Avant-Garde, Internationalism, and Politics

The 1960s were heady years in Argentina. Visual artists, curators, and critics sought to fuse art and politics; to broaden the definition of art to encompass happenings and assemblages; and, above all, to achieve international recognition for new, cutting-edge Argentine art. A bestseller in Argentina, Avant-Garde, Internationalism, and Politics is an examination of the 1960s as a brief historical moment when artists, institutions, and critics joined to promote an international identity for Argentinas visual arts. The renowned Argentine art historian and critic Andrea Giunta analyzes projects specifically designed to internationalize Argentinas art and avant-garde during the 1960s: the importation of exhibitions of contemporary international art, the sending of Argentine artists abroad to study, the organization of prize competitions involving prestigious international art critics, and the export of exhibitions of Argentine art to Europe and the United States. She looks at the conditions that made these projects possiblenot least the Alliance for Progress, a U.S. program of exchange and cooperation meant to prevent the spread of communism through Latin America in the wake of the Cuban Revolutionas well as the strategies formulated to promote them. She describes the influence of Romero Brest, prominent art critic, supporter of abstract art, and director of the Centro de Artes Visuales del Instituto Tocuato Di Tella (an experimental art center in Buenos Aires); various group programs such as Nueva Figuracin and Arte Destructivo; and individual artists including Antonio Berni, Alberto Greco, Len Ferrari, Marta Minujin, and Luis Felipe No. Giuntas rich narrative illuminates the contentious postwar relationships between art and politics, Latin America and the United States, and local identity and global recognition.