ALFREDO SÁBAT: Mythological
Curator: Cristina Santa Cruz
ZINK Salon Privé®, Buenos Aires, Argentina
From September 1 to October 9, 2022
OPENING WEEKEND: September 1,2, and 3, 2022
Exhibition by appointment
(...) This is how Alfredo Sábat tells it in his paintings. The eye of the artist not only sees but makes people see. Its sensitivity perceives what is hidden (or what it is trying to hide), illuminates the corners, defines areas that remained hidden and gives us the joy of discovery, amazement and beauty. Those plastic forms of truth.
Diana Sperling
August, 2022
About the artist and his work
ALFREDO SÁBAT
Alfredo Sábat is a multifaceted artist with sophisticated skill. "Cartoonist. Painter. Cartoonist. Journalist. Graphic designer. Animator. Sometimes a musician. And several more etcetera.” This is how it is defined.
He was born in 1966 in Montevideo, Uruguay and has lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina since then. He studied Graphic Design at the University of Buenos Aires, later working in this area and in illustration, both advertising and editorial, in media such as the newspaper Clarín and the magazines Playboy (USA), Playboy (Argentina), Caras and Caretas and Barcelona , in addition to numerous media outlets from the US, Germany and Japan.
In 1997 he received the Abril Prize for Editorial Illustration in Brazil for a cartoon made for Playboy magazine, Argentina.
Together with his father Hermenegildo, he co-directed the visual arts magazine Selección Áurea .
From June 1997 to July 1999 he served as Illustrations Editor and illustrator of Trespuntos magazine. His work in the latter medium earned him the First Prize for Cartooning awarded by ADEPA (Association of Argentine Journalistic Entities) in 1998.
As a plastic artist, since 1996, he has held six individual exhibitions of oil paintings and sculptures in Argentina, and a group exhibition in New York in 2006. His 2007 individual exhibition at the Atica Gallery was called Teatro Olimpia and consisted of personal interpretations of Greek Myths.
In 1998, following designs by Hermenegildo Sábat, he created the “Gardel” trophy awarded annually by CAPIF (Argentine Chamber of Producers of the Phonographic Industry) to Argentine Music.
Starting in July 1999, he worked as an illustrator and cartoonist for the newspaper La Nación , an activity he continues to this day.
In 2005, together with Hermenegildo Sábat, Carlos Nine and Oscar Grillo, he created murals for the new “H” subway line, inaugurated in 2007 in Buenos Aires. In October 2006, the murals he created for the “Inclán” station were presented, dedicated to the tango singer Azucena Maizani.
Starting in 2006, he began to participate in international competitions. Since then, he has won First Prize in the Illustration category in the 2006 World Press Cartoon contest held in Sintra (Portugal), for the drawing “Silent Tsunamis”. He then won two special jury awards, one at the Rhodes Cartoon (Greece) and another at the Salão de Humor de Piracicaba (Brazil). And in December 2006 he won the First Prize of the Ranan Lurie Prize for Political Cartooning, organized by the United Nations Correspondents Association, also for the drawing “Silent Tsunamis”. In April 2007, he again won a World Press Cartoon award, this time Third Prize in the Cartoon category for a drawing of Fidel Castro. And in July of the same year, he received a Special Mention at the 24th Biennial of Humor in Art of Tolentino (Italy). In September 2007 he won First Prize at the Kosova World Cartoon Festival. In October 2007 he once again won the First Prize for cartooning awarded by ADEPA (Association of Journalistic Entities of Argentina), this time for his performance in the newspaper La Nación. In 2008 he made the illustrations for the new edition of the book “Del Cabildo al Shopping (pasando por la pingüinera)” by Enrique Pinti, published by Editorial Sudamericana. In May 2008 he won the First Prize in the “Belleza Intervenida” contest, dedicated to variations on the painting “Olimpia” by Edouard Manet, which was organized by the “Hoy en el Arte” Gallery. In 2009 he made his first foray into cartoons, another collaboration with Enrique Pinti, which was projected on stage during the play “Before I Forget” and which was presented at the Maipo Theater starting in January 2010. The exhibition “Figures and Figurines – Two Decades of Drawings and Illustrations”, his first retrospective and his first solo exhibition of graphic works, was exhibited at the Bernardino Rivadavia Cultural Center in the city of Rosario in April and May 2009, then in the MACLA in the city of La Plata in November 2009 and finally at the Centro Recoleta in the City of Buenos Aires in March and April 2010. In September 2011 he held the exhibition of portraits of psychoanalysts “Psyche”, presented at the Bollini Foundation. In July 2012 he published his first book, “We are Drawn”, published by Libros del Zorzal. It is a compilation of political drawings that appeared in “La Nación” between 2001 and 2011 and has a prologue by Santiago Kovadloff. In May/June 2015, together with Alejandra Moreno y Moreno, she held the painting exhibition “Reflejos de Alicia” at the Borges Cultural Center. It, dedicated to the characters from Lewis Carroll's books, was held 150 years after the appearance of “Alice in Wonderland” and was sponsored by the Lewis Carroll Society of England, the Lewis Carroll Society of United States and the British Embassy in Buenos Aires. In 2021 he illustrated the book “Cristina's Secret Letters” by Carlos R. Roberts, published by Editorial Catarsis.