ISLAA Spotlights is a series of focused presentations that highlight pivotal works from the collection across our programmatic spaces. These displays create opportunities for close engagement with artists and ideas that remain underrepresented in dominant art historical narratives, offering a platform to explore individual practices in greater depth.
This season, we are pleased to present a Spotlight on Aída Carballo (1916–1985, Argentina), a pioneering artist known for her incisive portrayals of urban life, fantastical imagery, and psychologically charged scenes. Working across drawing, printmaking, and painting, Carballo developed a deeply expressive practice shaped by autobiographical memory, social critique, and political engagement. Her work navigates themes such as femininity, madness, and marginality through an ironic yet tender approach to her subjects. Bringing together a selection of works spanning decades and mediums, this presentation underscores the range and complexity of her artistic practice— one that remains largely absent from major institutional collections outside Argentina.
The Spotlight series highlights ISLAA’s mission to support the diverse artistic voices of Latin America and its commitment to supporting the study and visibility of art from throughout the region. This season’s presentations— featuring work by Aída Carballo, Marcia Schvartz, Alicia Herrero, Ana López, and Cristina Schiavi—reflect on artistic responses to the shifting political, social, and cultural landscapes of twentieth-century Argentina, offering insight into how artists navigated themes of resistance, memory, and marginalization across generations.
Spotlight presentations are open during select hours and by appointment. To inquire about a tour or visit, please contact us at info@islaa.org.
Aída Carballo (Buenos Aires, 1916–1985) was a pioneering Argentine printmaker, ceramicist, illustrator, and educator whose personal and politically engaged practice significantly shaped the development of twentieth-century graphic arts in Argentina. Known for her expressive use of etching, aquatint, and lithography, Carballo created a singular body of work centered on social critique, autobiographical memory, and psychological introspection.
Carballo studied at the Escuela de Artes Decorativas de la Nación under Pío Collivadino and later at the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes Ernesto de la Cárcova and the Escuela Nacional de Cerámica. In the late 1950s, she was awarded a scholarship to study printmaking in France, Spain, and Portugal, experiences that expanded her technical knowledge and deepened her admiration for artists such as Rembrandt and Goya.
Carballo gained early recognition with her work La calle, el corazón y la lluvia (1948), which earned the First Prize in Printmaking at the 33rd Annual Salon of the Society of Watercolorists and Printmakers. In this etching, a young girl— neither child nor adult—stands in the rain, holding a hyper-realistic heart. Surrounding her is a neighborhood suspended between tradition and change, where chickens, iron railings, and stained-glass windows coexist with the looming presence of a modern apartment building. While this distinction helped establish Carballo’s reputation within Argentina’s graphic arts scene, marking one of her earliest instances of public recognition, the work also foreshadows Carballo’s preoccupation with psychological interiority and the political tenor that pervades most of her practice.
In 1951, Carballo held her first solo exhibition at Galería Müller in Buenos Aires, presenting a selection of ceramics, drawings, and prints. This milestone offered further exposure for the breadth of her artistic production at a time when she was consolidating her voice across multiple media. A renewed momentum in her career arrived in the 1960s, when both La ciudadana (1960) and Autorretrato con narices (1964) received awards from the Buenos Aires Salón Municipal and the Salón Nacional’s Premio de Honor, respectively. These works reflect Carballo’s engagement with the social and political issues of her time, often placing her own image—whether in solitude or surrounded by a crowd of men’s noses—as a demand for public participation and resistance, and as a protest against systemic oppression. In works from this period, such as Detenéos, entráis en la morada del Caballero (1963), Carballo portrays male figures through quixotic satire, combining parodic, theatrical poses with ironic allusions to rationalism. By overlaying the composition with phrases like “caballero es el que os acomete” and “nosotros somos cuerdos,” she offers an incisive critique of human absurdity and masculinity.
Carballo’s practice was periodically interrupted by recurring hospitalizations, which gave rise to series such as Hospicio (1956) and De los locos (1963). A haunting series of lithographs depicting patients in psychiatric institutions, De los locos marked a decisive shift from urban landscape to psychological and satirical portraiture drawn from her own experiences of internment. It was followed by De los amantes (1964), Los levitantes (1967), Los colectivos (1975), and Las muñecas (1975), each exploring themes of madness, desire, everyday life, and femininity with a subversive yet tender gaze.
Carballo’s activism was as central to her legacy as her artistic practice. In 1981, she cofounded the Movimiento por la Reconstrucción y el Desarrollo de la Cultura Nacional, together with fellow artists and intellectuals such as Ernesto Sabato, Ana Pampliega de Quiroga, Enrique Stein, Ricardo Monti, and Leda Valladares. In addition to resisting Argentina’s last military dictatorship and championing cultural memory and human rights, the group was committed to protecting national heritage from cultural commodification and highlighting marginalized Indigenous and folkloric traditions. That same year, Carballo created Estamos en la cosa (1981), a work that signals a moment of graphic refinement in her practice. Though not overtly political, it reflects the precision and confidence of an artist deeply engaged with the urgencies of her time. Her critical voice also reached broader audiences through her illustrations for La Nacion’s literary supplement from 1974 to 1984, and in 1984, she designed the poster for the Semana de la Cultura de la Resistencia.
A committed educator, Carballo taught drawing and printmaking for decades at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Manuel Belgrano and the Escuela Prilidiano Pueyrredón, as well as in her private studio, where she mentored a generation of Argentine artists, including Marcia Schvartz, Matilde Marín, María Inés Tapia Vera, Mabel Rubli, Eduardo Iglesias Brickles, and Cristina Santander. Her practice remains a touchstone for feminist art in Argentina and a vital expression of artistic resistance, humor, and resilience in the face of authoritarianism, mental illness, and social exclusion.
Carballo’s work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Art Museum of the Americas of the Organization of American States, Washington, DC (1976), and is held in the collections of institutions such as the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid.