Jorge de La Vega - Biography

Biography

Jorge de la Vega was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on March 27, 1930. From about 1948 to 1952he studied architecture at the Universidad de Buenos Aires before quitting at this to pursue his true passion: art. He began creating his first art in the mid 1940s, and during the 1950s he created both representational and abstract geometric paintings. In 1961 he and three other Argentine artists created the Otra Figuración group which he worked with from 1961-1965. He traveled to Europe with this group where they were inspired to create a new form of art all their own. He later traveled to the United States on his own, and was greatly influenced by the Pop Art movement in New York City. During his time in the U.S., he also worked at Cornell University as a visiting professor/artist. Upon returning to Argentina he gave up the visual arts, and spent the last few years of his life as a popular singer/lyricist. He died in Buenos Aires on August 26, 1971.

As an artist, de la Vega may be best described in this quote said by his Otra Figuración colleague, Luis Felipe Noé, after de la Vega's death (as a farewell to his close friend): "Jorge was a painter, Jorge sang, Jorge was a lyricist of the absurd and of chaos. That chaos which almost swallowed him at some point in his life. But with much sense of humor, with a great desire for health, for clean air, he overcame it; he redefined himself, through his constant method of turning things around. He started by turning painting around, showing a freedom very few have had. If one does not do what one wants in painting, where will he do it? he told me once. Then he painted a world of twisted and turned—around persons: that of the apparent consumerist society. With his eyes of artist from an underdeveloped country he looked at the most developed country and x-rayed it cruelly. He then sang that things should be turned upside down. He died when he was becoming aware that what had to be overturned was much more than painting, much more than himself: the entire society."