Rafael Squirru

Rafael Fernando Squirru (March 23, 1925 – March 5, 2016) was an Argentine poet, lecturer, art critic and essayist.

Born and raised in Buenos Aires, Squirru was educated at Saint Andrew's Scot School and at the Jesuit El Salvador Secondary School.

He graduated with a Law Degree at the University of Edinburgh in 1948.

After founding the Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art in 1956, he went on to champion the cause of Argentine and Latin American art as Director of Cultural Affairs (1960) in the government of Arturo Frondizi.

Among his many initiatives of that period, Alicia Penalba’s sculptures and Antonio Berni’s etchings were sent to the São Paulo and Venice Biennales respectively, both artists obtaining First Prize.

Named Cultural Director of the Organization of American States (OAS) in 1963 with headquarters in Washington, D.C., he continued his task of promotion of North and Latin American culture until his resignation in 1970.

It was at this time that he supported the construction of the impressive memorial monument to U.S. President John F. Kennedy by Uruguayan artist Lincoln Presno in Quemú Quemú, a vast deserted plain in the Argentine province of La Pampa; his outspoken inauguration speech as official representative of the OAS, pronounced during the military government of General Juan Carlos Onganía, won public acclaim while provoking angry reactions on the part of the authorities present, earning him the local government’s condemnation as persona non grata, revoked a few years later.

Back in Buenos Aires he has supported culture in all its forms through an incessant activity of lectures in his own country and abroad, prologues for artists’ exhibitions and a constant output of articles on Argentine daily La Nación, with which he collaborated for over twenty years, often sharing the Culture page with Jorge Luis Borges during the Eighties.

Several volumes of Squirru’s poetry and prose writings have been published over the years, most of which are today out of print and considerably difficult to find.

His friends, correspondents and acquaintances included such personalities as Henry Miller, Fernando Demaría, Thomas Merton, Edward Hopper, Ned O'Gorman, Huntington Hartford, Sir Herbert Read, Edward Albee, Oswaldo Vigas, Julio Cortázar, Olga Blinder, Alejandra Pizarnik, Barnaby Conrad, Paul Blackburn, Amancio Williams, Jackie Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy, Batuz, Renata Adler, J. Carter Brown, Benjamin Bradlee, Nina Auchincloss Straight, Kay Halle, Alberto Ginastera, Elsa Wiezell, Hiram D. Williams, Leopoldo Marechal, Arthur Schlesinger Jr.., Stefan Baciu, Emilio Pettoruti, Antonio Berni, Eduardo Mac Entyre, Pérez Celis, Leopoldo Presas, Leonardo Castellani and Marco Denevi.

Art criticism

Art criticism in verse

Poetry

Essays

Translations

Drama

Prose

On the importance of culture

On the cultural identity and importance of Latin America

On the functions of art

On the responsibilities of artists and intellectuals

On Communism in Latin America

(The above quotes are all excerpts from Squirru’s addresses delivered at the Panamerican Union in Washington D.C. between 1963 and 1964, which can be found in their entirety in The Challenge of the New Man. A cultural approach to the Latin American scene, Washington D.C., Pan American Union, 1964.)