Artist, critic,
educator, and theorist Luis Camnitzer (born 1937 in Lübeck, Germany, lives and works in Great Neck, New York) grew-up in Uruguay and moved to
New York in 1964 where he co-founded The New York Graphic Workshop, along with fellow artists, Argentine Liliana Porter and Venezuelan Guillermo Castillo. For six years until the end of the workshop in 1970, they examined the
conceptual meaning behind
printmaking, and sought to test and expand the definition of the medium. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Camnitzer developed a body of work that explored
language as primary medium, shifting from printing text on paper or walls. As his interest in language unfolded, so did his aim to identify socio-political problems through his art. Camnitzer responded in great part to the growing wave of
Latin American military regimes taking root in the late '60s, but his work also points to the dynamic political landscape of his adopted country, the United States. Luis Camnitzer's strong interest in Simón Rodríguez is both educational and political. Whilst willingly referring to European artists such as Magritte or Mallarmé, Camnitzer insists on the importance of Simón Rodríguez as a tutelary figure in the historicisation of conceptualism in Latin America.
