The culture of Argentina is as varied as the country geography and is composed of a mix of ethnic groups. Modern Argentine culture has been influenced largely by the Spanish colonial period and the 19th/20th century European immigration (mainly Italian and Spanish), so it is strongly linked to the Western world and its Catholic religious tradition. It has also been influenced to a lesser extent by French, Indigenous, German, Basque, Irish, Arab and Polish cultures, particularly in the fields of music and art. Buenos Aires, its cultural capital, is largely characterized by both the prevalence of people of Southern European descent, and of European styles in architecture.Luongo, Michael. Frommer's Argentina. Wiley Publishing, 2007. Museums, cinemas, and galleries are abundant in all of the large urban centers, as well as traditional establishments such as literary bars, or bars offering live music of a variety of music genres.
An Argentine writer reflected on the nature of the culture of Argentina as follows:
Language
The spoken languages of Argentina number at least 40, although Spanish is dominant. Others include native and other immigrant languages; some languages are extinct and others are endangered, spoken by elderly people whose descendants do not speak the languages.Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.), 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Online version: Languages of Argentina, Retrieved on 2 January 2007.
The most prevalent dialect is Rioplatense, also known as "Argentine Spanish", whose speakers are located primarily in the basin of the Río de la Plata. Argentines are amongst the few Spanish-speaking countries (like Uruguay, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Honduras) that almost universally use what is known as – the use of the pronoun instead of (Spanish for "you").
In many of the central and north-eastern areas of the country, the "rolling r" takes on a similar sound as the one both ll and y take in the more general Rioplatense dialect ('zh' – a voiced palatal fricative sound, similar to the "s" in the English pronunciation of the word "vision").
The Southern Quechua language is spoken by 0.4% of the population, mostly Bolivian immigrants who have arrived in recent years. There are 70,000 estimated speakers in Salta Province. The language is also known as Central Bolivian Quechua, which has six dialects. It is classified as a Quechua II language, and is referred to as Quechua IIC by linguists.
The Guaraní language is also spoken, mainly near the border with Paraguay, and is an co-official language in the province of Corrientes.Ley Nº 5598 Poder Legislativo de Corrientes, 28 September 2004
The Welsh language is the co-official language of the province of Chubut. This province was strongly influenced by Welsh migration and is home to the largest community outside the British Isles. The language is spoken in the Patagonian Welsh dialect.
The Afrikaans language, unlike the previous one, does not have co-official status in Chubut, that language arrived with the Boer migration between 1902 and 1908. The language is spoken in the Patagonian Afrikaans dialect.
The German language does not have co-official status but is spoken mainly by the descendants of the Germans, this being the 4th largest ancestry, it is spoken mainly in the provinces of Entre Ríos, Santa Fe, Córdoba, La Pampa, Buenos Aires, Río Negro and Misiones.
Other prominent languages without co-official status in Argentina are Polish, Ukrainian, Galician, Basque, Russian, Armenian, Yiddish, French, Ladino, English, Mapuche, among others.
Literature
Argentina has a detailed literary history, as well as one of the region's most active publishing industries. 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. 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.Wilson, Jason. Cultural Guide to the City of Buenos Aires. Oxford, England: Signal Books, 1999.
The ideological divide between gaucho epic Martín Fierro by José Hernández, and Facundoe-libro.net. Free digital books. by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, is a great example. Hernández, a federalist, was opposed to the centralizing, modernizing, and Europeanizing tendencies. Sarmiento wrote in support of immigration as the only way to save Argentina from becoming subject to the rule of a small number of dictatorial caudillo families, arguing such immigrants would make Argentina more modern and open to Western European influences, and therefore a more prosperous society.Levene, Ricardo. A history of Argentina. University of Noerth Carolina Press, 1937.
Argentine literature of that period was fiercely nationalist. It was followed by the modernist movement, which emerged in France in the late 19th century, and this period in turn was followed by vanguardism, with Ricardo Güiraldes as an important reference. Jorge Luis Borges, its most acclaimed writer, found new ways of looking at the modern world in metaphor and philosophical debate, and his influence has extended to writers all over the globe. Borges is most famous for his works in short stories such as Ficciones and The Aleph.
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.
Visual arts Painting and sculpture
Argentine painters and sculptors have a rich history, dating from both before and since the development of modern Argentina in the second half of the 19th century. Artistic production did not truly come into its own, until after the 1852 overthrow of the repressive regime of Juan Manuel de Rosas. Immigrants like Eduardo Schiaffino, Eduardo Sívori, Reinaldo Giudici, Emilio Caraffa, and Ernesto de la Cárcova left behind a realist heritage influential to this day.
Impressionism did not make itself evident among Argentine artists until after 1900, however, and never acquired the kind of following it did in Europe, though it did inspire influential Argentine Post-Impressionists such as Martín Malharro, Ramón Silva, Cleto Ciocchini, Fernando Fader, Pío Collivadino, Cesáreo Bernaldo de Quirós, Realism, and aestheticism continued to set the agenda in Argentine painting and sculpture, noteworthy during this era for the sudden fame of sculptor Lola Mora, a student of Auguste Rodin.
As Lola Mora had been until she fell out of favor with local high society, monumental sculptors became in very high demand after 1900, particularly by municipal governments and wealthy families, who competed with each other in boasting the most evocative mausolea for their dearly departed. 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. Not as realist as the work of some of his belle-époque predecessors in sculpture, Yrurtia's subtle impressionism inspired Argentine students like Antonio Pujía, whose internationally prized female torsos always surprise admirers with their whimsical and surreal touches, while Pablo Curatella Manes' sculptures drew from cubism.
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.
As in Mexico and elsewhere, muralism became increasingly popular among Argentine artists. 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. Lithographs, likewise, found a following in Argentina sometime after they had been made popular elsewhere. In Argentina, artists like Adolfo Bellocq, used this medium to portray often harsh working conditions in Argentina's growing industrial sector, during the 1920s and 1930s. Antonio Seguí, another lithographer, transferred his naïve style into murals in numerous nations, as did Ricardo Carpani, though in a realist style.
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.
The emergence of avant-garde genres in Argentine sculpture also featured Pablo Curatella Manes and Roberto Aizenberg, and constructivists such as Nicolás García Uriburu and Leon Ferrari, one of the world's foremost artists in his genre, today. In the 1960s and 1970s, many of these figures' abstract art found their way into popular advertising and even corporate logos.
Generally possessing a strong sentimental streak, the Argentine public's taste for naïve art and simple pottery cannot be overlooked. 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. Illustrator Florencio Molina Campos's tongue-in-cheek depictions of gaucho life have endured as collector's items.
To help showcase Argentine and Latin American art and sculpture, local developer and art collector Eduardo Constantini set aside a significant portion of his personal collection, and in 1998, began construction on Buenos Aires' first major institution specializing in works by Latin American artists. His foundation opened the Buenos Aires Museum of Latin American Art (MALBA) in 2001.
Graphic arts
In the 1920s, Buenos Aires was overflowing with creative drawings and design. 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.