Counter-colonial unfoldings of cubism in Latin America: The works of Wifredo Lam, Fernando de Szyszlo, and Francisco Matto

The exceptional cubist configuration is often thought of as a French movement. Nevertheless, beneath the geographical label lies a hidden truth: an art that arises in Paris but relies on the cooperation of artists, critics, and art historians of various nationalities. On the one hand, the channels by which cubism established transatlantic dialogues and exchanges in different moments were diverse and in other periods. For example, by direct contact of Modern Latin American artists with the movement, art students and painters that attended the French academies, and distinguished visitors related to the movement. On the other, as in other regions, cubism circulated in Latin America, catalyzing different artistic approaches and practices that, despite sharing the same origin, resulted in a manifold of proposals and plastic forms. The cubist influence in Latin America was not strong enough to break with previous cultural traditions. In a similar way to how Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque assimilated the lesson of African sculpture, Latin American artists also dialogued with the so-called primitive cultures of their regions, maintaining and resizing their original symbolic and mythical value. Artists such as Tarsila de Amaral (Brazil), Cándido Portinari (Brazil), José Cúneo (Uruguay), Emilio Petorutti (Argentina), Diego Rivera (Mexico), among many others, assimilated its morphological aspect. But other artists understood cubism as a way of thinking. They assimilated its structural dimension, such as Wifredo Lam (Cuba), Francisco Matto (Uruguay), Joaquín Torres García (Uruguay), and Fernando de Szyszlo (Peru), among others. With a theoretical frame following the considerations of Carl Einstein, Daniel- Henry Kahnweiler, and Vincenc Kramář, three art theorists who tackled cubism from different angles and in terms of man’s active participation in the creation of a new, more dynamic view of the world, this paper approaches the works of Wifredo Lam, Fernando de Szyszlo and Francisco Matto, privileging the way they deal with space and their dialogue with local ancestral traditions in the context of modern societies.