Damián Bayón (Buenos Aires, 1915-Paris, 1995) defined himself as a poet, but with his sensitivity corrected by the discipline of history and the rigor of criticism.
He studied architecture at the University of Buenos Aires and also, although it is his most unknown facet, he cultivated and promoted poetry: he was the founder of Bitácora magazine and published five books of poetry as well as the first volume of his memoirs.
He was introduced to history and art criticism by the hand of Jorge Romero Brest, with whom he participated in the founding of Ver y estimar (1948). In the postwar period, he settled in Paris, where he met Giulio Carlo Argan and Pierre Francastel, of whom, in the words of Julián Gallego, he was “his most faithful disciple”.
After a few years linked to the Ecóle Practique des Hautes Études, he went to the University of Puerto Rico to teach History and Appreciation of Art, where he lived a short but intense stage due to his encounter with exiled Spanish intellectuals. At this stage, he wrote Construcción de lo visual, which would be published in 1965. Before his return to Europe, Bayón translated major works by Malraux, Francastel and Barr into Spanish.
Back in Paris, he received his doctorate from the Sorbonne with a thesis, directed by Francastel, on the commission in 16th century Castilian architecture, L'architecture en Castille au XVIe siècle (1967), published in Spanish under the title Patronage and architecture in the Castilian domain (1991). This work will have its lateral developments in various essays on Spanish mannerism, the monastery of El Escorial, etc., collected in the compilation book Witness ocular (1995).
Fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation (1970), artistic advisor to Unesco, he taught at various American and European universities, mainly in Austin (Texas) and the Sorbonne.