Monsters from the South. The Construction of Neo-figuration as Artistic Trend in Latiamerica

Abstract

This text is about the role played by the Cuban art-critic José Gómez Sicre, the Mexican artist José Luis Cuevas and the Argentine-Colombian art-critic Marta Traba in the consolidation of new-figurative painting as an artistic trend in Latin America in the period between the first exhibition of Cuevas in the Organization of American States (1954) and the publication of Marta Traba's book Los cuatro monstruos cardenales (1965). The article shows, in particular, how Gómez Sicre, Cuevas and Traba constitute a "common denominator" in the rise of neo-figurative tendency in Argentina (the Nueva Figuración group, formed by Macció, Noé, De La Vega), Colombia (Botero's "feista" period) and Mexico (the Interioristas group); and also stresses the importance of the exhibition "Neo-figurative painting in Latin America", curated by Gómez Sicre at the OAS in 1962, where for the rst time a "Latin American variant" of the European and U.S. new-figurative trend emerged. This trend had been outlined in 1959 at MoMA's crucial exhibition New Images of Man.