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Academic styles of painting, sculpture and even architecture lingered
longer in Latin America than they did in much of Europe in the last
decades of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th. Many of
the artists who would become the leading members of the various Latin
American vanguards were trained in the modes of academic art. If in
Europe of the 1870s, 80s and 90s, the avant-garde was comprise of those
artists who investigated and developed forms of Impressionism and Post
Impressionism, these styles developed only later in Latin America. One
must be very careful not to impose a Eurocentric notion of linear
development of aesthetic taste and "style" on Latin America and other
parts of the non-European world. Nonetheless, many artists from Latin
America (principally from the bourgeoisie) were able to travel to Europe
and see first-hand the novelties of European art. We will focus on
several artists who may serve as paradigms of this assimilation of
Impressionism and Post-Impressionism in a Latin American context. Among
them will be the Puerto Rican painter Francisco Oller. Oller spent
considerable time in Paris and Madrid and was friendly with many of the
protagonists of the avant-garde there (Pissarro, Manet, Cezanne). His
work done in Europe fits squarely within the patterns of European
Impressionism. When he returned to San Juan he adapted this mode of
vision to a uniquely "Puerto Rican" reality. His landscapes and still
lifes, as well as his figure studies, express many of the visual icons
and nationalistic goals of a troubled nation in the midst of a struggle
for national political identity which was threatened by the colonialist
domination of the US.
In Mexico, Diego Rivera, who would become one of the most outstanding
figures in modern Mexican art, had a thoroughly academic training in
Mexico City before receiving a state scholarship to study in Europe.
After 1907 he spent more than 14 years in Europe. First living in Spain
and then in Paris, Rivera (who also traveled widely) passed through
stages of Impressionism, Post Impressionism and Symbolism before
developing a Cubist style in c.1913. Between 1913 and 1917 he played a
very significant role in the discourse of Cubism in Paris, a theme which
will be examined at greater length in Lecture 3.
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