Modern & Contemporary Latin American Art

In this comprehensive collection of essays, three generations of international scholars examine Mexican muralism in its broad artistic and historical contexts, from its iconic figures—Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siquieros—to their successors in Mexico, the United States, and across Latin America. These muralists conceived of their art as a political weapon in popular struggles over revolution and resistance, state modernization and civic participation, artistic freedom and cultural imperialism. The contributors to this volume show how these artists’ murals transcended borders to engage major issues raised by the many different forms of modernity that emerged throughout the Americas during the twentieth century.

This text examines three works by the Colombian artist Débora Arango (1907-2005) that address sexual abuse and violence within relationships of unequal power: the undated paintings "Justicia" (Justice) and "La despedida" (The Farewell) are well-known in Colombia; the third piece is an untitled drawing. The images depict the police, military, and clergy in violent or abusive relationships with women or adolescents. Individually they convey disturbing messages; together they denounce the perversion of authority within institutions that should protect everyone, especially the most vulnerable.

Publicado en Museologia e Interdisciplinaridade, Instituto de Arte, Universidade de Brasília, v. 5 n. 10, 2016, pp. 117-131. ISSN: 2238-5436.  Dossier “Art Museums, History and Knowledge”. http://periodicos.unb.br/index.php/museologia/article/view/21558

La exposición “Los colores del deseo “realiza una mirada retrospectiva a la obra de Flor María Bouhot (Bello,  Colombia,1949). La artista surge en los pictóricos años 80, década en la que los artistas locales están redescubriendo apasionadamente la pintura, pero desde inéditas perspectivas. A nivel internacional, la Transvanguardia italiana y el Neoexpresionismo alemán propiciaban también una renovada reconexión con lo pictórico. Este es el contexto que nutre directa e indirectamente a la artista y a su generación. En una época en la que ya todo es posible, acude al pastiche, se apropia de imágenes de la alta y la baja cultura, bebe de estrategias expresionistas y pop, para sazonar finalmente su trabajo con una desenfadada estética kitsch.
La curaduría propone leer su obra como la afirmación de un inédito cuerpo urbano. Es el tema que explora en series como “Los amantes”, “Instancias del éxtasis” y sus múltiples representaciones de mujeres y seres de género ambiguo y colores improbables. Los cuerpos de la serie “Carnaval”, por su parte, desafían el industrial tiempo urbano con la lentitud subversiva del goce y la fiesta. Tendría que hablarse de cuerpo además en sus eróticos bodegones donde sus frutas dialogan con las flores lujuriosas de Georgia O'Keeffe .
Esta exposición busca, por un lado, realizar un merecido homenaje a sus 70 años de vida, pero también intenta poner a circular su obra en un contexto contemporáneo donde por primera vez los temas de género, raciales y multiculturales están en el centro de los debates nacionales. Una escena en la que este intrigante conjunto de imágenes construido desde los márgenes tiene, sin duda, mucho que aportar.
Sol Astrid Giraldo Escobar. Curadora.

In 2015, after an almost 20-year hiatus, the Museu de arte de Sao Paulo (Museum of Art of Sao Paulo, MASP) reinstalled the celebrated crystal easel display designed by the architect Lina Bo Bardi. To present “civilized art” as an authentic Brazilian expression, however, Bardi needed to assure his readers that it, too, was autonomous and local. In his chapter on the Brazilian art falling into this category, titled “Approach to Modernity,” Bardi thus glossed over the art of the colonial period and largely dismissed the academic and neoclassical art of the nineteenth-century as spurious and derivative. In his writings about modern Brazilian painting, Bardi thus construed a Brazilian modern art narrative based on European notions of the genius loci, the avant-garde and originality that reflected the Western model of modernity and art history.

The present work set out to examine how different experiences of displacement influenced the artistic output of Mira Schendel (1919-1988), a Swiss-born visual artist who migrated to Brazil in 1949 and became one of the most important figures in Latin American art of the twentieth century. Coming from a Jewish background, she was baptised a Catholic and raised in Italy, but she needed to flee the country in 1939 due to the Nazi persecution of Jews. Focusing on the body of work produced mostly during the sixties, this dissertation will argue that some recurrent visual elements are very much related with travels and Schendel’s life in exile. As such, three central aesthetic elements will be discussed: the use of text in painting and drawings, often mixing words in different languages; the spatial aspect of her work; and transparency, explored in works made with rice paper and plates of acrylic. Schendel’s engagement with writing will be correlated with a foreigner’s perception of language, and the use of different idioms as an attempt to create a universal vocabulary. The disorienting effect caused by the use of text in spatial installations will be read in parallel with her past displacement, as if she was lost between different lands and idioms. A crucial aspect in her work, transparency will be analysed alongside her attempt to depict different time-frames simultaneously, which is also correlated with a transitory aspect of the migrant’s life, who see themselves always between the present and the past.

Este es un homenaje a Carlos Mérida un recorrido por las ciudades que marcaron su vida como artista: Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, París y Ciudad de México, cada una de ellas propició las condiciones para la evolución de su propuesta creativa.  La libre movilidad está ligada al proceso de intercambio de ideas y producción de conocimiento, la posibilidad de viajar en busca de esos centros donde se produce el debate, la reflexión y la crítica que dará lugar a la propuesta es la clave en el desarrollo intelectual de todas las personas, la oportunidad de migrar libremente, de elegir donde vivir.  El ensayo se puede encontrar de la página 53 a la 66.

CONTENTS
Flávio de Carvalho 8
Kiki Mazzucchelli

Flávio de Carvalho: Media Artist Avant la Lettre 32
Rui Moreira Leite

Flávio de Carvalho in conversation with Silveira Peixoto 66

The Dialectics of Fashion or Fashion and The New Man: Ways of Dressing, The History of Clothing, The Summer Outfit 86
Rui Moreira Leite

Flávio de Carvalho/The Bones of the World: Projections
Rui Moreira Leite 118

Artist Timeline 133

Exhibition Checklist 136

Stemming from Grosfoguel's decolonial discourse, and particularly his enquiry on how to steer away from the alternative between Eurocentric universalism and third world fundamentalism in the production of knowledge, this article aims to respond to this query in relation to the field of the art produced by Latin American women artists in the past four decades. It does so by investigating the decolonial approach advanced by third world feminism (particularly scholar Chandra Talpade Mohanty) and by rescuing it from-what I reckon to be-a methodological impasse. It proposes to resolve such an issue by reclaiming transnational feminism as a way out from what I see as a fundamentalist and essentialist tactic. Following from a theoretically and methodological introduction, this essay analyzes the practice of Cuban-born artist Marta María Pérez Bravo, specifically looking at the photographic series Para Concebir (1985-1986); it proposes a decolonial reading of her work, which merges third world feminism's nation-based approach with a transnational outlook, hence giving justice to the migration of goods, ideas, and people that Ella Shohat sees as deeply characterizing the contemporary cultural background. Finally, this article claims that Pérez Bravo's oeuvre offers the visual articulation of a decolonial strategy, concurrently combining global with local concerns.

A review of the historical exhibition Dialogos Constructivistas en la Vanguardia Cubana: Amelia Peláez, Lolo Soldevilla and Zilia Sánchez (April 28 – June 25, 2016) at Lelong Galleries in New York City addressing the constructivist approach by these women artists. The review also address some of the art historical events that lead these women to develop their body of work within the Cuban art context.

Looking at the genesis of geometric abstraction in Brazilian art, relevant studies generally ascribe its very beginnings to the impact exerted by the strong presence of Max Bill and other concrete artists from Switzerland at the first São Paulo Biennial in 1951. During the 1950s, a rapid spread of geometric-abstract or concrete movements can be observed in the country; including Atelier Abstração or Ruptura group in São Paulo, and the groups Frente and Neoconcreto in Rio de Janeiro. Without diminishing the significance of the first Biennial, this event can hardly be considered as a first encounter with the formal repertoire of abstract art.
Up to now, few analyses account for the fact that already in the late 1940s collective approaches of geometric abstract art had been evolving. Focusing on the development in Rio de Janeiro, in-depth research shed light on a first group of geometric abstract artists, in which Ivan Serpa (1923-1973), Almir Mavignier (b. 1925) and Abraham Palatnik (b. 1928) aspired to the elaboration of an own abstract geometric language with universal claim.

En los últimos años hemos visto en el arte contemporáneo de América Latina un creciente interés por la estética del perífodo colonial, especialmente una tendencia por cuestionar las sensibilidades del Barroco (siglo XVI al XVIII). Diferenciando la cultura y la política barroca del arte y el periodo Barroco, es más adecuado referirse a estas prácticas transhistóricas en el arte contemporáneo como expresiones de un “contra-Barroco”. Siendo que los intereses por la estética del Barroca varían entre artistas el presente artículo examinarán exclusivamente las piezas Con nombre y apellidos (2017) y Notabile y Nobicile (2017) de la artista ecuatoriana María José Argenzio (n. 1977). Estas obras, más allá de constituir dos trabajos diferentes, se analizan en conjunto bajo un marco expositivo. Es decir, en una puesta en escena, las obras hacen evidente la tensión entre lo real y el artificio, al mismo tiempo que retratan la construcción de la identidad en América Latina. A través de este análisis, propongo que la estética de un contra-Barroco surge como una propuesta contestataria a la visualidad moderna y la representación colonial.

Research on Diego Rivera´s Detroit Industry Murals, film and Fordism. Originally work in progress presented the University of Chicago´s Workshop on Latin America and the Caribbean (October 29 2015), discussing  the archival research for  "Detroit´s Rivera: The Labor of Public Art,"  a documentary montage based on the Ford Movie Division film materials on Rivera and Kahlo in Detroit (1932-3). The piece examines a fundamental yet neglected link between Rivera´s muralism, the Fordist biopolitical regime, and industrial film. In closing, Ramos discusses Philip Levine´s post-fordist poem, What Work Is.

In the 1940s and with the sponsorship of the Museum of Modern Art of New York (MoMA), the U.S artist Truman Bailey directed a school-workshop in Lima where he employed and trained nearly 80 workers to produce luxury items inspired by Andean popular arts. In this essay, I argue that the workshop was not only an indigenista project to preserve indigenous traditions as its organizers, Bailey and influential curator René d’Harnoncourt, claimed. I contend that the workshop was also and above all, a space for workers’ formation through training in modernist design and modes of production and commercialization of U.S industrial capitalism.

An article honoring Pedro de Oraa, abstract Cuban painter member of the 10 Pintores Concretos Cubanos, for his National Visual Art Award, Cuba 2015. It have an significant historical and insightful information about Pan Latin American Art World from the 1950s-60s

Notes for a Horizon-tality: Toward the Possibility of Becoming Together as an Assemblage is an editorial project that responds to our multiple and seemingly multiplying emergencies. Since the growing uncertainty of living in a world in crisis seems to continuously threaten the possibility of the future, this project seeks to contribute to the growing scholarship on this topic from the perspective of Latin American contemporary art. We hope that by providing a take on the future, the initial artistic and curatorial imaginaries gathered here can help counter the defuturing narratives that stagnate our mobilizing potential for constructing other ways of being and existing in the world.

In the face of generalized pessimism, it is essential to remember that recent uprisings and social movements have opened the door to alternative imaginaries for thriving amid end-of-the-world scenarios. Especially as these imaginaries underscore the fact that looking back in time constitutes a powerful form of anti-colonial resistance. This proposal for engaging in an assemblage against extinction, however, prompts two different albeit related questions namely: where is the future? And whose world are we to imagine? We invited an array of collaborators from Latin America to provide a multiplicity of answers so that together we can foster the beginning of what could be a collective imaginary for Horizon-tality.

In the next few entries readers will find a variety of provocations: some propose other ways of telling time (past, present, future); others may incite us to follow new directions or assume new orientations; may offer imaginaries for what an indigenous, Black, queer, or feminist proposition for Horizon-tality would look like; additional ones may help us to think about what an interspecies Horizon-tality could entail, and lastly, they may altogether offer us an (aesth)et(h)ics for collaged and stitched-together assemblages for being and existing in the world outside of the modern-colonial world system.

See the entire project at https://www.coleccioncisneros.org/editorial/featured/notes-horizon-tality

In this essay, I explore modalities of disruption of postcolonial ideas of space and time in Latin American art and design through the works of artists Chiachio & Giannone and Daniela Ortiz and designer Pedro Barrail.
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En este ensayo exploro distintas modalidades en las que ideas postcoloniales de tiempo y espacio son alteradas en piezas de arte y diseño latinoamericanos a través de las obras de los artistas Chiachio & Giannone y Daniela Ortiz y el diseñador Pedro Barrail.

The first time I met Puerto Rican artist and arteologist Diógenes Ballester was in a community summit in el Barrio. As a researcher interested in Puerto Ri- can art as history—as opposed to art history—I was introduced to Diógenes, one of the few artists who can navigate the art of the diaspora and in Puerto Rico given his long trajectory as an artist in both Puerto Rico and el Barrio. Diógenes is eager to share his extensive and precise knowledge of the history of art and how it intersects with the socio-political realities of Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans; for Claudia and me, it’s shocking how Diógenes recites dozens of facts--names, places, years, and so on—with near-impeccable precision. His personal story, like his art, is profoundly influenced by the political history of Puerto Rico and the art history of the world.

La lectura es, a lo largo de los siglos XIX y XX, puesta obsesivamente en imágenes. En Argentina, el catálogo de pinturas y grabados de lectores resulta proliferante y disperso: estamos hablando de cientos, varios cientos de imágenes. En el siglo XIX, artistas asentados en Buenos Aires como Adolphe D'Hastrel, Alphonse Femepin, Jean-Léon Pallière, Prilidiano Pueyrredón y Carlos Enrique Pellegrini trabajan una y otra vez el tema; en el siglo XX, nombres consagrados-desde Antonio Berni a Carlos Alonso-lo tratan sistemáticamente. Estas imágenes son tan potentes como lugar del deseo que en algunos artistas constituyen la figura decisiva de un modo del relato. Este artículo estudia las numerosas representaciones de lectores en la obra de Antonio Berni y, en particular, analiza la figura de Juanito Laguna como lector.

IN Colóquio LABEX- Uma história da arte alternativa: outros objetos, outras histórias - da história colonial ao pós-modernismo; Inst.promotora/financiadora: Museu de Arte Contemporânea da USP; Unifesp; Université Paris 10 - Ouest Nanterre.  http://www.mac.usp.br/mac/conteudo/academico/publicacoes/anais/labex_br_fr/index.html

Rodolfo Abularach (Guatemala, 1933-2020). Es considerado uno de los maestros del arte latinoamericano. Llegó a Estados Unidos con una beca de la Dirección de Bellas Artes de Guatemala en 1958 y se quedó a vivir allí por 40 años. Regresó a su país en 1998 y asumió la dirección de la Escuela de Artes Plásticas (ENAP). Esta entrevista hace un recorrido por los episodios más relevantes de su vida, el mundo de las exposiciones, los viajes y los encuentros con otros importantes artistas del siglo XX latinoamericano

were conserved prior to an exhibition in 2015 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH). We examined the authenticity of the current mechanisms, and in some cases replaced components. Where possible through research, we identified aspects of their original operating processes such as the speed, color, and configuration of elements. We also considered how these works can be maintained in the future without compromising the artists' intentions.

This essay analyses two works by the Brazilian artist Lygia Pape (1927–2004): a short film titled Eat Me: a Gula ou a Luxúria? (Eat Me: Gluttony or Lust?, 1975) and a related installation (1976). Both reference advertising and contain erotic images of women. I discuss these works in relation to the Brazilian television and film indus- tries of the 1960s–1980s, including Brazilian pornography and erotica, deemed a threat to traditional values by the country’s military dictatorship (1964–1985), de- spite its inconsistent approach to censoring them. I suggest that Pape appropriates and satirizes—or “cannibalizes”—ads and pornography as to resist the dictatorship’s conservative sex and gender ideologies. Though Pape did not consider herself a feminist, I argue that her Eat Me film and installation present a feminist critique of the heteronormative and patriarchal discourses undergirding the dictatorship and the Brazilian mass media’s commodification of women and sex, especially in advertising and pornochanchadas (sex comedies).

In this paper, I discuss the work of Uruguayan avant-garde composer Carmen Barradas (1888-1963), one of the first female composers to experiment with graphic music notations, to decenter dominant historical narratives that have silenced the contributions of Latin American women in the global histories of art. Born in Montevideo in 1888, Barradas’ work has been mostly overshadowed by the attention given to her brother, abstract painter Rafael Barradas (1890-1929). Between 1915 and 1926 the Barradas family resided in Barcelona, Spain where their household became the meeting place of avant-garde gatherings attended by Torres Garcia, Dali, García Lorca, and Marinetti among many others. During that time, the Barradas developed a collaborative relationship that led to the development of Carmen’s Plastica Musical, a unique approach to graphic notation that incorporated painterly forms and an interest in noise, and Rafael’s vibraciionismo style of abstraction that expressed the vibratory nature of sound color and form. Through a discussion of Carmen’s and Rafael’s collaborations, I first explore Carmen’s approach to graphic music notation as part of her dialogue with the futurist aesthetic of her time. Following, I discuss her interest in the spatial elements of sound represented which speak to a curiosity for adding elements of chance and improvisation to her compositions: two defining characteristics of the international intermedia avant-garde of the 1950s. Ultimately, by making Carmen’s contributions to graphic music notation and futurist aesthetic visible I claim her place in the histories of the early twenty-century avant-gardes and postwar intermedia art.
This paper presents preliminary research presented at the "Global Avant Grades Panel" in CAA 2019, New York.

The text approaches the relation of the photographic work of Geraldo de Barros in the 1940's and 1950's with the aesthetical proposals of the Museum of Art of São Paulo.

ESPADA, Heloisa. “The Fotoforma Exhibition at Masp, 1951: Geraldo de Barros and the Museum-School”. In: ALVAREZ, Mariola V. & FRANCO, Ana M. (Ed.). New Geographies of Abstract Art in Postwar Latin America. New York: Routledge Taylor and Francis Group, 2019, pp. 70-83.

The text analyzes the contacts between the Brazilian artist Lygia Clark and the French-German artist Hans Arp, as well as the connections between their conceptions of Concrete Art.

Published in:
TEUSCHER, Jana; WÜRTENBERGER, Loretta (Ed.). The Art of Hans Arp After 1945. Berlin: Stiftung Arp e. V. Papers, 2017.

An interview with Cuba contemporary artist Sandra Ceballos creator, main curator and director of Espacio Aglutinador the longest running privately own not-for-profit art gallery in Havana after the 1959 Castro's revolution. This interview was published in three parts.