Art Brokerage: Guillermo Kuitca was born on January 22, 1961 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. From 1970 to 1979 he studied painting in Buenos Aires; he also studied theater and cinema during secondary school. He had his first solo exhibition at the age of thirteen at the Lirolay Gallery in Buenos Aires; he began to exhibit regularly thereafter. In 1980 he traveled to Europe, where he became more familiar with European painting by visiting museums and galleries, and also met choreographer Pina Bausch in Wuppertal, Germany. After returning to Buenos Aires in 1981, he designed and directed several theatrical productions and began to create expressionistic paintings in which he transformed themes and images borrowed from his own and other theater productions, as well as from literature, film, and popular music. Many of these works depict cavernous stage sets populated with miniscule figures engaged in mysterious and often violent narratives. Although these paintings are often associated with contemporary American and European neo-Expressionism, they are rooted in the artist's observations of the recent, troubled history of his native country Argentina. In 1987 Kuitca began a series of paintings based upon city maps and apartment floor-plans; many of the latter works were inspired by American novelist David Leavitt's The Lost Language of Cranes. Although he usually paints on canvas, he has also executed works on unusual supports, such as mattresses.