Culture of Argentina

An Argentine writer reflected on the nature of the culture of Argentina as follows: With the primitive Hispanic American reality fractured in La Plata Basin due to immigration, its inhabitants have come to be somewhat dual with all the dangers but also with all the advantages of that condition: because of our European roots, we deeply link the nation with the enduring values of the Old World; because of our condition of Americans we link ourselves to the rest of the continent, through the folklore of the interior and the old Castilian that unifies us, feeling somehow the vocation of the Patria Grande San Martín and Bolívar once imagined.The spoken languages of Argentina number at least 40, although Spanish is dominant.

Other prominent languages without co-official status in Argentina are Polish, Ukrainian, Galician, Basque, Russian, Armenian, Yiddish, French, Ladino, English, Mapuche, among others.

Argentine writers have figured prominently in Latin American literature, since becoming a fully united entity in the 1850s, with a strong constitution and a defined nation-building plan.

[7] The struggle between the Federalists (who favored a loose confederation of provinces based on rural conservatism) and the Unitarians (pro-liberalism and advocates of a strong central government that would encourage European immigration), set the tone for Argentine literature of the time.

Some of the nation's notable writers, poets, and intellectuals include: Juan Bautista Alberdi, Jorge Luis Borges, Roberto Arlt, Enrique Banchs, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Silvina Bullrich, Eugenio Cambaceres, Julio Cortázar, Esteban Echeverría, Leopoldo Lugones, Eduardo Mallea, Ezequiel Martínez Estrada, Tomás Eloy Martínez, Victoria Ocampo, Manuel Puig, Ernesto Sabato, Osvaldo Soriano, Alfonsina Storni, María Elena Walsh and Oliverio Girondo.

Though most preferred French and Italian sculptors, work by locals Erminio Blotta, Ángel María de Rosa, and Rogelio Yrurtia resulted in a proliferation of soulful monuments and memorials made them immortal.

Becoming an intellectual, as well as artistic circle, painters like Antonio Berni, Lino Enea Spilimbergo, and Juan Carlos Castagnino were friends as well as colleagues, going on to collaborate on masterpieces like the ceiling at the Galerias Pacifico arcade in Buenos Aires, towards 1933.

Among the first to use his drab surroundings as a canvas was Benito Quinquela Martín, whose vaguely cubist pastel-colored walls painted in his Buenos Aires neighborhood of La Boca during the 1920s and 1930s, have become historical monuments and Argentine cultural emblems, worldwide.

[citation needed] The vanguard in culturally conservative Argentina, futurists and cubists like Xul Solar and Emilio Pettoruti earned a following as considerable as that of less abstract and more sentimental portrait and landscape painters, like Raúl Soldi.

Likewise, traditional abstract artists such as Romulo Macció, Anselmo Piccoli, Eduardo Mac Entyre, Luis Felipe Noé, and Luis Seoane co-existed with equal appeal as the most conceptual mobile art creators such as the unpredictable Pérez Celis, Gyula Kosice of the Argentine Madí Movement, and Marta Minujín, one of Andy Warhol's most esteemed fellow Conceptual artists.

Since Prilidiano Pueyrredón's day, artists in the naïve vein like Cándido López have captured the absurdity of war; Susana Aguirre, and Aniko Szabó, the idiosyncrasies of everyday neighborhoods; Guillermo Roux's watercolors, a circus atmosphere; and Gato Frías, childhood memories.

Argentine illustrators and sketchers were attracting worldwide recognition, including artists such as Jose Freire Segundo, creator of gráfica of Aikal (1940); Jose Luis Salinas, called upon by King Features to create a comic strip of worldwide fame, Cisco Kid; and Florencio Molina Campos, the brilliant sketcher of the Alpargatas Almanacs of rural life (1930), who collaborated on three Walt Disney films.

The simplicity of the Rioplatense baroque style can be clearly appreciated in Buenos Aires, in the works of Italian architects such as André Blanqui and Antonio Masella, in the churches of San Ignacio, Nuestra Señora del Pilar, the Cathedral, and the Cabildo.

Attempts at renovation took place during the second half of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th, when the European tendencies penetrated into the country, reflected in numerous important buildings of Buenos Aires, such as the Santa Felicitam Church, by Ernesto Bunge; the Central Post Office and Palace of Justice, by Norbert Maillart; and the National Congress and the Colón Opera House, by Vittorio Meano.

Juan Antonio Buschiazzo helped popularize Beaux-Arts architecture, and Francisco Gianotti combined Art Nouveau with Italianate styles, each adding flair to Argentine cities during the early 20th century.

Francisco Salamone and Viktor Sulĉiĉ left an Art Deco legacy, and Alejandro Bustillo created a prolific body of Rationalist architecture.

Clorindo Testa introduced Brutalist architecture locally, César Pelli's and Patricio Pouchulu's Futurist creations have graced cities, worldwide.

The industry produced actors who became the first movie stars of Argentine cinema, often tango performers such as Libertad Lamarque, Floren Delbene, Tito Lusiardo, Tita Merello, Roberto Escalada, and Hugo del Carril.

[21] Argentine composers Luis Bacalov, Gustavo Santaolalla, and Eugenio Zanetti have been honored with Academy Award for Best Original Score nods.

By the 1930s, tango had changed from a dance-focused music to one of lyric and poetry, with singers such as Carlos Gardel, Hugo del Carril, Roberto Goyeneche, Raúl Lavié, Tita Merello, and Edmundo Rivero.

The golden age of tango (1930 to mid-1950s) mirrored that of jazz and swing in the United States, featuring large orchestral groups too, like the bands of Osvaldo Pugliese, Aníbal Troilo, Francisco Canaro, Julio de Caro, and Juan d'Arienzo.

Incorporating acoustic music and later, synthesizers into the genre after 1955, bandoneón virtuoso Astor Piazzolla popularized "new tango" creating a more subtle, intellectual and listener-oriented trend.

Today, tango enjoys worldwide popularity; ever-evolving, neo-tango is a global phenomenon with groups like Tanghetto, Bajofondo, and the Gotan Project.

Bands such as Soda Stereo or Sumo, and composers like Charly García, Luis Alberto Spinetta, Fito Páez and Andrés Calamaro are referents of national culture.

Mid-1960s Buenos Aires and Rosario were cradles of the music, and by 1970, Argentine rock was well established among middle class youth (see: Almendra, Sui Generis, Pappo, Crucis, Pescado Rabioso).

Serú Girán bridged the gap into the 1980s, when Argentine bands became popular across Latin America and elsewhere (Enanitos Verdes, Fabulosos Cadillacs and Virus).

Atahualpa Yupanqui, folk musician, and Mercedes Sosa would be defining figures in shaping Nueva Canción, gaining worldwide popularity in the process.

Griselda Gambaro, Copi, Roberto Cossa, Marco Denevi, Carlos Gorostiza, and Alberto Vaccarezza are a few of the more prominent Argentine playwrights.

Besides many of the pasta, sausage, and dessert dishes common to continental Europe, Argentines enjoy a wide variety of Indigenous and Criollo creations, which include empanadas (a stuffed pastry), locro (a mixture of maize, beans, meat, bacon, onion, and gourd), humitas, and yerba mate, all originally indigenous Amerindian staples, the latter considered Argentina's national beverage.

Other popular items include chorizo (a pork sausage), facturas (Viennese-style pastry), dulce de leche, a sort of milk caramel jam and the alfajor.