Michele Greet
George Mason University, History and Art History, Faculty Member
- Art History, Arte Colombiano, Arte Latinoamericano, Historia del arte latinoamericano, Marta Traba, Indigenismo, and 20 moreParis, Latin American Art, Mexican Art, Peruvian art History, Surrealism, Surrealismo, Cubism, Mexican Muralism, Women in Art, Women Artists, History of Exhibitions, Avant-Garde, Modernism (Art History), 20th century Avant-Garde, Arte Contemporáneo Latinoamericano, Modern Art, Modernismo, Contemporary Latin American Art, Arte contemporáneo, and Historia del Arteedit
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This essay examines the work of New York-based Bolivian artist María Luisa Pacheco, whose groundbreaking exhibition of abstract paintings in La Paz in 1962 helped validate abstraction as a legitimate form of artistic expression in... more
This essay examines the work of New York-based Bolivian artist María Luisa Pacheco, whose groundbreaking exhibition of abstract paintings in La Paz in 1962 helped validate abstraction as a legitimate form of artistic expression in Bolivia, where socially oriented figural painting still reigned supreme. The Pacheco Papers at the Archives of American Art illuminate the shifting circumstances and conflicting expectations the artist faced while exhibiting in different contexts throughout the Americas and bring to light the unique strategy—informed by her residence in both Bolivia and the United States—Pacheco developed to connect notions of the local to a style critics deemed “universal.” While many midcentury Latin American artists explored means of infusing abstraction with markers of local identity, Pacheco invented an innovative visual language that evoked the Bolivian landscape through shape, color, and texture, resonating across hemispheres.
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Exhibition review
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*Errata The name of the 1926 "Salon de France" was incorrectly transcribed. The correct title of the salon is the "Salon du Franc"
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Various scholars have suggested a contiguity or affinity between Brazilian artist Tarsila do Amaral’s iconic painting Abaporu and surrealism; none have engaged in an in-depth analysis of her actual relationship with surrealism, however.... more
Various scholars have suggested a contiguity or affinity between Brazilian artist Tarsila do Amaral’s iconic painting Abaporu and surrealism; none have engaged in an in-depth analysis of her actual relationship with surrealism, however. This close reading of Abaporu will demonstrate that Amaral deliberately and systematically engaged with the tenets and formal languages of surrealism. Her engagement was not one of pure emulation; instead she turned the surrealists’ penchant for satire and desire to disrupt hierarchical schema back on itself, parodying the images and ideas put forth by the movement to create a counter modernism. Amaral’s sardonic appropriation of surrealism’s formal languages and subversive strategies was the very factor that made Abaporu the catalyst of the Anthropophagite Movement.
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The first survey of Latin American art ever to be held anywhere in the world took place in Paris at the Musée Galliera in 1924. Rather than showcasing a particular stylistic tendency, organizers conceived of Latin American heritage as the... more
The first survey of Latin American art ever to be held anywhere in the world took place in Paris at the Musée Galliera in 1924. Rather than showcasing a particular stylistic tendency, organizers conceived of Latin American heritage as the unifying factor behind the show, giving rise to an exhibition format that would persist for the rest of the twentieth century. The stylistic eclecticism of the exhibition compelled critics and audiences to ponder the existence of a Latin American aesthetic and to attempt to pin down characteristic traits common to the region. This article examines the content, reviews and ramifications of this foundational exhibition of Latin American art.
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*Correction. Angel Zárraga exhibited the the male version of Three Soccer Players in the Autumn Salon in 1931, but he painted it ten years earlier in 1921.
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This essay will analyze the individual exhibitions of four Latin American women artists held in Paris between the two world wars : Brazilians Tarsila do Amaral and Anita Malfatti in 1926, Mexican Lola Velásquez Cueto in 1929, and Cuban... more
This essay will analyze the individual exhibitions of four Latin American women artists held in Paris between the two world wars : Brazilians Tarsila do Amaral and Anita Malfatti in 1926, Mexican Lola Velásquez Cueto in 1929, and Cuban Amelia Peláez in 1933. Entering the modern art milieu involved decisions about subject matter and technique, about whether to portray national themes or avoid them, and how to negotiate the gendered implications of style. During periods of “exhilarating exile” all four of these artists entered the vibrant artistic environment in Paris and strategically positioned themselves, via their artistic choices, in relation to aesthetic debates about the role of decorative in modern art.
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Known primarily as a surrealist poet, César Moro also created numerous paintings and collages in a surrealist mode. Born in Peru, Moro made the obligatory sojourn to Paris in 1925 to immerse himself in European avant-garde activities. In... more
Known primarily as a surrealist poet, César Moro also created numerous paintings and collages in a surrealist mode. Born in Peru, Moro made the obligatory sojourn to Paris in 1925 to immerse himself in European avant-garde activities. In 1928 he met André Breton and began to experiment with surrealist technique as a means to push both his painting and his poetry in new directions. Moro was one of the first Latin American artists to take up collage as an autonomous art form, creating images that combine text with photographs from advertisements, scientific journals, and newspapers in bizarrely incongruous ways.
When he returned to Peru, Moro organized the first exhibition of surrealist art in Latin America at the Academía Alcedo in Lima, Peru in 1935. Given the dominance of Indigenism in the visual arts in Peru, this was a bold move on Moro’s part. While the exhibition baffled the public, it introduced new possibilities to young artists working in Peru and challenged the ascendancy of Indigenism. In 1938 Moro left Peru for Mexico where he would remain for the next decade. There he renewed his contact with Breton and the two joined forces, together with the painter Wolfgang Paalen, to organize the Exposición Internacional del Surrealismo at the Galería de Arte Mexicano in 1940.
This essay will trace César Moro’s extensive engagement with surrealism, from his early participation in Breton’s surrealist group in Paris, to the exhibition he organized in Peru, and finally to Mexico. By examining closely Moro’s surrealist collages and paintings, I hope to reveal the depth of his involvement with the movement, as an artist, poet, and organizer on a transnational scale.
When he returned to Peru, Moro organized the first exhibition of surrealist art in Latin America at the Academía Alcedo in Lima, Peru in 1935. Given the dominance of Indigenism in the visual arts in Peru, this was a bold move on Moro’s part. While the exhibition baffled the public, it introduced new possibilities to young artists working in Peru and challenged the ascendancy of Indigenism. In 1938 Moro left Peru for Mexico where he would remain for the next decade. There he renewed his contact with Breton and the two joined forces, together with the painter Wolfgang Paalen, to organize the Exposición Internacional del Surrealismo at the Galería de Arte Mexicano in 1940.
This essay will trace César Moro’s extensive engagement with surrealism, from his early participation in Breton’s surrealist group in Paris, to the exhibition he organized in Peru, and finally to Mexico. By examining closely Moro’s surrealist collages and paintings, I hope to reveal the depth of his involvement with the movement, as an artist, poet, and organizer on a transnational scale.
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Este estudio centra su análisis en la obra pictórica de Eduardo Kingman como un modelo para describir los enfoques, tendencias e ideología que caracterizaron al Indigenismo. Esta corriente artística reunió a pintores, escritores e... more
Este estudio centra su análisis en la obra pictórica de Eduardo Kingman como un modelo para describir los enfoques, tendencias e ideología que caracterizaron al Indigenismo. Esta corriente artística reunió a pintores, escritores e intelectuales ecuatorianos durante la década de 1930. El artículo propone que esta corriente surgió como una reacción al academicismo predominante en los salones y escuelas de arte. El estudio hace una revisión de las exposiciones, bienales y concursos en los que Kingman participó.Analiza las influencias artísticas y literarias reflejadas en la obra de este autor,sus relaciones con el Grupo de Guayaquil y su vinculación al Sindicato de Escritores y Artistas del Ecuador (SEA). Finalmente, recoge la opinión y reacción a su producción pictórica por parte de escritores, intelectuales y prensa en general.
This study centers its analysis in the pictorial work of Eduardo Kingman as a model to describe the approaches, tendencies and ideologies which characterized Indigenismo. This artistic current brought painters, writers and Ecuadorian intellectuals together during the 1930s. The article proposes that this current emerged as a reaction to the predominance of academicism in the circles and schools of art. The study reviews the exhibits, biennials and contests in which Kingman participated. It analyzes the artistic and literary influences reflected in the work of the author, his relationships with the Guayaquil Group and his links with the Union of Writers and Artists of Ecuador. Finally, it brings together the opinions and reactions of writers, intellectuals and the general press to his pictorial production.
This study centers its analysis in the pictorial work of Eduardo Kingman as a model to describe the approaches, tendencies and ideologies which characterized Indigenismo. This artistic current brought painters, writers and Ecuadorian intellectuals together during the 1930s. The article proposes that this current emerged as a reaction to the predominance of academicism in the circles and schools of art. The study reviews the exhibits, biennials and contests in which Kingman participated. It analyzes the artistic and literary influences reflected in the work of the author, his relationships with the Guayaquil Group and his links with the Union of Writers and Artists of Ecuador. Finally, it brings together the opinions and reactions of writers, intellectuals and the general press to his pictorial production.
Research Interests: Latin American Art, Modern Art, Modernism (Art History), Frida Kahlo, Matta Echaurren, Roberto Sebastian Antonio, and 15 moreExhibitions, Wifredo Lam, Diego Rivera, Amelia Pelaez, Xul Solar, Pedro Figari, Joaquín Torres García, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Tarsila do Amaral, School of Paris, Ángel Zarraga, Antonio Berni, Anita Malfatti, Vicente Do Rego Monteiro, and Emilio Pettoruti
André Lhote and His International Students is a collection of 13 essays that illuminate the significant way in which André Lhote, through is teaching, his art practice and writing, was responsible for distributing a specific set of formal... more
André Lhote and His International Students is a collection of 13 essays that illuminate the significant way in which André Lhote, through is teaching, his art practice and writing, was responsible for distributing a specific set of formal and theoretical modernist trends. This book thus not only pays tribute to an unjustly neglected artist, theoretician and teacher, but also examines how artists from around the world contributed to and reinterpreted modernist movements that took place in Paris during this period. André Lhote and His International Students is an account of a microcosmic version of the cosmopolitan Paris that was shaped by the flow and circulation of thousands of single artists from around the world.
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An unprecedented and comprehensive survey of Latin American artists in interwar Paris Paris was the artistic capital of the world in the 1920s and ’30s, providing a home and community for the French and international avant-garde, whose... more
An unprecedented and comprehensive survey of Latin American artists in interwar Paris
Paris was the artistic capital of the world in the 1920s and ’30s, providing a home and community for the French and international avant-garde, whose experiments laid the groundwork for artistic production throughout the rest of the century. Latin American artists contributed to and reinterpreted nearly every major modernist movement that took place in the creative center of Paris between World War I and World War II, including Cubism (Diego Rivera), Surrealism (Antonio Berni and Roberto Matta), and Constructivism (Joaquín Torres-García). Yet their participation in the Paris art scene has remained largely overlooked until now. This vibrant book examines their collective role, surveying the work of both household names and an extraordinary array of lesser-known artists.
Author Michele Greet illuminates the significant ways in which Latin American expatriates helped establish modernism and, conversely, how a Parisian environment influenced the development of Latin American artistic identity. These artists, hailing from former Spanish and Portuguese colonies, encountered expectations of primitivism from their European audiences, and their diverse responses to such biased perceptions—ranging from rejection to embrace to selective reinterpretation of European tendencies—yielded a rich variety of formal innovation. Magnificently illustrated and conveying with clarity a nuanced portrait of modernism, Transatlantic Encounters also engages in a wider discussion of the relationship between displacement, identity formation, and artistic production.
Paris was the artistic capital of the world in the 1920s and ’30s, providing a home and community for the French and international avant-garde, whose experiments laid the groundwork for artistic production throughout the rest of the century. Latin American artists contributed to and reinterpreted nearly every major modernist movement that took place in the creative center of Paris between World War I and World War II, including Cubism (Diego Rivera), Surrealism (Antonio Berni and Roberto Matta), and Constructivism (Joaquín Torres-García). Yet their participation in the Paris art scene has remained largely overlooked until now. This vibrant book examines their collective role, surveying the work of both household names and an extraordinary array of lesser-known artists.
Author Michele Greet illuminates the significant ways in which Latin American expatriates helped establish modernism and, conversely, how a Parisian environment influenced the development of Latin American artistic identity. These artists, hailing from former Spanish and Portuguese colonies, encountered expectations of primitivism from their European audiences, and their diverse responses to such biased perceptions—ranging from rejection to embrace to selective reinterpretation of European tendencies—yielded a rich variety of formal innovation. Magnificently illustrated and conveying with clarity a nuanced portrait of modernism, Transatlantic Encounters also engages in a wider discussion of the relationship between displacement, identity formation, and artistic production.
Research Interests: Latin American Art, 20th century Avant-Garde, Organization of American States, Indigenism, Marta Traba, and 12 moreJosé Sabogal, Post Colonial Theory, José Carlos Mariátegui, Panamericanism, 1939 New York World's Fair, New School for Social Research, Oswaldo Guayasamín, Amauta, Revista, José Gómez Sicre, Camilo Egas, Eduardo Kingman, and Helice, Revista
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... following chapter Greeley moves on to Salvador Dalí. Through an in-depth analysis of several paintings created during the war years (Soft construction with boiled beans: Premonition of civil war, 1936; Autumn cannibalism, 1936–7; The... more
... following chapter Greeley moves on to Salvador Dalí. Through an in-depth analysis of several paintings created during the war years (Soft construction with boiled beans: Premonition of civil war, 1936; Autumn cannibalism, 1936–7; The metamorphosis of Narcissus, 1937; and ...
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In 1928 the French journal La Renaissance de l’art français et des industries de luxe published the first images of Diego Rivera’s SEP murals to circulate in Paris. Accompanying the photographs was a condensed and translated reprint of an... more
In 1928 the French journal La Renaissance de l’art français et des industries de luxe published the first images of Diego Rivera’s SEP murals to circulate in Paris. Accompanying the photographs was a condensed and translated reprint of an essay by Mexican born Latvian-American historian and art critic Anita Brenner “A Mexican Renascence,” which had originally appeared in the United States in 1925. The images chosen to illustrate the French publication were entirely different from the US version, however, and therefore told a different story. Following Brenner’s lead, in 1929 French critic Jean Cassou wrote an article entitled “La Renaissance de l’art Mexican” for the journal L’Art Vivant which also discussed Rivera’s murals, and in 1930 L’Art Vivant dedicated the entire January issue to Le Mexique, publishing an extensive spread of photographs of Rivera’s SEP and Chapingo murals, thereby significantly expanding on the images made available in 1928. This paper will examine the presentation of Diego Rivera’s SEP murals in the French Press, looking at how French journals served as a curatorial platform and shaped perceptions of Mexican muralism abroad through their selection, arrangement, and analysis of imagery.