Mestizofilia y nacionalismo.: La literatura artística de Mariano Picón Salas

Mariano Picón Salas (Mérida, 1901 - Caracas, 1965) was a Venezuelan intellectual of deep Americanistconvictions and author of an outstanding work for the history of Latin American essay writing in the 20thcentury. Art and regional literature occupied a relevant place in his work, both disciplines in which he madesignificant contributions at a time when they were defining their contours and objects. This article deals withaesthetic thought and art writing in Picón Salas, less explored than other aspects of his work, focusing on theChilean stage of his intellectual life (between 1923 and 1936), where he germinates an aesthetic thought andproduces a corpus of essays in which the concepts of mestizaje, nationalism and artistic experience are central.It is also argued that this thought on art is closely linked to an institutional and political trajectory that mustbe included in the analysis, specifically within the University of Chile. That is why, in order to examine hiswriting on art, his work will be analyzed using tools of intellectual, institutional and cultural history.