, 392 pages

[ISBN: 9788412020373]

Available only  in Spanish.

To purchase the book, please click here.
To view a sample of the book, please click here
HANS ULRICH OBRIST & CÉSAR PATERNOSTO:LIVE ONLINE CONVERSATION

HANS ULRICH OBRIST & CÉSAR PATERNOSTO:LIVE ONLINE CONVERSATION

Friday, October 9, 2020, 1 p.m. EST
Live Online Conversation
RSVP

The Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA) is pleased to announce an upcoming conversation between curator Hans Ulrich Obrist and painter, sculptor, and theorist César Paternosto, organized in conjunction with the release of Hans Ulrich Obrist & César Paternosto: Interview. Presented by The Institute of Fine Arts at New York University and moderated by Dr. Edward J. Sullivan, this event will illuminate the Argentine artist’s groundbreaking career and immense contributions to postwar abstraction.

César Paternosto (b. 1931, La Plata, Argentina) is a painter, sculptor, and theorist. Paternosto lived in New York between 1967 and 2004, when he moved to Segovia, Spain. At the beginning of the 1960s he embraced abstraction at a time in which painting was still the cutting-edge art. It was in New York in 1969, however, that he conceived a radical “lateral vision” of painting that brought the pictorial notations to the side edges of the picture. Toward the end of the 1970s an encounter with the ancient arts of the Americas led him to pursue systematic research on the eccentric origins of abstraction in non-European cultures, about which he later wrote, published (The Stone and the Thread: Andean Roots of Abstract Art, 1996), and organized exhibitions (most notably, Abstraction: The Amerindian Paradigm, 2001). All along he has continued developing pictorially, as well as intermittently in sculpture, these foundational principles of his work.

Hans Ulrich Obrist (b. 1968, Zurich, Switzerland) is Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries in London. Prior to this, he was Curator at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since his first show, “World Soup (The Kitchen Show)” in 1991, he has curated more than 300 exhibitions. Obrist has lectured internationally at academic and art institutions, and is a contributing editor to Artforum, AnOther Magazine, Cahiers D’Art, and 032C; he is a regular contributor to Mousse and Kaleidoscope, and he writes columns for Das Magazin and Weltkunst. In 2011 he received the CCS Bard Award for Curatorial Excellence, and in 2015 he was awarded the International Folkwang Prize for his commitment to the arts. His recent publications include Ways of Curating (2015), The Age of Earthquakes(2015), Lives of the Artists, Lives of the Architects (2015), Mondialité (2017), Somewhere Totally Else (2018), and The Athens Dialogues (2018).



For more information, please click here.

Gallery artists at MoMA Exhibition

Gallery artists at MoMA Exhibition

We are pleased to announce Joaquín Torres-García, María Freire and César Paternosto's participation in the following exhibition:

"Journeys of Abstraction—The Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Gift" at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York

On view through March 14, 2020

For more information, please click here.

Cesar Paternosto at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes

Cesar Paternosto at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes

We are pleased to announce César Paternosto's upcoming solo exhibition:

César Paternosto: La mirada excéntrica, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina

On view October 8, 2019 - February 2, 2020

Opening Reception: Tuesday, October 8, 7 pm

For more information, please click here.

For a featured article in La Nación Newspaper (in spanish) please click here.

Cecilia de Torres, Ltd. at ARCO 2019

Cecilia de Torres, Ltd. at ARCO 2019

We are pleased to announce our participation in ARCO Madrid 2019, featuring a special exhibition for "Perú en Arco":

César Paternosto: A Journey through Abstraction

BOOTH 7E09

Dates: February 27 - March 3, 2019

For a preview of our booth, please click here.

Gallery artists at Fondation Cartier

Gallery artists at Fondation Cartier

We are pleased to announce Joaquín Torres-García, Gonzalo Fonseca and Cesar Paternosto's participation in the following exhibition:

Southern Geometries, from Mexico to Patagonia,Fondation Cartier, Paris, France

From October 14, 2018 to February 24, 2019

For more information, please click here.

César Paternosto's Upcoming Exhibition

César Paternosto's Upcoming Exhibition

We are pleased to announce César Paternosto's upcoming exhibition:

César Paternosto, Obras Recientes, Guillermo de Osma Galería, Madrid, Spain

Opening Reception: Tuesday, November 22, 2017, 7:30 PM

On view: November 22, 2017 to January 15, 2018

For more information, please click here.

César Paternosto's Exhibition at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum

César Paternosto's Exhibition at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum

We are pleased to announce Cesar Paternosto's upcoming exhibition:

César Paternosto: Hacia una pintura objetual, El Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain

Opening Reception: Monday, November 13, 12:30 pm

On view: November 13, 2017 to January 28, 2018

For more information, please click here.

César Paternosto's new exhibition

César Paternosto's new exhibition

We are pleased to announce César Paternosto's new exhibition:

El silencio de las lineas, María Calcaterra Galería, Buenos Aires, Argentina, October 1st through December 1st, 2015

Opening Reception: October 1st, 2015, 7-9pm.

For more information about the exhibition, please contact María Calcaterra by clicking here.

César Paternosto exhibition at Galerie Denise Rene

César Paternosto exhibition at Galerie Denise Rene

We are pleased to announce César Paternosto's exhibition:

Paternosto, Galerie Denise Rene-Rive Gauche, Paris, France

Opening Reception: Thursday, April 16, 2015, 7-9pm

For more information, please contact the gallery at info@deniserene.com