The son of a Republican exile from the Spanish Civil War to the Soviet Union, Francisco Infante trained at the Moscow Art Institute in the 1960s. As a student, he embarked on what would become the norm in his career: setting up collectives and working in groups. He founded Dvizhenie (Movement Group) in 1962 and Argo (a group of artists and engineers experimenting in kinetic art) in 1970. Much of his artistic work was produced with his wife Nonna Gorunova (b. Moscow, 1944).

Since the 1960s his works have nearly always been produced using geometric forms, reinstating the suprematist, constructivist tradition of the Russian avant-garde (especially Kazimir Malevich and Naum Gabo). On the one hand this must be interpreted as a criticism of the socialist realism that was fiercely maintained by with Stalinist governments (something that was rather more tolerated at that time); and on the other hand it can be read as the search for a metaphysical artistic discourse. His work lies in the field of kinetic art, but also of a specific land art intrinsically connected to conceptual discourses. In 1976 he began to create what he called ‘Artefacts’ using photography, slides, installations, etc.

Francisco Infante has held exhibitions at the Spanish Centre in Moscow (with the Argo group, 1974); the Tretyakov National Gallery (Moscow, 1992); Sala Rekalde (Bilbao, 1995); the Moscow State Museum of Contemporary Art (1999); the Caja de Burgos Art Centre (with Gorunova, 2012). He took part in the Venice Bienniale (1977 and 1996) and was awarded the Russian State Prize for the Arts in 1996.

Isabel Tejeda