Rebellion, Nonsense and Despair: Latin American Artists at the end of the 60s
By the end of the 1960s, Latin American art reached a threshold. In Argentina, the mainstream art historical narrative tells how, pushed by increasing politicization, many artists withdrew from the art world to engage in political activism. But amid that situation of liminality, there are other stories to be told. This presentation focuses on three artists who died young, but who were some of the most brilliant and original figures of the decade: Alberto Greco, Jorge Bonino and Federico Manuel Peralta Ramos. It narrates how, like other politicized artists, they also refused the conventions of the art world and radicalized themselves. Although in their case they did it to the point of insanity, producing works and actions that were expressions of despair as well as symptoms of the limits of language. The presentation asks how to recuperate the value of rebelliousness and nonsense vis-à-vis the dominance of the discourse of rationality.
This lecture is presented as part of the CCS Bard course When Radical Attitudes Become Form: Reinvention and Destruction of Art in 1960s Latin America, led by Mariano López Seoane. The ISLAA Artist Seminar Initiative supports graduate seminars on key figures and periods of Latin American art with a focus on living artists who participate in conversations with students or on historical figures represented in the ISLAA collection. Students collaborate to produce a public-facing exhibition that aims to expand art historical narratives and provide a platform for emerging curators.
Inés Katzenstein joined The Museum of Modern Art in 2018 as Curator of Latin American Art and the inaugural Director of the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Research Institute for the Study of Art from Latin America. In her role as curator, she helps conceive the Museum’s collection displays, and heads the Latin American and Caribbean Fund, which is dedicated to acquisitions from the region. She has organized two major exhibitions based on the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Gift: Sur moderno: Journeys of Abstraction (2019, with Maria Amalia García) and Chosen Memories (2023). In 2021 she was part of the curatorial team for Greater New York at MoMA PS1.
As director of the Cisneros Institute, she oversees research projects on modern and contemporary Latin American art and a fellowship program. Since its inauguration, the Cisneros Institute has developed a multiyear research project on issues of art and ecology in contemporary Latin America, and it recently began a second project dedicated to studying the relationships between modernity and spirituality in the 20th century.
Prior to joining the Museum, from 2008 to 2018, she was the founding director of the Art Department at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, where she created and oversaw an educational program for artists and curators, as well as an exhibition program. Previously, she was Curator at Malba-Fundación Costantini, and the editor of Listen, Here, Now! Argentine Art of the 1960s: Writings of the Avant-Garde, published by The Museum of Modern Art in 2004. She holds a master’s degree from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College and a BA from the Universidad de Buenos Aires.