L'Ile de l'insomnie, 1998

Antonio Segui   Famous Artists

Antonio Seguí was an Argentine artist known for his playful yet sharp observations of urban life, creating scenes where humor, satire and human behavior blend into a vivid, instantly recognizable visual world. He was born on January 11, 1934 in Córdoba, Argentina, in a family of wealthy merchants.

He arrived in France in 1951 to study painting and sculpture. In 1952, he moved to Spain for his studies. In 1957, he had his first solo show in Argentina. In 1958, he went on a long trip in South America and in Central America, before settling in Mexico, where he studied printmaking techniques. In 1961, he returned to work in Argentina, before moving permanently to Paris in 1963.

He lived in Arcueil in a former property of Emile Raspail.

At the beginning of his career, influenced by artists such as George Grosz and Otto Dix, his work was close to an expressionist figuration, full of irony. Little by little, his figuration evolved towards the absurd, constructing a sort of theater, a stage on which a man in movement is seeking his place in the world.

The humor is overcoming existential anxiety and he attempts to orchestrate in his own way the hopes and the madness of a human comedy, ironic, falsely naive and unsettling.

The military dictatorship in Argentina forces him to emigrate: "I did not make any direct attack, but people who are not very intelligent think that when you are not with them, you are against them."

Each of the works of the Latin-American artist carries in it the image of the city, of the night and of his homeland: "I have solved my problems with my mother, with God, but with Cordoba! The city stayed as it was in my memories, and I still go back there in my dreams..."

Using charcoal, pastels, pencils or pen, he gives life to a colorful and graphic world which seems come from the universe of comics, having as a background the whole urban hustle and bustle.

Antonio Seguí died in 2022 after a long artistic career.