The Contested Object: Pop Art in Latin America, 1964-1974

Since the 1960s art critics and historians have remarked the absence of Pop art in Latin America. They justified its absence by relating Pop art with high levels of industrialization, consumption, and an American ethos. However, Pop art was frequently spoken of in countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Colombia Cuba and Venezuela. This dissertation analyzes how mainstream Pop art was adopted and adapted in three different countries: Argentina, Colombia and Cuba during a ten-year period (1964-1974). A group of Pop artists emerged in Buenos Aires around 1964. Among them were Marta Minujin, Dalila Puzzovio, Rafael Squirru, Edgardo Gimenez, Delia Cancela and Pablo Mesejean. These artists converged around the prestigious Centro de Artes Visuales of the Instituto Torcuato di Tella (1963-1969), which became a privileged site for avant-garde art. The works produced by this group, for the most part installations, happenings and environment, point to an understanding of Pop art as a primarily experimental style. In Colombia, Beatriz Gonzalez became identified early on with Pop art. Her work, like that of mainstream Pop artists, stems from pre-existing sources culled from mass culture. The aesthetic hierarchies in place in Latin America at this moment, however, made her work acquire a radically different form and content. Her use of mass culture sources threatened the long-standing relationship between high art and popular culture and pointed to exclusions based on class and gender and embedded in the ideology of national culture. Her work, like that of the Argentineans, was primarily three-dimensional, incorporating cheap furniture that acted as a frame for her pictures. Cuba's adoption of Pop art surprised many critics in the mid-1960s because of the style's association to American culture and consumer values. However, Cuban artist Raul Martinez used the style to create portraits of the Revolution's principal leaders, while poster designers often blended Pop art with Op to create an image of absolute contemporaneity.