Latin American Art Exam 1

casta paintings

an 18th-century artistic genre from colonial Mexico that visually categorized multiracial families according to a rigid racial hierarchy

Art Nouveau, Symbolism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism

European Art Movements that Influenced Latin American Art

Art Nouveau

(1880s-1910s) International style of art, design, and architecture that embraced the use of modern industrial materials but rejected the functional aesthetic of works such as the Eiffel Tower that showcased exposed structure as architectural design.
Drew inspiration from sensuous curves in nature. The goal was to harmonize all aspects of design in to an integrated whole, as food in nature itself.

Symbolism

(late 19th Century) International movement in art and literature championed by a loose affiliation of artists interested in the irrational aspects of the human mind.
Symbolists sought a deeper and more mysterious reality beyond everyday life, which they conveyed through strange, ambiguous subject matter and stylized forms that suggest hidden and elusive meanings.

Impressionism

Movement of art that emerged in 1870s
France. Rejecting the rigid rules of the beaux-arts ("fine arts"), Impressionist artists showcased a new way to observe and depict the world in their work, foregoing realistic portrayals for fleeting impressions of their surroundings.

Post-Impressionism

Term coined by English critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe a diverse group of painters whose work he had collected for an exhibition. He acknowledged that these artists did not share a unified approach to art, but they all used Impressionism as a springboard for developing their individual styles.

Indigenismo

"is not synonymous with social
painting: rather, it is an offshoot of a broader tendency in Latin America
during the 1930s and 1940s to examine a segment of society that had
previously not been adequately represented in art."

A social and political movement in Latin America advocating the increased involvement, influence, or representation of Indigenous people in public policy, culture, education, employment, etc.

Mexican Revolution

(1910-1920 CE) Fought over a period of almost 10 years form 1910; resulted in ouster of Porfirio Diaz from power; opposition forces led by Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata

Mexican Muralism

headed by "the big three" painters, Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros in 1920s to 1970s a large number of murals with nationalistic, social and political messages were created on public buildings

Brazilian Modernism

came after that of the Spanish speaking Latin American countries, was a vanguard
movement that sparked a veritable rupture with Portuguese academicism and colonial
cultural practices.

• experimentalism - a rejection of the strict academism of the Brazilian Academy of Letters
• heightened consciousness of the social problems and political currents within Brazil.
• Major polemic within the movement: anxiety over the influence of Europe and the United States on Brazilian art and culture.

• 2 Major Positions:
• Oswald de Andrade & Cannibals: subsume influences from abroad but turn them into a
uniquely Brazilian art form.
• Nationalists: rejected international influences. Many of the Nationalist modernists were actively engaged in politics. The leader of the school, the writer Plínio Salgado, later became a fascist political figure & lead a failed coup against President Getúlio

Modern Art Week

• Grupo dos Cinco (Group of Five) group of 5 modernists who were influential in the early founding of the movement and sought to promote a uniquely Brazilian culture that emphasized both indigenous and non-
European elements.
• Members collaborated in forming the movement and organizing Modern Art Week, but they did not remain unified throughout the 1920s. Reasons for split: divergent interests or disagreements over which tradition should inform the movement and personal disputes like a feud between Mario de Andrade and Oswald de Andrade.
• Consisted of poetry readings, art exhibitions, performances, music &
dances.
• Art: departure from symbolism & impressionism / post-impressionism

Grupo de Cinco

- Tarsila do Amaral
- Anita Malfatti
- Mário de Andrade
- Oswald de Andrade
- Menotti Del Picchia

Antrhopofagio/ Cannibalism

Brazilian 1928 cultural and artistic concept where thinkers metaphorically "devoured" European and foreign influences to digest them and create a unique national identity

Non-Objective Art

First coined by the Dutch artist and designer Theo Van Doesburg, the term refers to any type of abstract art which has no figurative or symbolic references. Thus an abstract painting whose motifs or shapes are evidently derived from any natural elements, would not be considered concrete art: the
picture must be wholly devoid of any naturalistic associations. As a result, most
concrete art is based on geometric imagery and patterns, and is often called
geometric abstraction.

De Stijl/ Neo-Plasticism

The austere, geometrical style of concrete / non-objective art developed by the Dutch painters Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian just after the First World War (Netherlands). It described Mondrian's vision of an ideal, pure form of art and design which he felt the post-war circumstances demanded. It was to be a pure type of abstract art that adhered to strict rules of composition. Also the name of a journal that was published by Theo van Doesburg.

Suprematism

a Russian abstract art movement, founded by painter Kasismir Malevich around 1915, which concerned itself with elementary geometric forms (squares, circles) (El Lissitzky was a follower of Malevich and a fellow suprematist).

It was one of several modern art movements developed in Russia during the early 20th century.
Among them were:
- Russian Futurism (c. 1912-14) founded by Vladimir Mayakovsky
- Rayonism (1912-15) founded by
Mikhail Larionov
- Constructivism (c. 1919-1930) founded by Vladimir Tatlin.

Based on Utopian ideals, Suprematism was artistically revolutionary and sought a new freedom of expression in total abstraction. he wanted to develop a type of non-objective art which would allow him to abandon all references to the natural world and focus exclusively on pure form.

Constructivism

(also Russian) New approach to making objects, tried to abolish the traditional artistic compositional concern and replace it with 'construction.'
Borrowed ideas from Cubism, Suprematism, and Futurism. Interest in analysis of materials for mass-production, ultimately serving a modern, communist society.

geometric abstraction

art movement of the early 20th century that stressed the two-dimensionality of painting as observed subjects were converted into geometric shapes

Art Informel

• Tends toward the gestural and expressive, with repetitive calligraphic marks and anticompositional formats related to Abstract Expressionism, which is often considered its American equivalent.
• It eventually took root in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Spain, and was known in its various manifestations as: Gesture Painting, Lyrical Abstraction, Matter art, and Tachisme (from the French tache, meaning a spot or stain).
• Artists who became associated with Art Informel include Enrico Donati, Lucio Fontana, Asger Jorn, Emil Schumacher, Kazuo Shiraga, Antoni Tàpies, and Jiro
Yoshihara.

Surrealism

an artistic movement emphasizing the imagination and characterized by incongruous juxtapositions and lack of conscious control

Mexican Muralists

• Ramón Alva de la Canal
• Jean Charlot
• Fernando Leal
• Fermín Revueltas
• Roberto Montenegro
• Gerardo Murillo (Dr. Atl)
• Carlos Mérida
• Xavier Guerrero
• Diego Rivera
• José Clemente Orozco
• David Alfaro Siqueiros

Estridentistas

(1921-1927)
• Founder: Manuel Maples Arce
• Multidisciplinary: Jean Charlot, Alva del canal, Edward Weston, Tina Modotti
• Anti-classicism, pro-Modernity
• Art should be political
• Anti-poetic
• Anti-Government, anti-Church, pro-labor
• Anti-Centralism: Puebla, Zacatecas, Veracruz
• Uses mass/popular culture
• Influence: cubism, Dadaism, futurism

Los Contemporáneos

(1920s-1930s)
• Cultural Magazine Los Contemporáneos
• Multidisciplinary, emphasis on literature
• Pro-internationalization
• Pro-Modernity, "art for art's sake"
• "effeminate"
• Content: literary analysis, poetry, book reviews, cultural events, film reviews,
translations.
• Showcased works by Julio Castellanos, Agustín Lazo, Roberto Montenegro, José
Clemente Orozco, Manuel Rodríguez Lozano y Diego Rivera. George Braque, Jean
Charlot, Giorgio de Chirico, Salvador Dalí, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Man Ray.

Maria Candelaria

• 1943 Mexican film
• Director: Emilio "El Indio" Fernández
• Starring: Dolores del Río and Pedro Armendáriz
• 1st Mexican film screened at Cannes International Film Festival
• 1st Latin American film wining Grand Prix (Palme d'Or)
• Set in Xochimilco, Mexico in 1909, right before the Mexican Revolution started

Antonio Berni

- helped Orozco with the Argentinian mural.
• shared Orozco's leftist views
• His work reflects the unjust situation of the masses.
• Depicts not the mestizo or the Indian of the Muralists, but poor European immigrants who struggled to have fair labor conditions.

- later created two characters that were at the center of 2 series of paintings.
• Ramona Montiel, a seamstress/prostitute, and Juanito Lagunas, an orphan boy from the poor areas of Buenos Aires. Both figures struggled to survive, and offered a sharp critique to the inequality of the country.

Candido Portinari

- son of Italian immigrants and his family had worked in plantations
• showed the less fortunate classes of Brazil: poor European immigrants, mulattos, and blacks as strong and physically active.
• Later in his career his work shows social critique.
• His work shows an influence of Picasso, in particular to his painting Guernica, but also his blue period.

Leonora Carrington

An English-born Mexican artist, surrealist painter, and novelist. She lived most of her adult life in Mexico City, and was one of the last surviving participants in the Surrealist movement of the 1930s.

Remedios Varo

Spanish surrealist painter, writer, and graphic artist. Her work features Surrealist worlds, where science, mysticism, and magic mix together.

María Izquierdo

Studied at Academia de San Carlos under
Rufino Tamayo, Naïve style, First Mexican woman painter to be exhibited in New York and Paris

Frida Kahlo

Mexican painter; international popularity with self-portraits; was married to Diego Rivera; influenced by Rivera, shared his Communist views

Diego Rivera

Mexican Muralist who created artworks in Mexico and the U.S. focusing on political messages.

Wilfredo Lam

- Cuban artist who sought to portray and revive the enduring Afro-Cuban spirit and culture
- Chinese father & mother of mixed African, Indian, and European descent
• Attended Escuela de Bellas Artes, Havana.
• Exhibited at the Salón de la Asociación de Pintores y Escultores in Havana in the
early 1920s
• Moved to Madrid in 1923, studied with Fernando Alvarez de Sotomayor, Director
of the Museo del Prado (and teacher of Salvador Dalí).
• In 1929, married Eva Piriz, who died of tuberculosis two years later, as did their
young son.
• 1930s Association with the Surrealists
• 1936: traveling exhibition of Picasso was influential
• Moved to Paris in 1938, Picasso took him under his wing ,primitivism
• 1938 traveled to Mexico, where he stayed with Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.
• Spent WWII years in the Caribbean, along with André Breton & others
• 1941 returns to Cuba, reads Carl Jung's theories
• His style: fusion Surrealism, Cubism, & Caribbean inspiration
• Received the Guggenheim International Award in 1964
• 1966-67: multiple retrospectives (Kunsthalle Basel; the Kestner-Gesellschaft,
Hannover; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; and the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels.

Joaquín Torres-García

• Uruguayan mother and a Catalan emigrant father
• With the Uruguayan artist Rafael Pérez Barradas, he developed Vibracionisme
(Vibrationism), which combined formal elements of Cubism and Futurism and
focused on urban scenes. His Vibrationist works included symbols like clocks and
were divided into loose, grid-like structures containing fragments of images of people, places, and objects.
• 1926 moved to Paris, where he would formulate the key principles of Universalismo Constructivo.
• Influence: Neoplasticism, Theo Van Doesburg. He added symbols from a variety of sources, such as Egyptian, Greek, medieval, African, Aztec, Incan, and Oceanic art.
• Met & collaborated with Antoni Gaudí (1903-07)
• Returned to Uruguay in 1934. There he founded the Asociación de arte constructivo
(Association of Constructivist Artists) and published the journal Circulo y cuadrado,
which introduced the avant-garde art movements of Cubism, Neoplasticism, and
Constructivism.
• One-person shows, including those at the Museo de arte moderno, Madrid (1933);
Musée national d'art moderne, Paris (1955); Museo de bellas artes, Caracas, Venezuela (1980 and 1997); and the Sala Torres-García at the So Paulo Biennial (1959
and 1991).

Minimalism

• Geometric works that radically disregard conventional aesthetic appeal
• Sculptures often fabricated from industrial materials and emphasized anonymity over the expressiveness of Abstract Expressionism
• Duchamp influence readymades - prefabricated materials
• Seriality
• Emphasis on materiality
• Open-ended meaning
• Opposition to Greenbergian Formalism.
• Donald Judd, Robert Morris, Sol LeWitt

Art Academies

Institutions that hire, train, and create future artists; dictate what art is acceptable