5.3: Avant-garde Movements in Latin America

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During the first half of the 20th century in Latin America, a significant portion of artistic production reflected the impact of social activism and the profound ideological changes that occurred in the Western world during those years. These movements, parallel to the European ones, were grouped under the generic name of “avant-garde”, which share characteristics with what is known in the Anglo-Saxon world as Modernism in the field of aesthetics. The painting on the left illustrates the rich development of avant-garde aesthetics in Latin America. With surreal elements, which take advantage of the symbolism of the unconscious, of dreams and of the ancestral heritage, the complex relationship between social classes, cultural roots and visions of personal and collective identity that characterized the experimentation of avant-garde movements, in dialogue with innovations from different geographies, fields of knowledge and historical sources, is represented here.

“The Two Fridas” (1939), by Frida Kahlo (Mexico 1907-1954).

Ideological-political context

As we have seen (§5.1), the 20th century began in many Latin American countries with an economic expansion in the export of raw materials. This generated considerable urban growth and an increase in the middle and working classes. Some sectors of the business elite favored political reforms to gain the support of a larger sector of the population. On the other hand, worker and peasant activism had a particular influence, not only because it was connected to the worldwide strengthening of left-wing movements, but because any strike affecting export infrastructure had a crucial impact on the economy of Spanish-American countries. Thus, labor mobilization led to processes of redefining the national sphere. The debates and initiatives advanced by the working classes, as well as the perception that the European model was not necessarily superior, increased interest in local demonstrations and alternative visions of national destiny.

This redefinition of national identities and the arts was, in part, a response to the changes that Western Europe experienced in the first decades of the century. Until the end of the 19th century, Western culture imagined itself as a superior civilization, a force for progress and social harmony, with technical advances transforming transportation, communication, and mass production. However, the horrors of the First World War (1914-18) dealt a major blow to this positivist vision, generating distrust of science and rationalism. Even before, Karl Marx (1818-1883) had strongly questioned the principles of capitalism and bourgeois society. Consciousness scholars such as Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) disputed the empire of reason (the Enlightenment idea that man was a rational animal) and emphasized the importance of other aspects of the psyche, which the father of psychoanalysis demonstrated in dreams and in the erotic aspects of the unconscious, as in his book on The Interpretation of Dreams (1900). In 1905 and 1915, Albert Einstein (1879-1955) unveiled his theories of relativity, which integrated time into the three dimensions of space, resulting in a profound revision of how reality was conceived. On the other hand, The Decline of the West (1918-22), the work of the German philosopher Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), posited the aging of European civilization and its need to renew itself in contact with other cultures. The nightmare of the First World War confirmed these theses and also undermined the value of expansionist, colonialist or imperial projects. All of this contributed to a radical self-examination of Western culture and the arts.

In connection with workers' activism and with this revision of culture, certain values became prevalent in the intellectual and urban world: “being at the forefront”, innovating, protesting, fighting for rights, proclaiming manifestos, breaking with tradition, being cosmopolitan, shaking up bourgeois comfort. Artistic production elaborated this impact in very visible ways through movements grouped under the generic name of “the Vanguard” (avant-garde), an appropriately military and militant term that was used fashionably in France to indicate this combative desire to be at the forefront of change and to participate in social transformation.

Many groups of artists and poets drew up their manifestos or organized themselves into movements. Famous in Europe were Fovism (1905), Cubism (1907), Futurism (1909), Dadaism (1916) and Surrealism (1924). Each of these “-isms” defines its own aesthetic priorities, but all were animated by the enthusiasm to propose new expressive possibilities that would accompany the rapid pace of sociocultural changes. In avant-garde aesthetics, the following predominate:

• experimentation with expressive forms and possibilities (breaking norms, playful sense);
• a level of activism or emancipation contrary to the traditional or conventional;
• self-definition: each movement produces its own definition of “what is art”;
• questioning the “I” as a unit and of authority as something just or desirable;
• and an inquiry into representation processes:
  • they seek to affect and “shock” the public (reader, spectator), they are anti-sentimental;
  • show how the medium (the word, the painting, etc.) influences what is represented, and
  • show how social relations influence what is acceptable, beautiful or artistic.

Four avant-garde European movements that were widely disseminated in Latin America were:

Cubism. In the analytical phase (1907-12), he sought to present the object from different perspectives, exploring the limits of realism by fragmenting and recomposing the image through paintings characterized by a geometric vision. In the synthetic phase (1913-30), the forms were simplified; more vivid colors were used, and the recreated object became more abstract. A famous exponent of Cubism was the Spaniard Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), formerly a member of the Fovista group [1].

Futurism. In 1909, the “Futurist Manifesto” appeared in Italy, adopting a political stance to defend an artistic trend against traditionalism and celebrate modernization, speed, technology, violence, youth, and industry. It was a literary and artistic movement launched by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944). The aim was to portray the dynamic character of the 20th century by glorifying war, danger and machines. In literature, the free imagination, the rupture of syntax, the subversion of orthographic signs, the use of inks of different colors, the disordered arrangement of letters, words and verses were defended. In 1918, the “Futurist Political Party” joined Mussolini's fascism.

Expressionism. Already in the early years of the 20th century, several German and Northern Western European artists sought to represent pain and violence before and after the world wars, exploring subjective perception to evoke ideas and moods and to innovate in creative possibilities. His aesthetic emphasizes individual freedom, emotional expression, irrationalism, and impactful or taboo subjects such as morbid, demonic, fantastic or sexual. In several of these characteristics, it resembles French fovism [1].

Surrealism. As a movement, it was founded on the basis of a manifesto promoted in 1924 by the Frenchman André Breton (1896-1966). The name originates from a work by the poet Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918), a strong critic of World War I, which he subtitled “surrealist drama” (Les mamelles de Tiresias, 1917). Influenced by the discoveries of psychoanalysis, surrealists are especially interested in free association, dreams, the inner life, alternative understandings of reality, and mythological perceptions of the world (archetypes). The Spanish painters Salvador Dalí (1904-1989) and Joan Miró (1893-1983), as well as the director Luis Buñuel (1900-1983), are among its most influential representatives. In Latin America, surrealism developed a distinct identity, enriched by indigenous and African cultural influences. In the painting of the Cuban Wilfredo Lam (1902-1982) and of the Mexican Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), this type of Latin American or “post-colonial” surrealism is found, which, by taking the implications of the European movement further, breaks with it and affirms the creative force of cultural sources that were previously underestimated.

Of all these movements, the one that had the most lasting impact on 20th-century literature in general, and in the Hispanic world in particular, was surrealism. This is explained, in part, because it is less restrictive in terms of its formal postulates: it is more interested in researching a type of experience than in imposing a specific way of representing it. It also articulates in its aesthetics the three basic criticisms of modern societies: 1) injustice and social violence; 2) rationalism; and 3) Eurocentrism or colonialism. In addition, it explores the aspect of the human experience that most concerns artistic and literary production, as understood in the contemporary era: subjectivity, consciousness, and identity. The most influential thing is his conception of the work, not as an expression of emotions or of the rational authorial self, but as a space for experimentation and discovery, in which other forces are manifested (the unconscious, cultural archetypes, the mechanics of language). Among the many names that could be mentioned in the cultivation of Latin American surrealism, the Cuban painter Wilfredo Lam (1902-1982), the Guatemalan novelist Miguel Ángel Asturias (1899-1974), the Chilean narrator María Luisa Bombal (1910-1980), and the Mexican painters Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) and Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991) stand out. The latter is also associated with Expressionist aesthetics, to which the artists Débora Arango (Colombia, 1907-2005) and Oswaldo Guayasamín (Ecuador, 1919-1999) notably contributed, among many others.

Detail of a mural by the Ecuadorian Oswaldo Guayasamín, a sample of muralist art that developed since the 1920s
after the Mexican revolution and spread across Latin America with a mixed avant-garde aesthetic.
H3kt0r, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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[1] Fovism or Fauvisme (1905) had emphasized emotional intensity through the distortion of forms and the dissonant use of colors. Its most outstanding exponent was Henri Matisse (1869-1954).

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Avant-Garde Spanish-American poetry

The poetics immediately following Modernism can be grouped into two directions. The first, known as Spanish-American postmodernism, emphasizes formal simplification and accessible images with a localist spirit; the second, avant-garde, radicalizes exploration of the critical place of art in modern societies with intense formal experimentation and a cosmopolitan spirit.

A significant portion of the Latin American intelligentsia contributed to the aesthetic and cultural self-reevaluation of the first half of the 20th century in the West. The renewed enthusiasm in Spain, exemplified by the government of the Second Republic (1931-1939), led to significant contributions from important Spanish-American poets, such as Pablo Neruda and César Vallejo. To give another example, Mexican surrealism had as much vitality as the Parisian one, with world-famous creators such as the painter Frida Kahlo, the filmmaker Luis Buñuel (who lived in Mexico since 1949) and the poet Octavio Paz (1914-1998). If magazines were created to disseminate these ideas, to defend them, multiple manifestos were written and disseminated. In most cases, however, the normativity of “-isms” was not strictly followed, but rather their renewing and experimental spirit was adopted to break conventional molds and open fruitful paths to poetry: the importance of studying the non-European art that cubists and fovists had promoted, the introduction of the technological language advocated by the futurists, and the revolutionary or liberating value of non-conscious creativity invigorated by the surrealists, among other directions.

In 1914, the Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro presented his poetic manifesto, “Non serviam,” in Santiago, where he elaborated on the foundations of the movement that he later called creationism. This movement consisted of conceiving poetry as a creation of reality, rather than a representation of it. His proposals became more radical when, in collaboration with avant-garde artists from Paris, he co-founded the magazine Nord-Sud (1917-18). His works from this period, such as “Landscape”, experiment with the visual dimension of the poem to expand their possibilities of representing and suggesting multiple meanings:

In 1918, in Madrid, Huidobro helped found Ultraism, a movement also joined by the Argentine Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), who was living in Spain at the time. Upon returning to Argentina, Borges and other young writers spread ultraism with the premise of eliminating (modernist) ornamentation and reducing poetry to its fundamental elements: image, typography, and linguistic innovation. The movement also wanted to capture modernization through neologisms, references to technical advances, parody and the incorporation of regional experiences. Borges later renounced this type of aesthetics in favor of philosophical meditation and dialogue with universal culture.

The Latin American avant-garde movement spread especially through literary magazines that encouraged controversy and celebrated striking innovation. In Argentina, Prisma (1921), Proa (1922-25), Martín Fierro (1924-27) and, a few years later, Sur, founded by the writer Victoria Ocampo (1890-1979); in Cuba, the Revista de Avance (1927-30); in Peru, Amauta (1926-30), founded by the Marxist and indigenist thinker José Carlos Mariátegui (1894-1930). In those years, stridentism also appeared in Mexico (c. 1922), with an aesthetic influenced by futurism, whose most outstanding exponent was the poet Manuel Maples Arce (1898-1981). Soon after, the group of “contemporaries” was formed, gathered around two important magazines: Ulises (1927-28) and Contemporaries (1928-31). Among them, Carlos Pellicer (1897-1977), José Gorostiza (1901-73), Jaime Torres Bodet (1902-74), Xavier Villaurrutia (1903-50) and Salvador Novo (1904-1974) stand out, several of whom were also playwrights. This group incorporated the avant-garde impulse, proposing suggestive directions for the dialogue between poetry, the other arts, the psyche and society.

At the beginning of poetic avant-gardism in Latin America, the Mexican modernist José Juan Tablada (1871-1945) stands out, who introduced the plasticity of Japanese hai-ku; the Argentines Silvina Ocampo (1903-1993), Norah Lange (1905-1972) and Oliverio Girondo (1891-1967), who explored cubist concepts and surrealist possibilities in cosmopolitan and self-conscious poetry; Vicente Huidobro (1893-1948), the theorist and most constant defender of creationism, visual poems and radical search —of life and of aesthetics— that represent the avant-garde movements in the world; and the Peruvian César Vallejo (1892-1938), whose varied work, which connects avant-garde combativity with the aspirations of the proletariat in a deeply personal and suggestive way, continues to have a profound influence on Latin American (and global) poetic production. The Negro and indigenist movements also incorporate avant-garde aesthetics into their proposals.

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Postmodernist vs. avant-garde aesthetics

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Fuentes

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• Chang-Rodriguez, Raquel and Malva Filer. Voices from Latin America. Boston: Thomson & Heinle, 2004.
• Davies, Catherine, ed. The Companion to Hispanic Studies. Oxford University Press, 2002.
• Frank, Jean. History of Spanish-American literature. Barcelona: Ariel, 1983.
• Jimenez, Jose Olivio. Critical anthology of Spanish-American modernist poetry. Madrid: Hyperion, 1989.
• Oviedo, Jose Miguel. History of Spanish-American literature. Madrid: Alliance, 2001.
• Quiroga, Jose. “Hispano-American poetry between 1922 and 1975”. History of Spanish-American literature. Ed. Roberto Gonzalez Echeverria and Enrique Pupo-Walker. Trad. Ana Santonja Querol and Consuelo Triviño Anzola. Madrid: Gredos, 2006. 318-73.
• Winn, Peter. Americas: The Changing Face of Latin America and the Caribbean. 4th ^ed. Berkeley: U of California, 2005.