Libero Badii (Arezzo, Italy, 1916-Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2001) was initially involved with the symbolic meaning in sculpture. In the 1950s, after having traveled throughout Latin America, his work was formally influenced by Pre-Columbian art. He concocted the concept of "the sinister," both as a form of knowledge and as a way of feeling. The artist named his studio-workshop as Almataller [SoulShop].
Jorge Romero Brest (1904-1989) was the director of the Ver y estimar [To See and Ponder] journal (1948-55). He was appointed inspector of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes [National Museum of Fine Arts] in 1955, and served as its director from 1956 until 1963, the year he resigned to assume the direction of the Centro de Artes Visuales [Visual Arts Center] of Instituto Di Tella for which he was a consultant. In 1962 and being the director, Romero Brest organized an exhibition by Libero Badii at the MNBA.
This document is important for understanding both the significance of Badii's work in the 1960s and the personal evolution of the art critic, who attempted to establish a philosophically based art criticism. This text, which has been forgotten in the analyses of the critique of Romero Brest, is quite singular for showing two pivotal terms in the discourse of that decade: "conscience" and "destruction." Also, both are extensively quoted in bibliography about art in the 1960s. However, in this text, its sense is not literal —that which is generally given when they are understood from political practice—but more of a relationship between the artist with the materials, the image, and the idea.