Pieter William Green
AIFS
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Spring 2022
Blog #2
Hola todos!
Welcome to another installation of my adventures in Argentina.
As the majority of you are taking your finals, I am in the middle of completing my midterms at my university here in Buenos Aires. During some of my free time in between exams, I had the opportunity to visit the MALBA, one of my favorite museums in Argentina.
The museum stands for “Museo de arte latinoamericano de buenos aires” or the museum of Latin American Art Buenos Aires. The museum focuses on Latin American art from the early 20th century to present day and contains quintessential pieces of the many artistic movements in the region. From well-known schools of thought like modernism to less popular but no less impactful movements like surrealism, muralism, and constructivism, the MALBA is a one-stop shop for Latin American experimentation.
The most recognizable aspect of Latin American art is how it distinguishes itself. Unlike our early forefathers, Spanish colonists did not entirely eliminate Amerindian tribes as much as they integrated them into their cultural identities, and as such, many Latin American works take heavy inspiration from Amerindian art. This represents an important facet of the Latin American experience; its desire to culturally mix. Instead of many cultures that live among one another like in the United States, Latin America thoroughly blended its native roots among European and African influences to create the distinct Mestizo society we are familiar with today. This is reflected in Latin American art which shows no preference from where influence is taken or what is made.
Jorge de la Vega, the artist of the work in my first photo, is known for bolstering the movement known as Other Figuration, a group of Argentine painters dedicated to freeing themselves from artistic renditions of the human form that were popular during the 1960s. In typical Latin American fashion, their goal was to combine influences that had never been used before to create human interpretations that were considered more than merely abstract.
As my semester begins to settle down, expect more accounts of my adventures in the near future. I hope everyone pulls through during finals!
¡Ciao!