In the decades of the 60s to the 80s of the 20th century, the lead years in South America, art could not be neutral or timid. It had to be combative. And boy was it, both in the political sense and in a formally disruptive and experimental dimension.
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This other boom latinoamericano, different from the literary but coinciding with it in time, it is now on display generously in the second of the six episodes or narrative spaces of the Reina Sofía Museum within the new configuration of its permanent collection; a reorganization and expansion that began to be presented in May with the opening of a first section focused on the 1950s and 1960s in the United States, Europe and Spain, and which will culminate in November with the inauguration of the entire complex.
The new Latin American section shows the double vocation of rupture in the language and combat in the content of the artists of the region between the 60s and the 80s
The title of this second episode from the museum, The enemies of poetry. Resistances in Latin America, sums up that double vocation of rupture in language and combat in content. There are a total of more than a hundred works, the majority never exhibited before and either donated by patrons related to the entity or bought by the institution, in any case in recent years.
‘Repression’ (1985), by Herbert Rodríguez (Peru, 1959)
The tour begins with two rooms dedicated to the movements that emerged in Brazil from the civil-military coup of 1964. Sensory experimentation, the occupation of public space, the dematerialization of the work, the use of one’s own body and the participation of the spectator are ideas essential: concepts that delve into parallel and subsequent currents throughout Latin America.
Photographic record of the fourth performance of the work ‘A Chile’. Panel of 182.88 cms. high by 118.16 cm wide
The spirit of May 68 acquires great prominence in these movements, along with the response to the military dictatorships that try to smash all creativity out of the way. In this context, and in contrast to the individuality of American art in the 1950s, Latin Americans show a strong “collectivist will,” explains Borja-Villel. A sample of this collective soul is postal art: a formula devised to avoid censorship by exchanging subliminal messages in a kind of international network. These were difficult times. Also challenging and fruitful.
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