Vernacular readings of postwar south american abstraction

Abstract

The combination of high modernism represented by abstract art and vernacular South American culture has been read by artistic historiography as incompatible, contradictory phenomena. However, some magazines that assumed the role of popularizing a modern lifestyle in Brazil, Venezuela and Colombia also took into account of the vernacular features of local life. Applying a comparative perspective on this process led me to review Buenos Aires context in search of possible correspondences; neglected materials and figures show their relevance. In the first instance, the magazines Habitat (edited by Lina Bo Bardi) and A. Hombre y expression (directed by Carlos Raúl Villanueva) the coexistence between modern art and local culture will be addressed. In the second instance, I will examine the Buenos Aires magazines Nueva Visión (directed by Tomás Maldonado) and Conjugación de Buenos Aires (edited by Edgar Bayley and Juan Carlos Lamadrid) in order to challenge established views of Argentine concrete art. My hypothesis is that these magazines read the aesthetic-constructive aspects of the vernacular from a modernist perspective focusing on procedures such as synthesis, formal values and material honesty.