Mendoza’s Art Scene Has New Names: 14 Artists You Need to Know

Raised in the countryside, among foxes and hares in a rural area of La Paz, a department in Mendoza, Milagros grew up observing the landscapes that now take center stage in her art. That’s why any Mendocino who stops in front of her canvases will find something familiar in the vast skies, native flora and fauna, and mountains depicted in them.

Her inspiration springs from the land, specifically from its processes, its rhythms, the animals that roam it and the plants that grow from it. This translates into her color palette, where every shade seeks to communicate a sense of belonging, memory and respect for the landscape. Ultimately, looking at her work means seeing Mendoza from within, from its wildest roots.

Since he was eleven, Juan has painted graffiti under the name Mity. He has also experimented with ink, paper and skin, allowing each surface to teach him new techniques. Tattooing, in particular, marked a turning point, leading him to see skin as an artistic medium just as valid as any wall or canvas.

Over the years, Bonaceto found in painting on canvas the sweet spot where all his disciplines could come together. Little by little, he shaped a style that now moves between the symbolic, the figurative and the abstract. His palette, once saturated to stand out in public spaces, has softened into muted tones, pastel pinks, light blues and oranges, among others. The structured nature of graffiti and tattooing dissolves into something more painterly and contemplative, drawing equally from the street and from introspection.

If you’ve walked around Mendoza, chances are you’ve come across his art on a street corner, in a drainage ditch, on a T-shirt or even on a sticker pasted somewhere in the city. A muralist, illustrator and graffiti artist, Resinfiltro knows how to make any kind of surface his own: walls, clothing, accessories, prints, whatever is available. That’s how many people have come to recognize him as the artist responsible for filling the city with animated characters from the ’90s.

His work moves through series and temporary obsessions. At one point, his fixations were giant fish, then pigs, later Chihuahuas and now his cats. On his Instagram feed, he has recently been highlighting his textile work, with airbrush designs on clothing and capsule collections of T-shirts and sweatshirts featuring his illustrations. At the same time, he paints intimate scenes from his home, finding beauty in everyday life. Moving from one medium to another and capturing different elements that entertain him, Resinfiltro continues to discover himself as an artist.

For Antonella, a Mendoza-based visual artist and researcher, photography is, above all, a way of learning, paying attention and being present in the world. That’s why she rejects planning and instead gives herself over to surprise, discovery and whatever appears when you least expect it. That same approach creates a sense of spontaneity for viewers looking at her photographs. Her images are filled with humor, nostalgia and subtle touches of the absurd that play with aesthetic conventions.

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Her work moves through collective memory and landscapes to question our perception of reality and dismantle imposed narratives. What makes her images interesting is that Mendoza is not simply a postcard, but becomes a territory in which to reinvent the story that has been told and the image we have learned.

María is a ceramic artist who explores eroticism, tenderness and an awareness of mortality through sculpture. Her latest pieces combine ceramics with shibari, a Japanese rope-tying technique. In this way, bodies molded from clay become caught in knots and ropes, creating a tension between intimacy and exposure.

Her interest in exploring the body and desire is also expressed in her podcast "El despertar de Eros", where she delves into relationships and sexuality. All of her work comes together around the need to make visible what exists within our inner worlds and, together with others, build possible imaginaries around pleasure and tenderness.

Omar is an artist who for more than a decade has moved between drawing, sculpture, painting, installation and performance. It was precisely through this multidisciplinarity that he developed a personal language that is constantly evolving, in which each discipline is questioned in order to reveal its fragility, but also its potential. His palette follows this sense of drift and strangeness that runs throughout his work.

His search focuses on things that cannot be fully perceived, such as mental states, ambiguous zones, the intangible, and that which exists somewhere between one thing and another. His works dive headfirst into the indefinable, finding in the “flaw” an opportunity to create. That’s why his sculptures seem unfinished, his drawings are interrupted and his paintings stop at the boundary between the figurative and the abstract.

If in the 19th century artists painted gauchos drinking mate, in the 21st century Esteban “Látigo” Warro portrays the Mendoza “ranchada.” In other words, his work depicts the gatherings that are characteristic of local youth. His canvases feature beer cans that function as modern still lifes, cigarettes in people’s hands and scenes recognizable to anyone who has spent an afternoon with friends in the province.

Warro studied Visual Arts, then joined the muralist collective Asfáltico and later returned to the studio, where he found a freedom that the streets did not always provide. This change in scale led to a distinctive style that fully took shape in 2020. Today, he is increasingly focused on small-format canvases, a path that has already taken him to exhibitions in different parts of Mendoza.

With work in museum collections in Argentina, Uruguay, Germany, the U.S., Spain, Mexico and New Zealand, the work of this Mendoza-born artist deserves a place on this list. In his paintings, drawings and digital experiments, hybrid beings and mutant creatures coexist with scenes from everyday life. This reflects his artistic search, which revolves around that moment when the familiar ceases to be familiar with the appearance of something we cannot name.

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The relationship between humans and other beings on Earth not only inhabits Juan’s work, but also appears in his project Hada Rosa. This is an art collective he co-founded with Ayelén Villalba, focusing on socio-environmental issues and reflecting on the impact humans have on themselves and on other species.

With twenty-five years in the trade, Mariano Ruffo proudly calls himself a carpenter. However, a decade ago he decided to rethink his work and dive fully into functional art. From Estudio Ruffo & Giampor, the studio and workshop he shares with Emilia Pereyra Giamportones, he creates different pieces in which wood appears to have been kneaded by hand.

His main interest lies in finding the sensual side of wood, which can be felt in the impulse viewers get to run their hands over its polished grain. But he is also fascinated by mythology and extraterrestrial themes, sculpting gods and creatures that seem to come from another planet. All of this stems from his attention to anything that causes him discomfort or evokes a feeling he considers worthy of artistic exploration.

Behind many of the plates found on the tables of Mendoza’s fine-dining restaurants, such as Azafrán, Lagarde and Susana Balbo, are the same pair of hands that shaped them. We’re talking about Agustín Herrera, a potter and creator of bespoke tableware whose work moves between functional design and contemporary sculpture.

His creative process begins at the wheel, the circular platform that spins at high speed and on which he shapes the clay. This is precisely where both his restaurant tableware collections and his more sculptural pieces emerge. The latter are visceral forms that resemble living ceramic organs. If you’re visiting Mendoza City and want to dive into his world, a few months ago he opened Garibaldi 57, a shared studio and exhibition space with artists Rodrigo Etem, Rodrigo Price and Mauco Sosa.

For twenty years, Ana Paula worked as an architect specializing in interior design. However, her career took a different direction in 2020, when repeated retinal detachments left her with just 3% of her vision. That moment marked the beginning of a new artistic exploration. Today, from her atelier in Chacras, she creates works that invite exploration through both sight and touch.

After learning to “see with her fingers,” she began experimenting with different textures and pigments on acrylic, as well as drawing with a stylus on metallic paper. Her signature technique is paper clay, a material that combines recycled paper with clay, pigments and natural fibers. From it, Ana creates lamps, bowls, accessories and sculptures, notable for being large in size while remaining very lightweight. Today, her pieces can be found in independent design stores and hotels in Tulum, Mexico City and Panama.

Marta is a visual artist and ceramicist. Although she describes herself as diverse and flexible, open to different languages and mediums, her work today is primarily focused on ceramics. This medium allows her to explore three-dimensionality as well as her own connection to and fascination with the material. Through clay, she engages in dialogue with ancestral traditions, particularly pre-Columbian and Asian art.

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Her pieces emerge from an intuitive process in which she lets herself be guided by the moment, allowing forms to appear on their own, as if they came from somewhere deeper. From there, small sculptures and vessels inhabited by demons, goblins and unnamed beings emerge, among others. Her pieces have already appeared in various exhibitions within Mendoza’s art scene, gaining an increasingly prominent place in the local landscape.

Paula is a visual artist who paints, draws, makes prints and collages, but she also intervenes in objects, creates installations and experiments with video installation. Her work has appeared in solo and group exhibitions in Mendoza, Buenos Aires City and Chile, and today forms part of private collections both in Argentina and abroad.

Behind each piece are existential questions about what it means to be human. Her work invites us to rethink ourselves, take ourselves apart a little and rebuild meaning. She also seeks to explore new ways of relating to our surroundings, to others and to our own existence. With this in mind, she is currently developing “Herbaria,” an artistic research project focused on observing and documenting spontaneously growing plants that inhabit margins and cracks. The project has already been presented in several cultural spaces in Mendoza.

Magdalena’s work is based on the quipu, a system of communication and record-keeping that Andean civilizations created using knots. The Mendoza-born artist takes this legacy and reinterprets it from a contemporary perspective. Under the Quipu Lab label, she combines materials, scales and handcrafting techniques to bring the quipu into the present while preserving its essence.

Her universe expands in multiple directions, from pieces designed for interiors to knotted art meant to be worn. Each work is, in her words, an expression of quiet luxury, carrying with it the memory of the Andes. Her work can be purchased at various locations across Argentina: Casa Quipu Lab in Chacras de Coria (Mendoza), Parera 50 and Design CE Hotel in Recoleta (Buenos Aires), the Museo de los Cerros in Huichaira, Tilcara (Jujuy), and online through Nuevo Lujo Spain for Spain and the rest of Europe.