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  • Delia Cancela (Buenos Aires, 1940)


    Fresh out of Art School, Delia participated actively in the Buenos Aires avant-garde scene of the 1960s, associated with an emergent youth culture and a free spirited comunion between art and everyday life. In collaboration with her then husband and fellow artist Pablo Mesejean, she presented pieces such as Love and life (1965), an installation that combined colorful paintings, ambientation, music and performance. In 1966, they exhibited a manifesto known as Nosotros Amamos (We Love) in which they proclaimed their love of international pop culture and their celebration of diversity in gender identity.

    Inspired by the world of design as well as the language of mass media and advertising, the duo created an image -for their work and themselves- that blurred the boundaries between art and fashion, and clashed with traditional cultural expectations. They received a grant to travel to Paris, and then settled in New York and London, where their work received immediate recognition and was published in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Nova, and other magazines.

    From the 80s onward, Delia’s solo career continued as a cross-over between fashion and art, leaving behind her former Pop aesthetic in favor of a more introspective one. In drawings, paintings, fashion figurines, pattern designs for fabric and textile pieces made up of gauze, ruffles and embroidery that depicts flowers, birds and rivers, she has built a vast feminine universe in constant self- renewal.

    Delia´s work was included in major group exhibitions, as The world goes Pop, at the Tate Modern in London (2015-2016) and International Pop, at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (2015). In Argentina, she has been awarded the Premio a la Trayectoria 2018, and had a retrospective in the Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires, among other recognitions. She lives and works between Buenos Aires and Paris.