Lidy Prati

Her father, Olinto Prati, a native of Longiana, Italy, and her mother, Hilda Usinger, from the Cañada de Gómez province of Santa Fe, were married around 1916.

Her father had been a public accountant in Italy, though, in Argentina, he abandoned this profession and became a prominent textile industrialist, earning him the title, "The Cotton King" of Chaco.

He also produced kaolin, wood fiber, chemical products, and owned several car dealerships (Ford, Renault, and IKA).

His success in these industries provided him with financial assets integral in the creation and publication of Arturo magazine.

As a child, Prati lived with her family in Chatara, Chaco where her father's business was based, though when she was 6, she lived with her grandparents for a year in Rimini, Italy where she learned Italian language and culture.

Lidia "Lidy" Elena Prati (1921–2008) was an Argentine painter who was known for her abstract, geometric paintings.

Her artwork called into question representational art and was influential in defining the concrete art movement in Latin America.

Lidia Elena Prati was born in Resistencia, Chaco, Argentina in 1921 into an Italian and Swiss-German immigrant family.

In the 1930s, Prati and her sister Pierina began attending the religious boarding school, Nuestra Señora de la Misterordia, in Rosario.

In 1936, at 15, Prati began school at the Instituto Inmaculado Corazón de Maria "Adoratrices", a traditional Catholic school in Buenos Aires.

Shortly after her enrollment, she began living with her uncle Francisco Prati in a luxurious apartment building where she came into contact with culture, art, and music.

In 1938, Prati received her teaching degree from Las Adoratrices, and in 1942 she moved back in with her parents who had recently moved from Chaco to Buenos Aires.

Prati contributed to the publication of Arturo magazine and during the 1940s, was one of the founding members of the Asociación Arte Concreto-Invención (AACI) art movement (or Concrete-Invention Art Association) along with Enio Iommi and Tomás Maldonado.

While she is primarily known for her concrete art paintings, Prati also worked in graphic and layout design and worked with textiles and jewelry.

Throughout the 1940s, Prati participated in several exhibitions, collaborated with other concrete artists, and taught Concrete art and industrial design in Terezopolis, Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil with Maldonado.

In 1942 she had her first-ever exhibition at the Salon Peuser in Buenos Aires.

In 1942 she had her first ever exhibition at the Salon Peuser in Buenos Aires.

On 11 March in 1944, despite her parents' wishes, Prati married artist Tomás Maldonado with whom she had started taking art classes from two years prior.

For the next eight years, they participated in collaborations and exhibitions together.

Prati's artistic career began in 1944 when she began taking art classes with Thomás Maldonado after her cousin, María Victoria "Bimbi" Prati had met the young artist in a chance encounter.

The basic drawing classes she took in school and Maldonado's classes would be the only were the only training she received, leading her to proclaim herself a self-taught artist.

In 1944, Prati contributed her artwork to the one-time publication Arturo.

This publication was spearheaded by a group of artists, including Carmelo Arden Quin, Gyula Kosice, and Rhod Rothfuss, Maldonado, Edgar Bayley, Joaquín Torres García, Piet Mondrian, and Wassily Kandinsky.

These artists were among those with whom she had begun meeting with the previous year at the Café Rubí in Buenos Aires.

Their publication of Arturo was partially funded by her father and it is now considered to be an important precursor to the avant-garde Asociación Arte Concreto-Invención and Madí art movements in Argentina.

These artists would later split into two separate groups; Quin, Kosice, and Rothfuss would form Madí and Maldonado the Concrete-Invention group, respectively.

In 1952, however, Prati and Maldonado separated and she traveled to Europe with her parents where she studied Renaissance paintings and met with several artists including George Vantongerloo, Max Bill, Giacomo Balla, and Piero Dorazio.

In 1954, Prati and Maldonado began their divorce proceedings, at which time Prati stopped painting, though she continued to draw.

For the next part of her life, Prati had several different careers.

She continued her artistic career by working as a graphic and layout designer.

She also began to work as a clothing and jewelry designer.

From 1960 on, Prati had several psychiatric episodes.

In the early 1960s, she was hospitalized at Hospital Pirovano in Buenos Aires, and another time while she was in Tunisia.

Prati also experienced unstable financial circumstances due to the loss of her family's business after the death of her father in 1964.

Prati worked as an art critic on a radio program from 1970 to 1974 and for the art magazine Artinf, which she had co-founded with Silvia de Ambrosini, Odile Baron Supervielle, and Germaine Derbecq.

Prati's life after divorcing Maldonado did not come without challenges.

From 1971 to 2001, Prati worked for the Argentine Ministero Relaciones Exteriores.

In the 1980s, she served as secretary to diplomatic directors of the Department of Western.

She performed administrative tasks at the Ministero and in 1980 traveled to Tunisia.

Prati died on 19 August 2008, in Buenos Aires, Argentina.