Abstract Art in the Andes, 1950-1970
FAIN: FEL-267252-20
Michele Marie Greet
George Mason University (Fairfax, VA 22030-4444)
Research and writing of a book about 20th-century abstract art from the Andean countries Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru.
Informalist abstraction (also referred to as gestural or lyrical abstraction) emerged as a dominant trend in Andean art in the 1950s and 1960s, simultaneous to and in dialogue with the advent of this variant of abstraction in Europe and the United States. Yet Andean artists declared abstraction as their heritage and, by working in this manner, they believed that were finally disengaging themselves from the legacies of colonialism, assuming and transforming an aesthetic that was already rightfully theirs. This investigation will examine the nuances of postwar Andean artists’ references to pre-Columbian abstract designs, the politics and implications of this posture at home and in the international art world, and its effectiveness as an aesthetic strategy in these spheres.