COMMUNICATING VESSELS. Latin American Avant-Garde Movents and Europe 1900-1950

In collaboration with the Esteban Vicente Museum of Contemporary Art and to mark the fifth centenary of the death of Christopher Columbus, the “Sociedad Estatal de Conmemoraciones Culturales” (Spanish State Corporation for Cultural Commemorations) and the Regional Government of Castile and León presented a temporary exhibition with the name “Communicating Vessels. Latin American Avant-Garde Movements and Europe, 1900-1950”. The exhibition brought together almost one hundred paintings, sculptures and photographs by forty-six Latin American artists. The works were borrowed from both public and private collections and were chosen to underline the dialogue and contact with Europe enjoyed by Latin American artists in the first half of the twentieth century.

The exhibition puts on display the depth of knowledge and involvement of some Latin American artists who visited or studied in Europe (Germany, Spain and France in the main) at a time in the history of modern art when the western world was seeing a great confluence of new ideas, languages and ideological stances.

Artists such as Rafael Barradas, Anita Malfatti, Emilio Pettoruti, Diego Rivera, Xul Solar, Joaquín Torres García and Ángel Zárraga assimilated the stylistic innovations of the European avant-garde movements such as Futurism, German Expressionism, Orphism, the Ultraist movement and Russian and Bauhaus Constructivism to shape their own visual styles. Yet by virtue of being artists from the other side of the Atlantic, they also enriched discussions about avant-garde art in Europe.

The name of the exhibition, “Communicating Vessels” is taken from the writings of André Breton and underlines the nature of the continuous dialogues and constant communication which took place between artists and aesthetes in Latin America and Europe, whilst highlighting an exchange of ideas, a confluence in values such as the absolute freedom of expression and the experimental direction of the quests made by the Latin American artists themselves.

The exhibition went beyond the typical categories used when viewing Latin American artistic expression and attempted to show a greater plurality of the stylistic proposals which became known and were practiced on the Latin American continent, particularly under the influence of Surrealism, Italian Metaphysics and the Magic Realism found in the writings of Franz Roh.

The selected artwork emphasized the diversity of aesthetic stances assumed by Latin American artists in the face of formal innovations and theoretical discussions about the avant-garde in the main artistic centers in North and South America and Europe, such as Paris, Madrid, New York, Mexico City and Buenos Aires.

The central dilemma for many of these artists was the confluence, if not the comparison, of the conceptual modernities adopted in Europe and their own Latin American background, particularly given that historical, political and cultural contexts differed greatly from country to country, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, for instance.

Far from wanting to present Latin America as having a unified theme and style, full of the exoticisms and magic realisms exalted by contemporary literature, this exhibition broadens the visitor’s knowledge of the aesthetic processes experienced by Latin Americans in the first half of the twentieth century as they fed on and actively participated in western avant-garde movements, whilst adopting a deep commitment to the cultural reality of their countries of origin.

The end result is that the question raised by this exhibition centers on the tension between the avant-garde and individual identities