Eugenio Zanetti

Eugenio Zanetti was born on 19 October 1946 in Cordoba, Argentina, to Juan Eugenio Zanetti, a lawyer and writer, and Rebeca Kahn. The household valued books and conversation. In the mid-1960s he enrolled in architecture at the Universidad Nacional de Cordoba, completing the first year before deciding that painting, theatre and film spoke more clearly to him than buildings alone.

As a young man he travelled in Europe. There he met Pier Paolo Pasolini and participated in the making of Pasolini's Medea. The experience fixed cinema as a serious craft rather than a sideline. When his father died he returned to Argentina to support his family, carrying European stage and film lessons back into local work.

Moving to Los Angeles during the Falklands War, he designed Slam Dance, Flatliners, Soapdish, Last Action Hero and Restoration. The 68th Academy Awards gave him Best Art Direction for Restoration; What Dreams May Come later brought another nomination.

Parallel to Hollywood, Zanetti directed and designed more than forty theatre and opera productions in Europe and South America. His opera work included Verdi's A Masked Ball and Nabucco and Puccini's Madama Butterfly and Tosca. In Argentina he received Thalia Awards for They're Playing Our Song, Chicago, Dracula and The White Queen, and Star of the Sea Awards for The Cherry Orchard, Chapter Two, Company and Peer Gynt. At the end of his life he was preparing Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann for the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires.

Zanetti insisted painting was his primary vocation. He held dozens of solo exhibitions across Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, the United States, Spain and Italy. His oils often show luminous figures emerging from dark grounds, an approach he linked to metaphysical rather than fashionable concerns.

As a film director he favoured fantasy with emotional stakes. Amapola (2014) gathered an international cast around a Cordoba-rooted story. He also lectured widely, including a 2012 TEDxCordoba talk on creative work.

Zanetti died on 18 September 2026 in Buenos Aires at age 79. After rehearsals for Les Contes d'Hoffmann at the Teatro Colon he felt unwell, returned home, collapsed and died suddenly. His circle described a cardiac event and stressed that he had been happy with the Cordoba retrospective and the Colon work. A private wake was held at Lazaro Costa in Recoleta on 20 September; a public farewell followed at the Buenos Aires City Legislature on 21 September, with a pause at the Teatro Colon before burial at Cementerio Parque de Pilar.

Colleagues remembered an artist who never stopped working. The Actors' Association called him a fundamental figure of Argentine culture. On his site he left a farewell imagining Madame Lamort ready with boat, lights and no retakes, hoping at least for a beautiful magic hour.

Zanetti studied architecture for a year at the Universidad Nacional de Cordoba in the mid-1960s. Formal architecture training sharpened his sense of space, light and structure, skills he later applied to sets and paintings. He did not complete an architecture degree; instead he trained through practice in painting studios, Argentine film and theatre productions, and by observing European filmmakers during his travels.

In Argentina he designed Mario Sabato's The Power of Darkness (1979), winning a Moscow Film Festival design award, and Alejandro Doria's Los pasajeros del jardin (1982). After relocating to Los Angeles during the Falklands/Malvinas War he became production designer on Wayne Wang's Slam Dance (1987), then on Flatliners, Soapdish, Last Action Hero, Tall Tale, Restoration (Academy Award for Best Art Direction, 1996), What Dreams May Come (Oscar nomination, 1999), The Haunting, Zapata: El sueno de un heroe and There Be Dragons.

He wrote and directed the short Quantum Project (2000) and the feature Amapola (2014). Critics described his film style as neobaroque: dense, symbolic images that refuse empty frames.

Zanetti's longtime partner was architect and scenographer Sebastian Sabas. Together they developed Estancia de la Cruz in San Javier, Traslasierra, Cordoba, first as a home and later as a boutique hosteria filled with antiques and Hollywood set pieces, including carved portals used in The Haunting. He kept strong ties to Cordoba even while based for years in Los Angeles, returning for exhibitions, lectures and, in September 2026, a major retrospective at the Museo Tamburini.

For roughly fifty years Zanetti studied Sufi thought and the writings of Idries Shah, an interest he discussed in a 2017 interview for the Idries Shah Foundation. He treated the Oscar as an industry honour, not a life goal, and said his "inner child" had never aspired to it. In a La Nacion interview with Pablo De Vita he argued that artists reveal the underlying reality that ordinary talk about "the real" leaves untouched. He preferred to call the work artistic rather than wait for others to award the label.

Academy Award for Best Art Direction, Restoration (68th Academy Awards, 1996). Oscar nomination for What Dreams May Come (1999). Moscow Film Festival design award for The Power of Darkness. Toronto festival design recognition for Some Girls. Special Silver Condor (2010) from Argentine film critics, shared in spirit with Santaolalla, Bacalov, Puenzo and Campanella. Multiple Thalia and Star of the Sea awards for theatre. Honorary doctorates including from the Universidad de las Artes (Buenos Aires), Universidad de Palermo and Esserp (Spain). Illustrious citizen of Buenos Aires, Cordoba and Los Angeles.

Zanetti's Oscar night and later interviews circulated widely in Argentine and Hollywood press. His TEDxCordoba talk and Idries Shah Foundation conversation remain online. Estancia de la Cruz was profiled in LA NACION as an Oscar winner's mountain retreat. After his death, the Asociacion Argentina de Actores, Teatro Colon and Cordoba institutions issued tributes; his website published a farewell note in his own wry voice about finally playing Orpheus.

Zanetti stands as one of the few Argentine production designers to win a competitive Oscar while keeping a continuous theatre, opera and painting practice. He helped make Argentine craft visible in Hollywood without abandoning Cordoba. Younger designers cite his neobaroque visual density and his insistence that lighting and camera are storytelling partners. The Museo Tamburini retrospective, planned to remain open into early 2027, and the Teatro Colon's decision to continue Les Contes d'Hoffmann after his death, framed an artist still mid-project.

No major public controversies dominated Zanetti's career. Industry talk sometimes contrasted the Oscar-winning Restoration with his own preference for What Dreams May Come, and noted that the planned San Luis film Arbol de fuego was never completed. Those points are career footnotes rather than scandals.