The book reviews the presence in Argentina during the 19th and 20th centuries of artwork by Spanish artists through interrelated sections that review the different aspects and problems of the circulation, distribution, art markets, art collection and criticism and cultural patrimony of artists exiled during the Second Spanish Republic. Special sections dedicated to the participation of Spanish artists in Argentinean international art fairs and to 2 emblematic figures of Spanish art during the studied period: Guillermo de Torre and Ramón Gómez de la Serna.

The exhibition is devoted to the work of Antonio Berni (Rosario, 1905-Buenos Aires, 1981), acknowledged master of Argentine art. The exhibition offers a tour around an outstanding set of his paintings, made between the thirties and the eighties, which intersect stylistic decisions, formal changes in the narrative imagination and the persistence of iconographic topics. The show, which does not follow a chronological reading, evidence of the personal statement a creative eye on the life of the popular sectors and marginal workers. Visiting his painting invites us to reflect on some topics of history and visual arts of the twentieth century Argentina, analyzing the extent to artistic issues formed the various ideological debates of the period. Through his prolific work the viewer sees an artist who realized the struggle for equality, questioned after the consumer society of his time. The works of this exhibition, composed of about thirty pieces, from the MNBA and private collections, including the large paintings of the thirties, defining unemployed new realism style, along with the work dedicated to the rural northern fifties (with migration of poverty) and the narrative series Juanito Laguna and Ramona Montiel, made with collages of urban waste. Also included are paintings in which he criticizes the consumer society and the political repression of the seventies, evident in his radical color change and the strength of the message explicit. It also presents a selected set of portraits of the thirties and forties, which reveal the intimate side of the artist and his mastery in the composition of figures.

"La exposición Las armas de la pintura: La Nación en construcción (1852-1870) tiene como objetivo proponer un recorrido estético por diferentes modos de representación del tema histórico, confrontar estilos, géneros y técnicas que le dan soporte a la imagen de narración histórica y ser escenario de los acontecimientos preparatorios a las celebraciones del 25 de mayo de 2010"--Prólogo.