February 16-March 31, 2010
This exhibit was organized by the Cultural Center of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in collaboration with the Art Museum of the Americas of the Organization of American States (OAS). It was first shown in 2009 in Medellín, Colombia, in celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the IDB, and it is now presented at the Art Museum of the Americas as part of the Centennial celebration of the OAS House of the Americas architectural complex.
Introduction
“Fifty Years, Fifty Works” is an exhibition organized by the IDB Cultural Center. It gathers fifty outstanding artworks from the art collections of the Inter-American Development Bank and the Art Museum of the Americas of the Organization of American States—both in Washington, D.C.—with the collaboration of the Museo de Antioquia. The exhibit represents to a great extent the development of the arts in the region through the twentieth century. The number of works has been deliberately fixed to associate the occasion with the fiftieth anniversary of the creation of the Inter-American Development Bank and the celebration of the 2009 Annual Meeting of its Board of Governors. It is also a good-will gesture on the part of the IDB to the City of Medellín, which is hosting both celebrations.
The scope of the exhibition is the twentieth century, and that serves as a reminder that the twenty-first century is just beginning and it is important to learn from past experiences, personal and otherwise, so one can be both innovative and original. The selection is composed of two-dimensional works: paintings, drawings and engravings, although a couple of pieces may escape such a strict definition. The selection, however, allows for an overview, seldom seen in Medellín, and symbolizes many of the most important moments in the artistic life of Latin American and Caribbean art during the last century. The variety of techniques selected responds to undeniable and obvious facts related to the region’s unpredictable and recurrent economic and social crossroads, often oblivious of the rules the international art market is constantly attempting to establish.
It is possible then to appreciate a small-scale pochoir composition by Dr. Atl (Gerardo Murillo), a seminal figure of Mexican art of the pre-Revolution days. His importance cannot be overlooked when analyzing the Mexican mural school, and in particular, Diego Rivera. Also included are some works by three important—if not the most important—Mexican muralists: Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco. Given the impossibility of bringing a real fresco into the exhibition, the several engravings included evince the muralist’s ingrained ability for such an undertaking (in Rivera’s case, two of the exhibit’s engravings are related to some of his most famous frescoes in Mexico; there is a similar version of the one of Zapata at The Museum of Modern Art, New York), which apart from the chemistry and labor required to accomplish its results demands an extraordinary capacity to draw and resolve an idea or a theme in a balanced, effective composition of epic proportions. Each of the muralists drew on such a capacity in a resourceful and personal way, aside from their ideological, humanistic, or aesthetic interests.
Present also in the selection are early modernists such as Argentinian Emilio Pettoruti, Uruguayans Pedro Figari and Joaquín Torres García, and Brazilian Cándido Portinari; the Indigenism trend that spread around the Andean countries as a result of the influence of Mexican muralism in the 1920s and 1930s has its niche with the Peruvian José Sabogal, and in a somehow, later version, in the work of Costa Rican Francisco Zúñiga; the Second World War avant-garde is well illustrated by the Guatemalan Carlos Mérida, the Cubans Wifredo Lam, Amelia Peláez, and René Portocarrero, the Mexican Rufino Tamayo (with mixography, a technique he helped to develop), and the Chilean Roberto Matta. The postwar years, with their extraordinary expectations about freedom and reconstruction and eagerness to find new ways for expression, are clearly identified in the works of the Venezuelans Jesús Rafael Soto and Carlos Cruz-Díez, Colombian Alejandro Obregón, Mexican José Luis Cuevas, Argentinians Rogelio Polesello and Mauricio Lasansky, Bolivian Maria Luisa Pacheco, Brazilian Manabú Mabe, and Peruvian Fernando de Szyszlo, to name a few; the exhibit dedicates numerically a larger segment to this generation for obvious reasons. Those considered visionary artists such as the Jamaican Everald Brown or the Haitian Joseph Jean-Gilles also have their place here, since they represent a portion of society and a way of life that used to be considered something outside the mainstream.
The introductory essay that accompanies the exhibition is a summarized version of a book, the last written by the late Colombian-Argentine art critic and historian Marta Traba in 1982–83. The text went dormant until 1993 when the IDB Cultural Center, upon an agreement with the Organization of American States, which owns the copyrights, published the book as part of the “Encounter of Two Worlds” celebrations. Many of the individual labels annotating the artworks are also authored by Marta Traba; others are by Syracuse University Professor Emeritus Stanton L. Catlin, the late pioneer in the appreciation of Latin American and Caribbean art in the United States.
In the name of the IDB Cultural Center, I would like personally to thank Lucía González, the Director of the Museo de Antioquia, for her enthusiasm and spirit of collaboration with this endeavor. In undertaking this work, she has demonstrated, one more time, her leadership, her inspiring determination, and her forceful commitment to reach out to everyone who believes in the capacity the arts possess to make life a better and more enjoyable experience.
Félix Ángel
Curator of the Exhibition
Artwork pictured is ©AMA | Art Museum of the Americas (OAS). All rights reserved.
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