He April 15 marks World Art Daydate proclaimed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) that seeks to celebrate “the development, dissemination and promotion of art”.
According to the international organization, the importance of art lies in its ability to “nurture the creativity, innovation and cultural diversity of all the peoples of the worldand plays an important role in the exchange of knowledge and the promotion of interest and dialogue”.
UNESCO also insists that these are qualities that art has had and will continue to have. Likewise, it is indicated that, by encouraging the development of art, the means through which to be able to “achieve a free and peaceful world”.
On World Art Day, the French Audrey Azoulay, current director of Unesco, has mentioned that the date reminds us “opportunely that the art has the ability to unite us and establish links between us even in the most difficult circumstances”.
We could say, and remember, that many of the artistic expressions that arise around the world are linked to individual and collective experiences in the different latitudes of the world and take forms of enunciation of identity in response to cultural, political and social events.
The territory of Guatemala has been an example of a vast artistic manifestation from the pre-Hispanic period to the present.
For decades, the need for expression has been reflected as a consequence of a understanding of personal or group stories that are intertwined with facts around what affects us as a society.
In 1967, the Guatemalan writer Humberto Alvarado took up again in his book concerns the purpose and philosophy behind the Saker-Ti group, a civic organization made up of writers and young artists who They had met to generate dialogues about the cultural activities of Guatemala just after the Revolution of 1944.
As a manifesto, the members of Saker-Ti proposed a series of statements with which they tried to explain the value of the artist against the context they inhabited. In the fourth premise it was established that “art is subject to the principles and forms that human society creates in each era.”
Likewise, from Saker-Ti they affirmed that art is one of the forms of social consciousness determined by the material conditions of life in society. In this historical process, the temporal dimension that implies understanding the events of the past, present and futuresuggests Humberto Alvarado in the book.
Regarding this temporal crossing, we present seven groups or collectives made up of different Guatemalan artists who have developed proposals on their own, but who, by joining with other colleagues, have proposed a new way of understanding the history of the country and its multiple identity from different languages.
1- new sign
Formed during the late 1960sthe group was integrated by the poets Julio Fausto Aguilera, Antonio Brañas, Francisco Morales Santos, Roberto Obregon, Delia Quiñoz, and Jose Luis Villatoro, who were mostly from areas distant from the capital.
In addition to carrying out publications, developed cultural encounters such as conferences and recitals that started from the encounter with poetry as a balm in the face of a time of repression where freedom of expression was under threat.
Since Nuevo Siglo was published a book and more than ten ‘plaquettes’, full of contextual verses elaborated by the different members.
2- Vertebra Group
“We live in a time that belongs to us and the in-law is no longer the king of the blind” and “We want to structure a conscience” are two of the phrases contained in the manifesto of the Vertebra Group, and collective formed in the 1970s by the artists Marco Augusto Quiroa, Elmar Rojas and Roberto Cabrera.
Through their creations, the members they sought to emphasize an art that was committed to society and their own testimonies within the framework of a violent era.
Through multidimensional paintings and montages, the artists emphasized the identity and racial plurality of the country. In addition, their dialogues were nourished by the exchange with both academic and self-trained and popular artists.
3- Painters from Comalapa
Since the 20th century, the municipality of San Juan Comalapa in Chimaltenango has distinguished itself by preserving an internationally recognized pictorial heritage. Part of this representativeness was achieved thanks to the group of Kaqchikele painters from Comalapaformed in the 1980s by Paula, Estela and Adelina Nicho Cúmez, Angélica and Berta Mux, María Nicolasa Chex and Margarita Roquel.
The surreal paintings of the Comalapans They had space in national and international exhibitions. Part of the group enunciation served as a response to the exhibition tradition that only men artists in the town had acquired.
4- Colectivo La Torana
The group, formed in 2000 by five students from the Faculty of Architecture of the University of San Carlos de Guatemala –Josué Romero, Marlov Barrios, Plinio Villagrán, Erick Menchú and Norman Morales– proposed into the 21st century a extended, humorous and technical look around issues such as territorial identity, migration and violence.
Through contemporary language, the members of La Torana developed joint works on expressions such as muralism, sculpture and painting.
5- Grupo Sotz’il
Also originating in the year 2000, the Sotz’il theater group has since developed a mutant body of work whose research and creation has fostered the crossroads of music, dance and Mayan scenic art.
The purpose behind the aforementioned scenic construction has led the group maya kaqchikel propose acts where the stories of struggle of the native peoples are vindicated. Their Presentations have been seen in different departments of the country, as well as on tours throughout Mexico, the United States, and Chile, among others.
6- MACÚ
the photographers Byron Marble and Juan Brenner gave life in 2010 to the collective THEY DO: a kind of dual platform in which they sought to identify elements that have revealed surrealism and the chaotic nature of the context they inhabit, through moving or still images.
a construction of photographic and audiovisual proposals that challenged “established ideas on issues of social class, politics and contemporary art”, led the authors to produce a series of images and video art that have been seen in Guatemala and other parts of the world.
7- Contemporary Marimba from Guatemala
Since 2015 and to date, the musical project Contemporary Marimba from Guatemala seeks to generate new forms of musical exploration, mixing instruments such as bass, cello and marimbato give as a result a subgenre that drinks from jazz, pop and even metal.
The group, made up of Rodrigo Maldonado, Hilda López, Daniel Gonzalez, Libertad Sáenz and Herson Choguix, explores axes such as criticism of authoritarianism, plurality and the exercise of free expression.
