Description
The renowned Argentine art historian and critic Andrea Giunta analyzes projects specifically designed to internationalize Argentina’s art and avant-garde throughout the 1960s: the importation of exhibitions of up to date international art, the sending of Argentine artists out of the country to study, the organization of prize competitions involving prestigious international art critics, and the export of exhibitions of Argentine art to Europe and the USA. She looks at the conditions that made these projects conceivable—not least the Alliance for Progress, a U.S. program of “exchange” and “cooperation” meant to prevent the spread of communism through Latin The usa in the wake of the Cuban Revolution—in addition to 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); more than a few group programs such as Nueva Figuración and Arte Destructivo; and individual artists including Antonio Berni, Alberto Greco, León Ferrari, Marta Minujin, and Luis Felipe Noé. Giunta’s rich narrative illuminates the contentious postwar relationships between art and politics, Latin The usa and the USA, and local identity and global recognition.