[Sitio oficial en castellano aquí.]

I am very grateful for the images of your paintings that have amazed me. I greet you fraternally and with admiration.
-Milan Kundera, letter to Gustavo Charif, Paris.-

How to forget the instant of the first time and the prodigy with Beckett, Octavio Paz, Kundera, Topor, Charif, Houellebecq or Ionesco?
-Fernando Arrabal, El Mundo newspaper, Madrid.-

Dear Gustavo: I applaud intensely your triumphs. A Buddha said, “I want nothing for me if it’s not for others”; which made me realize that all good things that others have, are also good for me. A citizen reaches his peak when he learns to celebrate the values of the other person. Your joyous accomplishment, thus, makes me very glad. I consider this a gift to my soul.
-Alejandro Jodorowsky, letter to Charif, Paris.-

Although he has always been a writer, years ago someone reminded us that “Charif took writing so seriously, that now he has to make a living from his work as a painter”. And so it is that his artworks ended up sharing walls with Alechinsky, Botero, Dalí, Magritte, Picasso, Topor, or the Gao Brothers in museums, galleries, and international fairs in Buenos Aires, Paris, New York, Tokyo, Taipei, Kuala Lumpur, among other major cities, earning praise from artists as diverse as Fernando Arrabal and Milan Kundera (with whom he collaborated on an artist’s book), Nolan Cook, Olivier O. Olivier, Alejandro Jodorowsky, or Luis Felipe “Yuyo” Noé (with which he wrote a film script).

In film industry, he worked for of the most important Argentine filmmakers in history, Leonardo Favio and Jorge Polaco, and directed numerous short films and music videos. In 1997 the Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires organized a retrospective with his experimental films. His first feature film as screenwriter and director, La razón (The Reason, 2010), included an unreleased song by Moby on its soundtrack, kindly provided by the musician. In 2017, he made a music video for Dimesland, and two more, 2018 and 2019, for Chris Connelly. In July 2020, The Year of Living Locked Up premiered, a feature film presented as “the first tube film in history”.

In 2018 Narraciones simples (Simple Narrations), a collection of 33 short narratives in Spanish accompained by 33 analogital images by the author, was published. In the same year, one of his large-format paintings became part of the heritage of the National Museum of Fine Arts of Argentina (museum which hosts works by Bouguereau, Courbet, Chirico, Degas, Fontana, Gauguin, Goya, Kandinsky, Manet, Modigliani, Pollock, Rembrandt, Rodin, Rubens, van Gogh and Zurbarán, among other artists. Today, Charif’s works are found in important collections in Europe, Asia and America (Christina Burrus, Einaudi, Elía-Robirosa Foundation, Fortabat Museum, Gastaldi, Luchetti, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de la Argentina, Pescheux, Stradella Bianchi, Tan-Yeoh and Zakaria, among others).

However, even before the publication of his book Simple Narrations and after living in Taiwan, he remained largely out of the public eye for about seven years. He gradually returned to activity starting in August 2024, when he held a solo exhibition at the invitation of the Contraviento Cultural Center (Rosario). In July 2026, his book of short stories, Los rayos invisibles (The Invisible Rays, published by Caburé), was released.
He’s currently finishing a pentalogy of novels begun three decades ago, translating literature from Chinese and other languages, and working on a script for a new feature film, based on a proposal by the Swiss artist and musician Dieter Meier.

To see a brief bio with some milestones, please click in LIFE. For a detailed biography year by year, you can consult the CHRONOLOGY. To see and read a selection of reviews, texts and tributes for or about Charif, please go to MENTIONS.