Antonio Asis, Pioneering Op Artist, Has Died -ARTnews

Antonio Asis, an Argentine artist best known for his illusionistic and lively geometric compositions, has died. The news was confirmed by Sicardi Gallery in Houston, which did not immediately offer a cause of death or an age for Asis.

Born in 1932 in Buenos Aires, Asis began studying art at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes at age 14, and he later attended the city’s Escuela de Bellas Artes Prilidiano Pueyrredón. He moved to Paris in 1956 and, after befriending kinetic artists Yaacob Agam, Nicolas Schöffer, and Jesús-Rafael Soto, began experimenting with color and light. He cofounded Position, a group of Paris-based Argentine artists, in 1971.

Comprised of interacting, intersecting, and undulating shapes, Asis’s artworks disrupt viewers’ perceptions of dimensionality and space. His output included paintings, lithographs, prints, drawings, and mixed-media pieces.

His works are currently held in the collections of the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation in Miami, Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende in Santiago, Chile, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and other institutions. They figured in the 1967 Paris Biennale and the 1968 Casa de Cultura de Grenoble, as well as exhibitions at the Grand Palais in Paris, the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Museo Nacional de Tres de Febrero in Buenos Aires, and elsewhere.