Nueva Figuración

also: New Figuration · Neofiguración

movement 1950s-1960s Argentina Mexico

Nueva Figuración ('New Figuration') was a movement of the late 1950s and 1960s in Spain and Latin America that reclaimed the human figure without returning to academic realism. Finding geometric abstraction and informalism detached from social upheaval, artists in Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela, and Colombia turned to a raw, subjective figuration. In Argentina the core was the Otra Figuración group - Jorge de la Vega, Luis Felipe Noé, Rómulo Macció, and Ernesto Deira - who shared a studio and exhibited together from 1961 to 1965. In Mexico, José Luis Cuevas and the Nueva Presencia group attacked the nationalist mural tradition. Across the movement, agitated brushwork, collage, and often grotesque imagery confront power, violence, and alienation; in Colombia the impulse took the form of Fernando Botero's inflated figures and Débora Arango's political satires.

The Tribuna of the Uffizi (Zoffany)
The Tribuna of the Uffizi (Zoffany)Public domain (credit: Johann Zoffany) · source

Defining characteristics

  • The human figure restored as subject, but distorted, fragmented, or grotesque rather than idealized
  • Loose, agitated, expressionistic brushwork; paint thrown, scraped, and splattered
  • Bright, saturated color set against dark, Goyaesque passages
  • Collage and mixed media worked into the painted surface
  • Raw, anti-aesthetic finish that rejects polished academic technique
  • Crowded, claustrophobic compositions that press figures against the picture plane

Key figures

  • Luis Felipe Noé (1933-2025) — Intellectual leader of Argentina's Otra Figuración and author of its treatise Antiestética (1965)
  • Rómulo Macció (1931-2016) — Otra Figuración painter of spontaneous, socially charged figuration
  • Jorge de la Vega (1930-1971) — Otra Figuración member whose textured canvases and collages edged figures out of abstraction
  • Ernesto Deira (1928-1986) — Otra Figuración painter of Goya-influenced, grotesque figuration
  • José Luis Cuevas (1934-2017) — Mexican draftsman who broke with muralism and pioneered neofigurative ink drawing

Example works

  • History of Human Indulgence — Luis Felipe Noé (1960)
  • Thundering Jupiter — Luis Felipe Noé (1960)
  • Danza de montaña — Jorge de la Vega (1963)

Sources

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