Beyond National Identity

Pictorial Indigenism as a Modernist Strategy in Andean Art, 1920–1960 Michele Greet

Publish Date: 11/3/2009
Dimensions: 9 x 9.5
Page Count: 312 pages

Illustrations:

Paperback ISBN: 978-0-271-03470-6
Series Name: Refiguring Modernism

Paperback Edition: $65.00Add to Cart

“This book makes an excellent contribution to the literature on Latin American art and culture. On the basis of providing new insights into understudied but significant figures alone, this book is invaluable.” —Katherine Manthorne, CUNY Graduate Center

“Michele Greet’s study is purposeful, careful, and thoughtful, a nuanced analysis of indigenism in twentieth-century Andean art. It is an ambitious project chronicling forty years of complex historical, artistic, and geographic terrain.” —Stacie Widdifield, University of Arizona

“With great skill and insight, Greet weaves the history of pictorial indigenism in Latin America into the larger narrative of twentieth-century art and politics in the Americas.” —E. Douglas, Choice

Indigenism is not folk art. It is a vanguard movement conceived of by intellectuals and artists conversant in international modernist idioms and defined in response to global trends. Beyond National Identity traces changes in Andean artists’ vision of indigenous peoples as well as shifts in the critical discourse surrounding their work between 1920 and 1960. By challenging the notion of pictorial indigenism as a direct expression of national identity, Greet demonstrates the complexity of the indigenists’ critical engagement with European and pan-American cultural developments and presents the trend in its global context. Through case studies of works by three internationally renowned Ecuadoran artists, Camilo Egas, Eduardo Kingman Riofrío, and Oswaldo Guayasamín Calero, Beyond National Identity pushes the idea of modernism in new directions—both geographically and conceptually—to challenge the definitions and boundaries of modern art.

Michele Greet is Assistant Professor of Art History at George Mason University.

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Foundations

2. Departure: Camilo Egas’s European Formation

3. Returns: Andean Journals in the 1920s

4. Diverted Gaze: From Paris to North America

5. To New York and Back Again

6. U.S. Interventions

Conclusion