Martha Boto was born in Buenos Aires on December 27, 1925, into a family of Spanish origin. When she was very young, she showed a predisposition for drawing and painting, and inherited the tastes of her grandfather and mother for theater, art, and music.
Education
With the encouragement of her mother, Martha enrolled at the National School of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires and graduated in 1946, giving her the title of "Professor of Drawing." The following year, she successfully passed the entrance examination to the highly renowned Graduate School of Fine Arts, where she deepened her knowledge. She graduated in 1950 and received the prestigious scholarship "Ernesto de la Carcova", which recognizes the best students.
Career
In the Fourties, she and her partner Gregorio Vardanega, an artist of Italian origin, were active participants in the lively artistic atmosphere of the era. The period was typified by forays into various schools and styles, from impressionist to expressionist painting, surrealism to abstraction, all of which led eventually to optical and kinetic art. In 1947, two painting prizes were awarded to Martha, demonstrating her talent and success in painting with her contemporaries. She was mostly intrigued with capturing landscapes in nature and scenes of daily life, before she turned to geometric abstraction in 1954.
Between 1951 and 1960, she had eight solo exhibitions devoted to geometric art. In 1956, she approached advocates of concrete art, who aimed to perpetuate the vanguard which was formed a few years earlier, with the groups "Arte Concreto Invencion", "Madi", and "Arte Nuevo." In 1957, Marthe joined the group ANFA (Not Figurative Artists Argentineans) and participated in numerous concrete art events. Having been the first in Argentina to create a work of art that involved movement, Boto and her husband chose to move to France in 1959 to further their artistic pursuits.
In the early sixties, Martha joined the Galerie Denise René, which promoted her work, both in Paris and abroad. In 1963, she used electricity in her work and made her first kinetic works. She collaborated with the international movement "New Trend" in 1963 and participated in the most crucial meetings of this group, whose objective was the recognition of the kinetics. In 1964, she had her first solo exhibition in Paris at the House of Fine Arts. Her famous Lumino-kinetic boxes emerged during that period. Many of those works were presented at the exhibition "Light and Motion" at the Modern Art Museum of the city of Paris in 1967.
The following year, she mainly produced mobiles with colored Plexiglas discs. In 1969, the Galerie Denise René organized a major retrospective that traced its kinetic artist course. During the early seventies, Martha Boto made her last kinetic structures devoid of light, inspired by the movement of the stars. In 1972, she gradually returned to painting and more traditional sculptural forms. During the sixties and beyond, she participated in many events in France and worldwide. Even today, she is represented in exhibitions devoted to geometric abstraction and kinetic art. French and foreign institutions, both private and public, preserve her works. Martha Boto died in Paris on October 13, 2004. In 2006, the Sicardi Gallery of Houston dedicated an exhibit both to Boto and Gregorio Vardanega, entitled "Contact."