Petrona Viera Garino
1895–1960 · Uruguayan painter associated with Planismo
Petrona Viera Garino (Montevideo, 1895 – 1960) was an Uruguayan painter associated with Planismo and one of the first women to build a notable career in the visual arts of her country. She matters both for the quality of her work and for her choice of subjects, which set her apart from her Planista contemporaries.
Born into a well-off family, she contracted meningitis at the age of two, which left her deaf. Her parents sought specialized teaching for her, and the French teacher Madeleine Larnaudie taught her lip reading and sign language. Around the age of twenty she began private painting lessons with the Catalan painter Vicente Puig, and from 1922 she studied with Guillermo Laborde, who drew her toward Planismo.
She began exhibiting in Montevideo in 1923 and held her first solo show at the Galería Maveroff in 1926. She later took part in group exhibitions in Buenos Aires, Paris, Chile and Bolivia. While fellow Planistas such as José Cuneo Perinetti, Carmelo de Arzadun and Alfredo De Simone often favored landscapes and simplified forms, she painted everyday scenes: her home, children studying and playing, servants, and her sisters at their sewing. Over the years her work moved toward landscape.
In 2019 a mural by José Gallino was unveiled in her honor as part of an art corridor near the Legislative Palace, and the International Astronomical Union named an asteroid after her.