Marta Minujín, La Destrucción, 1963
Marta Minujín
La Destrucción

Marta Minujín (*1941, Argentina) played a key role in the avantgarde in Argentina in the 1960s and 70s. In 1963, she staged her first joint happening in Paris, "La Destrucción", in which she and fellow artists burned the sculptures they had made during their stay in Paris in an impressive action. Since then, she has performed numerous, large–scale happenings and actions, sometimes spanning various continents, and has broken new ground working with new telecommunication media. She uses soft, impermanent materials and focuses on the participation of the audience and the release of collective energy. “The work of art is the instant, in which the individual lives, not the thing. The advent of development, and not of forms, which end up relegated to the level of accessories. A society’s art in constant change cannot be by any means a static image.” (Marta Minujín)

La Destruccion (The Destruction) is Minujín’s first happening. Interested in collaborative practices, she invited artists such as Christo and Lourdes Castro to create, tear down, recreate and eventually burn their sculptural installations in a vacant lot in Paris. The happening’s final action was to free 500 birds and 100 rabbits on the lot.

Courtesy Marta Minujín

Document media
Video, colour, sound, 3:00 min

Issue date
1963

To be seen in
Centro Cultural Montehermoso, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, 7 October 2011 – 15 January 2012

Tags
destruction, happening, participation, public space