Argentine Painting, Pre-Columbian Painting

Various pictorial records are found among the pre-Hispanic cultures that inhabited what is now Argentina. In the northwestern Andes, the agricultural and pottery civilizations that developed there, from the Condorhuasi Culture (400 BC–700 AD) to the La Aguada Culture (650–950 AD) and Santa María Culture (1200–1470 AD), show extensive development of painting on ceramics and stone pieces, among which the feline image stood out. This painting was especially studied by the Argentine painter Enrique Sobisch during a two-year residency, study, and improvement in Mexico.

Painting during the Colonial Period
During Spanish colonial rule, painting developed primarily as religious art in churches, intended to Christianize indigenous peoples. Colonial religious painting was often done by encomendados (commended) or reduced indigenous people and African American slaves, under the authority of religious orders.

Another source of colonial painting is the books and manuscripts produced by colonizers, priests, scientists, and visitors. Notable among these are the drawings and watercolors by the German Jesuit Florian Paucke (1719-1789).

Until the Jesuits were expelled, most of the colony's cultural life revolved around them, who organized the work of the Guaraní indigenous people, who excelled more in sculpture and goldsmithing than in painting. Consequently, very few remains of painting from that period remain. After their expulsion, some foreigners developed the art of portraiture, among them Fernando Brambilla, a native of Madrid who would become court painter to King Ferdinand VII.

In what is now northwestern Argentina, and especially in Jujuy, the Cuzco School developed in churches, with its images of arquebus-wielding angels (related to the conquistadors) and triangular virgins (a syncretism of the cult of the Virgin Mary and Pachamama).

Arquebus-wielding angels are part of a strictly American pictorial style that developed in the Marquisate of Yavi in the Puna region of Jujuy, then part of the province of Tucumán, under the direction of Mateo Pissarro. They are asexual angels dressed in soldier's clothing and armed with arquebuses. Today, only two collections exist: in Uquía (Cuzco School) and in Casabindo (CTC master).
The 19th Century

In the early years of the 19th century, already at the time of independence and the opening of the country, several foreign artists visited and resided there, leaving behind their works. The first was Jean Philippe Goulu, a prominent French miniaturist. Among them were the English sailor Emeric Essex Vidal (1791-1861), a watercolorist who left important graphic testimonies of Argentina's past; Carlos Enrique Pellegrini (1800-1875), a French engineer who dedicated himself to painting out of necessity and who would become the father of President Carlos Pellegrini; the sailor Adolphe d'Hastrel (1805-1875), who published his drawings and watercolors in the book Colección de vistas y costumbres del Río de la Plata (Collection of Views and Customs of the Río de la Plata) (1875); the lithographers Andrea Bacle (1796-1855) and César Hipólito Bacle (1790-1838); among others. All of them, with the notable exception of César Bacle, painted landscapes and costumbrista scenes for pleasure, but made a living by painting commissioned portraits, the only truly profitable artistic activity.

In the third decade, Carlos Morel (1813-1894) appeared. He has been considered the first strictly Argentine painter, as he was educated in Buenos Aires and never traveled outside the country. Morel was also the precursor of the historical painting, which would become immensely popular at the end of the century.
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