Latin American Avant-Gardes: Interwar Hemispheric Networks and Transatlantic Dialogues
In the wake of independence and revolution, Latin American art became a crucible for rethinking modernity itself. From the monumental voices of muralism to the symbolic power of Indigenism and the utopian geometries of kinetic art, this lesson follows how artists across the continent transformed modernism into a project of identity, solidarity, and liberation – at once regional and transnational, rooted and visionary.
This session will present how the Avant-garde has been defined in Latin America. It will explore the contributions of muralism and post-revolutionary public art in Mexico; Andean Indigenist painting; and artistic expressions from the Río de la Plata region through the intersections of literature and visual art. Among the artists to be examined are muralists such as Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Máximo Pacheco, and Juan O'Gorman; women artists such as María Izquierdo, Aurora Reyes, and Frida Kahlo; photographers such as Tina Modotti and Lola Álvarez Bravo, and printmakers such as Leopoldo Méndez, Pablo O'Higgins, and Elizabeth Cattlet. We will complete this vision through Andean indigenist works by José Sabogal, Julia Codesido, and Camili Egas; or the Río de la Plata artists Pedro Figari, Rafael Barradas, Joaquín Torres García and the Escuela del Sur and Xul Solar. Finally, the proposals of post-war art connected to surrealism, realist painting, and kinetic art will be studied. Some of the artists to be reviewed are: Jesús Rafael Soto and Carlos Cruz Diez, Mathias Goeritz, in the case of Cinetismo; and Carlos Alonso, Rómulo Macciò, Ernesto Deira, Luis Felipe Noé for Nuevo Realismo and Neofiguración.
February 11, 2026 - from 6 PM to 8 PM CET.
