Grilo, Sarah (1919–)

Sarah Grilo (b. 1919), Argentine painter. Born in Buenos Aires, Grilo lived in Madrid and Paris (1948–1950) and traveled throughout Europe and the United States (1957–1958). According to Damián Bayón, among the Buenos Aires group comprising José Fernández Muro, Clorindo Testa, Kasuya Sakai, and Miguel Ocampo, Grilo "always represented the extreme sensibility to color." From 1960 she showed this sensibility in compositions whose right-angled structures were permanently altered by the inclusion of circular forms. Her chromatic modulations are suggestive of the tonal values of Pierre Bonnard and his concept of color as a continuous state of exaltation in which form loses all importance. Later Grilo introduced tachiste effects (graphic signs). Her right-angled structures disappeared, giving way to a surface freely dotted with spots of paint and sprinkled with texts, words, letters, and numbers backed by radiant color, which created imaginary codices of great enchantment. Grilo has exhibited throughout North and South America as well as in Europe. She has received several awards, including the Wertheim Prize (Buenos Aires, 1961) and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (New York, 1962).

See alsoArt: The Twentieth Century; Buenos Aires.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Museum of Modern Art of Latin America (1985).

Lily Sosa De Newton, Diccionario biográfico de mujeres argentinas, 3d ed. (1986).

Vicente Gesualdo, Aldo Biglione, and Rodolfo Santos, Diccionario de artistas plásticos en la Argentina (1988).

Additional Bibliography

Barnitz, Jacqueline. Twentieth-Century Art of Latin America. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001.

                                Amalia Cortina Aravena