Magdalena Jitrik (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1966) lived in Mexico from 1974 to 1987, where she began her artistic training at the National School of Visual Arts. Since 1990, when she held her first solo exhibition, she has been building a career marked by a deep inquiry into revolutionary utopias, the legacies of the left, and the possible forms of articulation between art and politics.
Jitrik gained notoriety not only for her paintings — which engage with abstraction and modernist formalism — but especially for her ability to cross languages and historical periods. Titled with slogans, dates, and the names of historical uprisings, such as Manifiesto, Revueltas, and Desobediencia, her works represent a deliberate attempt to connect painting with an expanded field of political and social meaning.
Between 2002 and 2007, she was a founding member of the Taller Popular de Serigrafía (TPS), a collective born in the heat of popular mobilizations following the 2001 crisis in Argentina. With the TPS, she took part in graphic actions and urban interventions, including the historic participation in the 27th Bienal de São Paulo (2006), as well as festivals and occupations linked to the piquetero movement and recovered factories. Her work was also connected to the Asamblea Popular de San Telmo, with whom she created public memorial interventions, such as a monolith built with bricks taken from a former clandestine detention center.
The relationship between art and history, memory and collective action, is a constant thread in her practice. Jitrik invokes revolutionary figures and traumatic events — the Paris Commune, the Black Panthers, the Auschwitz Sonderkommando — to explore the limits of representation and the power of images in the face of barbarism. In addition to participating in international biennials — Porto Alegre (2009), Thessaloniki (2009), Istanbul (2011), Manifesta 9 (2012) — Magdalena Jitrik also develops curatorial projects, collaborations with social movements, and research into socialist and libertarian imaginaries.
Selected solo exhibitions include: Pueblo Fantasma, Luisa Strina, São Paulo, Brazil (2023); El Silencio, Luisa Strina, São Paulo, Brazil (2019); Venceremos // Black is Beautiful, Centro Cultural Universidad Nacional General Sarmiento and Casa Doblas, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2017); Vanguardia – America, MACBA, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2016).
Selected group exhibitions include: Qué cosa, la poesía visual?, Centro Cultural Kirchner, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Luchadoras: Mujeres en la colección, Fundación Casa de México en España, Madrid, Spain (2023); Colección MACBA , Preludio: Intención Poética, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain (2022); Culture and The People: El Museo del Barrio, 1969-2019, Museo del Barrio, New York, USA (2019); Power and Adversity – Latin American Art in Portuguese Collections, Museu de Lisboa / Pavilhão Branco and Pavilhão Preto, Lisbon, Portugal (2017); Verboamérica, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Buenos Aires (2016); Retour sur l'Abîme – l'art à l'épreuve du génocide, Les Musées de Belfort, France (2015); El teatro de la pintura, Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires (2014).
Collections that include her work: MACBA, Barcelona; Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Rosario (MACRo), Rosario, Argentina; Museo de Bellas Artes de Bahía Blanca, Argentina; FRAC – Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Marseille, France; Fundación ARTEBA, Buenos Aires; MALBA – Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires; Centro de Arte 2 de Mayo, Madrid, Spain; Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), UNAM, Mexico.