Sebastiano Mauri grew up in Milan. Of Italian father and Argentine mother, he has lived in New York for 12 years and now splits his time between Milan and Buenos Aires. Like his art, his being from ‘neither here nor there’, makes his vision surprisingly clear and precise. Its neutrality is the perfect combination of an insider’s knowledge with a foreigner’s objectivity. He thinks this ‘renewed interest in Argentine art  has to do in part with an international curatorial trend. If 10 or 20 years ago artists in the European or American curatorial agenda were 90 per cent from those same regions, now the game has opened up immensely – not only towards economies in surprising expansion like China or India, but also towards places like  Latin America and Eastern Europe. On the other hand, it clearly has to do with the strong changes following the economic crisis of 2001/2. The consequent need to start again seems to have woken up the spirit of the Argentines after the clumsiness of the previous decade. Contrary to more expected results, it caused an explosion of the Argentine art production and cultural scene: the discourses and the media have widened considerably, and many new voices have found and created new places in which to exist.’ From a foreigner’s (and there are many nowadays in Buenos Aires) point of view, the exchange rate, of course, makes all the difference. Katzenstein claims to have gone to galleries where she had pre-selected works to buy for the Malba only to arrive and find that a ‘horde’ of 20 tourist-collectors had come and bought everything –‘the prices are very competitive, so, for relatively little money, they buy huge and very good works.’

Mauri sums up the reasons for Buenos Aires’ appeal: ‘to begin with, it is an immense city by European standards. It has New World proportions and a surprising architectonic quality and eclecticism. Secondly, wherever one looks in Buenos Aires, it is possible to feel in Genoa, Paris or Madrid, even Miami, on holiday. It offers the Europeans a mixture of familiarity and exoticism that is very attractive. Today, there are more theatre productions in Buenos Aires than in New York, and, if the same cannot be said of the art world, there  is now a network of important references between, museums, galleries, and art foundations.