Argentinian artist Antonio Segui dies

Argentine painter and sculptor Antonio Segui, a major figure in the Latin American art scene, died Saturday in Buenos Aires at the age of 88, several close sources said, with many artists, museums and personalities expressing their condolences.

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Creator of the mythical little men in hats that populate his satirical work, Antonio Segui is the author of a prolific figurative oeuvre of paintings, prints, lithographs and engravings that illustrate an ironic vision of society, steeped in nostalgia and of poetry.

Although he has lived in France since the 1960s, the artist was in Argentina with his wife, a source from the Ministry of Culture confirmed to AFP.

Antonio Segui died of heart failure after hip surgery, La Nacion newspaper reported, citing relatives linked to his family.

Born on January 11, 1934 in Cordoba, 700 km west of Buenos Aires, Antonio Segui organized some 200 individual exhibitions during his long career.

In France, he was promoted in 2018 to the rank of officer in the order of Arts and Letters and was a member of the European Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters.

After studying painting and sculpture in France and Spain from 1951, he traveled throughout Latin America and finally settled in France in 1963.

In 2005, the Center Pompidou devoted the first retrospective to him, in France, of his works on paper

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," Antonio Segui told AFP in an interview in Paris when he presented in 2019, at the age of 85, an exhibition of half a hundred of his works. to the National Library of France (BNF), to which he had just donated half a thousand of them, including prints, portfolios and illustrated books.

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Although living in France, he never stopped returning to Argentina, except during the years of the dictatorship (1976-1983), when the military even refused to renew his passport.

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," he told AFP.