Artistas plásticos y partidos comunistas: el viaje de David Alfaro Siqueiros a Montevideo y Buenos Aires en 1933 y su impacto en los debates estético-políticos

Abstract

Objective/Context: the article investigates the links between groups of plastic artists and communist parties in the Southern Cone in the 1930s. The visits of David Alfaro Siqueiros to Montevideo and Buenos Aires in 1933 are taken as a gateway to address an ‘intense moment’ of the intersection between art and politics. The research adopts intellectual history as its main framework. On the one hand, it aims to study artists qua intellectuals because they formulated aesthetic-political postulates both through their works and writings that reflected on the social function of art. On the other hand, the framework of ideas, contexts, dynamics, and tensions typical of artistic-intellectual groups is analyzed. Methodology: the analysis and interpretation of primary sources is highlighted, both of visual works and writings on art, and there is a dialogue with secondary bibliography on the history of art, the history of communism, and cultural history. Originality: the article places communist groups in a ‘zone’ of the cultural fields of the Southern Cone. Thus, it captures the articulations between party membership and insertion in artistic circuits and formulates a new look at the link between communism and art in regions where communism was not a ruling party. Conclusions: Siqueiros’ visits to the Rio de la Plata metropolises generated a scenario in which a singular convergence between art and politics took place, which, unlike that which occurred in the 1960s and 1970s in the region, did not deny or break the modes of operation of the artistic field, but fought a battle to transform it from within.

Keywords

• communist party
• political art
• realism
• siqueiros
• unionized artist