León Ferrari (Buenos Aires, 1920–2013), son of the Italian architect, painter, and photographer Augusto Cesare Ferrari and Susana Celia del Pardo, was one of the leading figures of the conceptual art movement in Latin America. He discovered his artistic vocation in Italy: after intense sculptural experiences (metal filaments, ceramics, plaster, cement) between 1954 and 1960, his research focused on semantic and asemantic writing, calligraphic and epistolary, and mail art during the 1960s and 1970s, later opening up to installation structures, performance, and sound interactions between sculpture, public, and video. His works often include practices of mimesis, repetition, secret sign codes, tantric manuals, and profane reinterpretations of the Bible.

Ferrari embodied a post-surrealist neo-avant-garde, combining alchemical signals with solutions drawn from Situationism, Fluxus, New Realism, and Pop Art. He was noticed by Arturo Schwarz, who included him in the International Anthology of the Avant-Garde (Milan, 1962). The incongruous—sometimes even excremental—elements in his works act as a polemic against secular and Christian power, discrimination, and violence against women. His 1965 sculpture La civilización occidental y cristiana (Jesus crucified on a fighter jet FH107), exhibited in 2004 at the Centro Recoleta in Buenos Aires, provoked a harsh accusation of blasphemy by then-Cardinal Bergoglio.

Key works such as Quadro escrito (1964), La civilización occidental y cristiana (1965), and Nosotros no sabíamos (1976) mark Ferrari’s artistic and human path, one of freedom and denunciation. His militant commitment led him into exile in São Paulo from 1976 to 1991, following the loss of his son Ariel. His art is a shamanic cry that transforms aesthetics into ethics, breaking indifference and questioning the untouchable.

Following the retrospectives Infiernos e idolatrías (2000) at the ICI and the 2004 show at Centro Recoleta—both contested by ultra-Catholic groups—Ferrari solidified his international fame: he participated in Documenta in Kassel, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Museo Ludwig, São Paulo Biennial, Museo Reina Sofía, MoMA Buenos Aires, Smithsonian, Havana Biennial, and Museo Carrillo Gil, among other institutions. He received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale in 2007 and had a show at MoMA NY in 2009; in 2010 he was guest of honor at Les Rencontres d’Arles. In Argentina, he received various Konex honors (1992, 2002, 2012).

From 2021 to 2023, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires organized a micro-site and a series of commemorative events: the anthological exhibition León Ferrari. Recurrencias (May–August 2023), with around 250 works and an outdoor sound installation; Ferrari infinito (March–September 2021), with 120 graphic works from the Brazilian period; and a survey of photographs by his father Augusto Ferrari (April–July 2023).

Internationally, the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid and the Centre Pompidou in Paris have recently dedicated retrospectives to him, consolidating his role in the global artistic landscape.

Major future solo exhibitions are currently scheduled: at the Museo de Bellas Artes (Buenos Aires), Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid), Van Abbe Museum (Eindhoven), and the Musée National d’Art Moderne – Centre Pompidou (Paris). Since 2008, Galleria Michela Rizzo has collaborated with the artist and subsequently with his Estate, inaugurating a solo show at Palazzo Palumbo Fossati, curated by Irma Arestizabal.