The Professor and his light
“It has been said that light will travel beyond any notion or sensation…”

Tomas Alva Negri  1998
Member of the International Association of Art Critics
About Miguel Angel Vidal

Miguel Angel Vidal studied lines and light as an artistic form of expression.
He was a painter, sculptor, graphic designer and cartoonist as well as a professor and Rector of the Argentine Fine Arts Academy “Prilidiano Pueyrredon” where he himself studied with great masters such as Lino Eneas Spilimbergo and Eugenio
Daneri, graduating in 1952 with a degree as a Professor of Drawing.
Pioneer if the digital art world, his works can be found amongst others at the Computer Arts Society Archives in London’s Victoria & Albert Museum.
Born in Buenos Aires in 1928, he founded alongside Eduardo Mac Entyre, the “Movimiento Generativo” a movement that basing its work on the rigorous structural application of the straight line as a basic unit,  departed from a geometrical form, the intertwining lines of which gave way to new forms over a uniformly coloured background. During this period, Vidal produces work of a highly artistic standard and   reveals his inexhaustible inventiveness in elaborating his fundamental system, as is the case with  Homage to Albers (1965; Buenos Aires, Museum of Modern Art), in which he acknowledged his debt to a pioneer of geometric abstraction, Josef Albers.

His “topological” phase carries him into a new dimension in his work in which, experimenting with light, he mobilizes the background to give his work depth.
Through the 90s, we shall see how that light intensifies its presence and even though the artist will continue to recognize the line as a fundamental characteristic in his art, it will be displaced leaving the now obstinate presence of the artist’s representation of the symbolic energy of light at the heart of his work.

In the words of Alva Negri: “All traditions speak of Light and its infinite symbolism as something which has enriched both literature and art and which Vidal now captures magnificently”.
Miguel Angel Vidal died in January 2009.
His first exhibitions date back to 1954 and since 1957 (his first individual shows at the Rubbers Gallery, BsAs.) he takes part in several exhibitions both in Argentina and abroad: 1960, Salón Peuser with Eduardo Mac Entyre. 1977, Palatina Gallery. 1978, Washington Based International Exhibitions Foundation.  1979,  Palanza Award;  Nacional Fine Arts Museum, Bs As. 1980 “Hommage to Turner”; individual, “Pequeña Muestra”, Rosario; "El aniversario plástico más austral del mundo", Ushuaia; "La luz y sus espacios", Wildenstein, Buenos Aires. 1982 Konex Award; individual, Buenos Aires Modern Art Museum, and the Fondazione Pagani, Milán, Italy. 1985, "Abstraction in the 20th Century", Modern Art Museum, Foundation. 1987, Guggenheim Museum, New York. 1993, Provincial Fine Arts Museum "Emilio Guiñazu", Fader House, Mendoza. 1994, Konex Biennial, Fine Arts Museum.