Interest in art from this region rapidly increased to such an extent that the term “Latin American art boom” came into vogue.[3] After two earlier revivals of Latin American art in the West, in 1940–1945 and 1959–1970 respectively, that both were largely motivated by political and strategic interests in Latin America from the United States, from the late 1980s onward, this attention was sparked by predominantly social motives.[4] The interest in art from Latin America was also reflected in the art market. Auction houses saw sales of Latin American art soar. From 1989 through the 1990s, records in Latin American art auctions continued to be broken. For example, between the first auction organized by Christie’s in 1981 and 1999, sales grew from $2.5 million to more than $27 million. In Europe, where the Latin American population was smaller, the upcoming anniversary of the “discovery” of Latin America in 1992 was the main impetus to organize exhibitions focusing on art from Latin America, as was a general interest in this relatively unknown area, which had rebounded after periods of disruptive dictatorships and now seemed calmer.
American art historian Shifra Goldman marked the beginning of the third revival of art from Latin America with the exhibition Aqui (1984, University of Southern California), which brought together artists with a Latin American background who lived in the United States. However, the center of gravity of the revival can be dated somewhat later, with shows such as Art of the Fantastic: Latin America, 1920–1987 (1987, Indianapolis Museum, Indiana), Hispanic Art in the United States: 30 Contemporary Painters and Sculptors (1987, Houston Museum of Fine Art, Houston, Texas), The Latin American Spirit: Art and Artists in the United States, 1920–1970 (1988, Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York), Art in Latin America: The Modern Era 1820–1980 (1989, Hayward Gallery, London), and Latin American Artists of the Twentieth Century (1993, Museum of Modern Art, New York).[5]
Figure 1. Gallery views of the UABC (Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Chile) exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in 1989. The photograph shows the display of works from Francisca Nuñez. Photo: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
The growing attention for art from Latin America in North America and Europe was accompanied by a wave of debates about globalization and identity politics that had become pressing due to the increasing multiculturalization of many Western societies. This sparked a renewed discussion about how so-called non-Western art could be properly represented and included in international art centers. The notion “global art” emerged and became commonplace to distinguish contemporary art created worldwide after 1989 from the colonial notion of “world art,” referring to art by the “Other,” collected and presented separately from mainstream Western art, and therefore generally more a field of interest for anthropologists than for art historians. New approaches were also explored to contextualize Latin American art in relation to dominant cultures. Gradually, a dichotomy began to appear between art that appealed to a so-called “art for export” model—locally crafted, nationalist art and art that, free from obvious ethnic or nationalist connotations, circulated in the “contemporary global art scene.”[6] Art historian Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro put it this way:
Since the 1990s, two vectors pulling in opposite directions have defined the field of Latin American art. On the one hand, the idea of Latin American identity became a powerful tool in an increasingly fragmented and identity-based art system. […] On the other hand, we began to see the mainstream contemporary art world diversify and move toward a more global sensibility.[7]
Although museums and galleries working with artists from Latin America disregarded their origin more and more, this, of course, did not apply to the extensive retrospective exhibitions of Latin American art, which were based on the very idea of a “Latin American identity.”[8] Art historians and critics such as Goldman and Pérez-Barreiro, but also Ivo Mesquita, Gerardo Mosquera, Mari Carmen Ramírez, and Nelly Richard, devoted several critical articles to the representation of art from Latin America, which were compiled some years later in the anthology Beyond the Fantastic: Contemporary art criticism from Latin America (1995)—a title which indeed offered a critique on the exhibition Art of the Fantastic. It was the first publication written by Latin American authors in English, intended for a non-Latin American audience. It rightly critically examined the framing of art from Latin America in the Western canon. The consensus was that, influenced by the remnants of modernist standards, all too often Latin American art was still regarded as a separate, inferior, or exoticized art category. For Latin American art, as well as its presentation and reception, critic and curator Carolina Ponce de León, for instance, deduced only two options within the frame of reference existing in the Western art world at the time. It could either correspond to the models of the center, which would “condemn it to being an epigone and to seeing itself diluted within aseptic internationalism,” or it could be different, yet on the condition of “a closed notion of cultural identity as the only possibility of originality.”[9]
In the middle of this paradigm shift, related debates and changing curatorial approaches, in which the above exhibitions were often the subject of discussion and critical reviews, U-ABC was organized and presented in Amsterdam. Yet, despite its spot-on timing, the exhibition has hardly been associated with international interest in Latin American art and has not been considered as such abroad or in the Netherlands. In this article, I attempt to fill that gap by discussing U-ABC within the context outlined above. The question of what motivations and considerations led to the exhibition is my starting point. Afterward, I address the way U-ABC compared to other exhibitions of Latin American art programmed at the time. How unique was U-ABC? And to what extent did this particular transnational interest of Beeren have a lasting effect?
Figure 2. Gallery views of the UABC (Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Chile) exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in 1989. The photograph shows the display of works from Hilton Berredo. Photo: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
Prior to Beeren’s appointment as director, the Stedelijk Museum already had a noteworthy exhibition history relating to Latin American and Caribbean art. As early as 1950, director Willem Sandberg (1897–1984) showed art from Haiti. Moreover, the Netherlands was represented at an early stage at the São Paulo Biennial. For this reason, Sandberg, and later Edy de Wilde (1919–2005), visited the region frequently and built up a useful network of collectors, gallery owners, art critics, and historians. In the decades that followed, the Stedelijk Museum organized more than twenty exhibitions in which artists from Latin America took part. These included solo exhibitions of renowned artists such as Roberto Burle Marx (1957), Joaquín Torres García (1961), and Roberto Matta (1964), but also group exhibitions such as Jonge Schilders uit Uruguay (1956). From the mid-1960s, attention is said to have waned. Various claims, including from Beeren himself, indicate that relations with the continent were disturbed because of the military dictatorships that had gripped a considerable number of countries. Nevertheless, in addition to the Dutch participation in the São Paulo Biennial in 1967, several exhibitions with Latin American artists took place at the Stedelijk Museum after 1966. In the 1970s, for example, works by Wifredo Lam, Édgar Negret, and a presentation of Cuban posters were shown. Besides, De Wilde undertook multiple trips to Venezuela and Mexico that decade. Most of the works acquired during his directorship were donations, but De Wilde did arrange for the inclusion of some important works in the collection such as Roberto Matta’s Vietnam (1965) and Jesús Soto’s Paralleles: Jaune et blanc (1965). Furthermore, for reasons that are unclear, no further notice was taken of the support the Stedelijk Museum provided to a museum that was yet to be established in Santiago de Chile in the early 1970s, Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende, for which extensive contact was maintained between De Wilde and the curator there, Mario Pedrosa.
Figure 3. Roberto Matta, Vietnam, 1965, oil on canvas, 205 × 298. Gift from Foundation Vincent Van Gogh, 1969. Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
Figure 4. Jesús Rafael Soto, Parallèles: jaune et blanc, 1965, mixed-media installation, 56.5 × 107 × 25 cm. Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
The accession of Beeren in spring 1985 to the post of Stedelijk Museum director coincided with a period in which democracy was being restored in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. This inspired Beeren and his team to “re-establish” cultural relations in areas of interest the Stedelijk Museum had previously maintained, as he pointed out in the introduction of the catalogue accompanying the exhibition.[10] Also, Beeren explained in his inaugural speech that “there was a real need to find out what was happening in the fine arts in Latin America, right there on the spot.”[11] Somewhat further in the catalogue can be read that the show needed to be in touch with the kind of art then being made in Latin America. An art, therefore, that benefitted from a changing political climate: “We want to emphasize an art that is a part of life in those countries today,” Beeren wrote.[12] He was indeed known for his fondness for focusing on the relationship between society and art. The fact that Beeren connected the occasion of the exhibition to the restoration of democracy in South America is therefore no surprise, nor that its title referred to a geopolitical term: the ABC Pact, or the alliance between Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. Because of the importance of the new political situation as an area of focus for Beeren and his team, the absence of (explicitly) political art is curious. All in all, the dictatorial regimes in the countries concerned had only just—or not quite yet—been completely abolished. Chile was officially a dictatorship until 1990.[13] Museums in North America and elsewhere in Europe did not mention whether the political situation in Latin America was a specific reason for assembling exhibitions with artists from the region.[14] By making explicit reference to it, the Stedelijk Museum took a unique position, even though the proclaimed policy did not correspond to the museum’s past program or to the actual situation, as Chile was still ruled by a dictator. The assertion that the restoration of democracy was the reason for U-ABC may have been formulated in retrospect to legitimize the exclusive focus on those four countries.
With the announcement that Beeren wanted to center attention on Latin America, he clearly indicated a different vision than his predecessor. During De Wilde’s directorate, there was said to have been a fixation on large and modern cities in Europe and North America. Beeren saw a lack of topicality in his predecessor’s exhibition policy. He wanted to create large “groundbreaking exhibitions” more frequently and saw interesting possibilities in the field of Latin American but also Russian art. The new course set by Beeren should probably also be seen in light of his appointment as director, which was by no means self-evident, as Rudi Fuchs had been the anticipated successor.[15] Furthermore, he bore the burden of an enormous tradition. “Beeren was left with the dark shadows of the God Sandberg and the Demigod De Wilde,” Hans den Hartog Jager and Jhim Lamoree wrote in HP/De Tijd on August 21, 1992. The fact that he, in addition to having integrity and being erudite, was also known for being boring, shy, and hesitant did not help either. To deal with this, he may have sharpened his policy on certain fronts. Moreover, Beeren did not have much time to make his mark as director. He was fifty-seven when he took office in 1985, and many considered the few years of service that remained until his retirement too short.[16]
Immediately after his employment, Beeren started the preliminary research for his planned Latin America exhibition and prepared a trip to Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia.[17] It is unclear with what expectations Beeren began his orienteering trips at the time, and whether he had any at all. The catalogue states that he opted for “research and not an unscientific fixation based on speculation.”[18] Instead of a concept, he had a certain sympathy. The run-up to the exhibition indeed reveals a great deal of doubt, varying, sometimes contradictory choices, and took a relatively long time.[19]
Figure 5. Gallery views of the UABC (Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Chile) exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in 1989. The photograph shows the display of works from Marcia Schvartz. Photo: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
As mentioned before, the period of the Latin American art boom coincided with a tipping point in the awareness of power relations that were at play in globalization processes in the art world and of the different approaches to art from Latin America that were available. Beeren’s exploratory approach appealed to a growing number of curators such as Jean Hubert Martin, who were not deterred by the lack of infrastructure in Latin America and the minimal knowledge available about the art of the region. Traveling curators, such as Beeren, saw in Latin America an unexplored territory that held a promise of “new discoveries” and artistic authenticity. Jean Hubert Martin, regarding his motivation to focus on art from Latin America (as well) when he was preparing Magiciens de la Terre, said: “I expected to find something completely different, something that would renew our vision.”[20] Beeren and his staff naturally hoped for something similar. After all, the exhibition had to be trailblazing and increase the understanding of contemporary art. At the same time, possibly unconsciously, their approach responded to an ingrained “hierarchical internationalization of the art world” that was still taking place. This internationalization was reserved for the centers, where art from the rest of the world was shown from a one-sided and clichéd perspective.[21] As Mosquera concluded, “The defining voice of the international ‘Latin American Boom’ has remained that of the outside observer.”[22]
Despite the curators’ open-mindedness in principle, many did fall into the trap of adopting a stereotypical perspective.[23] Most exhibitions of Latin American art at the time still underlined a difference between non-Western and Western art, between the “there” and “here.” Such exhibitions, strongly oriented toward the “Latin American identity,” would promote a “confused collection of stereotypes” such as the colorful, emotional, fantastic, magical, chaotic, and as such a homogenizing image.[24]
U-ABC did not aim to become a broadly representative performance in terms of the countries involved, but one that showed the innovation and quality of art in situ.[25] With that goal in mind, Beeren and his team scoured the continent. However, selecting artists was not easy. Beeren acknowledged that local advice was indispensable.[26] In the preparation phase of the exhibition, he therefore consulted museum directors and other specialists in the field. Beeren was in close contact with the Brazilian critic Casimiro Xavier de Mendonça; the director of the São Paulo Biennial, Sheila Lerner; the director of Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade in São Paulo, Aracy Amaral; the director of Museo Nacional de Artes Plasticas in Montevideo, Angel Kahlenberg; and gallery owners Jorge Glusberg in Buenos Aires and Thomas Cohn in Rio de Janeiro. Beeren thus also contributed to the turning point in the way art from Latin America was represented, as he tried to create a nuanced picture “from the inside,” opposing the “hierarchical internationalization of the art world.”[27]
Contrary to the two earlier revivals of Latin American art, obtaining knowledge from local specialists was slowly becoming commonplace in presenting art from Latin America from the mid-1980s onward. For example, The Latin American Spirit: Art and Artists in the United States, 1920–1970 involved local experts, while the—much criticized—title of the exhibition Art of the Fantastic: Latin America, 1920–1987 was conceived by the Argentine critic Damián Bayón, who also wrote an article for the exhibition’s catalogue. The fact that Beeren did not organize the exhibition unilaterally but “in dialogue” was therefore not necessarily unique. However, Beeren gave the specialists—one per country—plenty of space and respect in the catalogue. Although the artists participating in Art of the Fantastic were introduced in the catalogue by both a North American and a Latin American author, critics argued that this forced a hierarchical distinction between a rational approach to the North American text versus a more emotionally charged Latin American contribution. Old prejudices were thus reaffirmed, it was said. By letting only one expert contribute via a comprehensively written text, Beeren was spared such criticisms, if they had been there at all.[28]
Figure 6. Gallery views of the UABC (Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Chile) exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in 1989. The photograph shows the display of works from Adriana Varejão. Photo: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
Figure 7. Adriana Varejão, Anjos, 1988, oil on canvas, 190.5 × 220 cm. Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
Beeren ultimately selected eleven predominantly “young and upcoming” painters, two sculptors, and ten photographers.[29] Partly related to the fact that the average age of the participating artists was around forty, U-ABC presented almost exclusively unknown names.[30] This naturally implied some risk; whether the artworks (some even yet to be produced) would last and how they would be received was uncertain. A pleasant side effect of Beeren’s ambition to show purely “young art” was that this did not overlap with London’s Hayward Gallery, which focused on art until 1980.[31] After Beeren visited Art in Latin America, he wrote, perhaps somewhat relieved, “In no way it will thwart our exhibition. On the contrary, it will provide the badly needed attention for topicality.”[32]
The explicit attention for younger art and artists is much less reflected in the selections made by the other exhibitions focusing on art from Latin America that were organized between 1987 and 1993.[33] Only Transcontinental: Nine Latin American Artists, which took place a year later, and Hispanic Art in the United States: 30 Contemporary Painters and Sculptors showed, like U-ABC, the work of artists with an average age of forty-three years. Also noteworthy was the relatively large number of female participants in U-ABC—certainly for that era—almost a third. The proportion of female artists in the other exhibitions was on average just over a tenth. Furthermore, U-ABC was characterized by a relatively large diversity of mediums. In addition to installations, sculptures, objects, photography, works on paper, and painting, video art was also shown in the form of a separate program during the exhibition.[34] This, too, was quite exceptional. Except for Transcontinental: Nine Latin American Artists, which had included a wide range of contemporary mediums as well, the overall focus was on the safer field of painting elsewhere. As he had stated in his inaugural speech, Beeren indeed opted for timely art.
Most of the exhibitions organized between the late 1980s and early 1990s, especially those in North America, were based on the survey model. These were extensive exhibitions, with art by mainly well-known names in the art world. Historically grafted exhibitions, organized with an educational approach, represented the majority. After all, for many museums it was important to gain insight into “the development of art from their own hemisphere.”[35] In doing so, many set themselves the goal of reflecting society, which was undergoing major changes thanks to the growing number of Latin American immigrants.[36] Such considerations were logically irrelevant to Beeren’s decision-making in the Netherlands, as immigration from Latin America was a less prominent topic in Dutch society. Unlike his North American colleagues, he could basically make a free and unbound selection. There is no doubt that Beeren indeed chose idiosyncratically. He did not allow himself to be led by big names, nor did he aim for a historical overview. Nevertheless, U-ABC did tell a story of Latin American art, and in the research phase Beeren, too, turned out to be at least slightly sensitive to recognizably “country-specific” characteristics.[37] The poster of the exhibition, on which the letters of the four countries are formed by exotic feathers, cacti, slices of meat, and animal fur, also testifies to a very caricatured representation of the countries concerned. There was no criticism of this form of framing. Possibly such a representation, at least in the Netherlands, was not so strange in the spirit of the times.
Important, certainly in comparison with the other exhibitions organized at the time, was that Beeren had decided not to use a thematic approach. Nor did he work with stylistic categories stemming from the Western art historical canon such as surrealism, constructivism, and geometric abstraction in structuralizing the exhibition. This was something common for North American institutions to do, and the Hayward Gallery also adopted this approach. As a result, there was no need to forcibly search for a mutual connection. Differences were respected this way, which avoided the creation or reconfirmation of a stereotypical image. This was first apparent from the exhibition title, in which each country was mentioned independently. Moreover, the individual participants were mostly allocated a separate space so that, based on a relatively very large number of works per artist, a representative insight was given regarding the different and distinctive oeuvres.[38] No fewer than twenty-five collages, drawings, and sculptures by Luis Benedit were included. But a solid picture was also sketched of the oeuvres of Guillermo Kuitca and Francisca Núñez, with thirteen paintings and nine extensive sculptures respectively. Only one work by Tunga was shown, but that was a room-filling, site-specific installation of gigantic strands, partly braided, that meandered through the space from the exposed wooden floor. In addition, a separate section was set up for photography. U-ABC’s focus thus was on the various practices of, in the eyes of Beeren and those consulted, promising artists in the region and not on their identity. It was an approach that underlined his ambition to deal with the representation of the “Other” carefully and with respect, doing justice to the artist’s identity, which is also reflected in the following comment deriving from Beeren’s opening speech: “We are not going to be opportunists, this is not a mega-exhibition, nor one of folklore.”[39] With the presentation of a considerable selection of works per artist, U-ABC occupied a notable position in the range of exhibitions that were organized at the time.[40] By taking oeuvres as a starting point, Beeren clearly opted for a different path, one that enabled him to largely bypass limiting notions of identity.
Figure 8. Gallery views of the UABC (Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Chile) exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in 1989. The photograph shows the display of works from Gustavo Nakle. Photo: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
Figure 9. Gustavo Nakle, Jocasta, 1985, modeled acrylic paint and epoxy resin, 45.5 × 110 cm. Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
In contrast, Art of the Fantastic, which envisioned a presentation of the “indigenous surrealist or fantastic tradition in South American Art,” had come under fierce fire for the oversimplified approach that was fundamental to the exhibition. Curator Mari Carmen Ramírez stated: “Art of the Fantastic best exemplifies the tendency towards reductionism and homogenization that underlay the representations of Latin American identity.”[41] The compilers of the show, presented at the Indianapolis Museum in Indiana, were said to have wronged artists in favor of the overarching exhibition theme. A concrete example of this was the attention paid to the life-size dolls that served as models for the paintings by the Venezuelan Armando Reverón, which he himself did not consider to be works of art. Although they expressed “the fantastic,” this was at the expense of Reverón’s characteristic impressionist paintings.[42] Even though Hispanic Art in the United States: Thirty Contemporary Painters and Sculptors had brought together a wide variety of respected artists, this exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston was, as noted by Peter Applebome in an article in The New York Times on June 21, 1987, also brimming with “colors, rhythms and themes of America’s Hispanic communities.” And the presentation was weighed down by a “heady, self-referential universe as distinctive as salsa music.” Moreover, no local experts were involved in compiling the exhibition, which many considered to be a lack. Art historian and professor Jacinto Quirarte, for example, characterized Jane Livingston, one of the two curators, as someone who provided the artists with an identity without knowing their background. In The Latin American Spirit, an attempt was made to avoid generalization. According to Luis. R. Cancel, director of the organizing Bronx Museum, the exhibition fought against the prejudice that Latin American art was only characterized by intense colors, aggressive brushstrokes, and folkloric references. Overly rigid stylistic choices and themes were avoided for this reason. Instead, the exhibition was divided into six not-too-strict categories, including “constructivism and geometric art,” but also more locally relevant subdivisions such as “social content in Latin American Art” and “New World Surrealism.” A wide variety of paintings and sculptures were supposed to destroy stereotypes, but this then led to “a rambling and disconcertingly uneven presentation,” according to Michael Kimmelman, as written in The New York Times on September 30, 1988. A year later, Art in Latin America, organized at the Hayward Gallery in London, received considerable commentary, as formulated by the Chilean artist Juan Davila: “Latin America appears there as exotic, primitive, quaint, pure. That is expressed by the erasure of all national art histories turning the continent into one place….”[43] Dawn Ades, curator of the exhibition, was accused of giving a disappointing representation of the participating artists. The exhibition brought together the work of many big names, such as Joaquin Torres-García, Matthias Goeritz, and Jesús Soto, but did so with insignificant and a meager number of works, according to Brazilian art critic Aracy Amaral.[44] Latin American Artists of the 20th century, curated by Waldo Rasmussen for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, was one of the largest and most ambitious retrospective exhibitions. It brought together 300 works of art by more than ninety artists from a span of eighty years. As one of the few exhibitions of the time, Rasmussen deliberately tried not to follow a substantive theme or formal principles. However, in an article in The New York Times on June 4, 1993, Roberta Smith rated the presentation as follows: “Although clearly intended as a sweeping overview, it is more a sweeping glimpse, partial, fragmented and confused.” Her biggest criticism, however, was about the way all art from Latin America was placed in a single category—that of “international contemporary art.” She stated:
Unlike North America, Latin America is a conglomeration of different nations, large and small, with different populations, cultures, and traditions (both pre- and post-colonial), and different ties to different parts of Europe. Latin America is, in fact, the Europe of the Western hemisphere, which means that its artistic achievements should be examined country by country. [45]
Shifra Goldman’s criticism was partly in line with this. She also felt that art should never have been separated from the national background, but at the same time opposed the idea that Latin American art could not be presented as such (i.e., as a coherent whole). After all, she reasoned:
Hasn’t art in all these countries, because of three centuries of colonialism, been shaped by the search for its own identity? And don’t they share the same social problems? It is precisely this common background that provides a necessary context.[46]
The criticism of these five exhibitions, which were the largest and most influential, and about which only the main points are mentioned here, can be summarized as follows. On the one hand, reference was made to the oversimplified, homogenizing, and clichéd perspective that emerged from many presentations. However, when an attempt was made to avoid this, it was argued that context was lacking, and the created image was confusing and fragmented.
In reviews of U-ABC by Dutch critics and journalists, there is hardly any mention of incorrect, clichéd or confusing representations. The heated debate in North America about how non-Western art should be represented was not so prevalent in the Netherlands yet. Nevertheless, the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam did organize a debate on collecting “non-Western” art in 1985. At the time, the conclusion of the art museums present was that this should be left to the ethnographic museums. Even though an exotic and “magic-surreal” visual language was recognized in U-ABC, no value judgment was attached to it. Much to the disapproval of the reviewers, most of the artworks on display stood out precisely because of the many similarities with Western art, as expressed by, among others, Anna Tilroe in de Volkskrant on September 29, 1989. The innovative and fresh perspective that Beeren had wanted to bring was clearly not received as such. The picture that U-ABC outlined, which was presented “under the South American flag” in the Netherlands, was not considered to be of high quality, or even surprising.[47] Only a few saw the presentation as a “successful attempt to effectively break the supremacy of First-World art.”[48]
Indeed, based on the catalogue and the few photographs that have survived, the artistic value of the individual works appears to have been questionable in some cases. The expressionistic, slightly critical assemblage sculptures by Francisca Núñez (Chile, 1961), however, were well received at the time, as can be read in articles by Jan Bart Klaster in Het Parool on September 23, 1989, and Anna Tilroe in de Volkskrant on September 29, 1989. And the baroque, pasty paintings by Adriana Varejão (Brazil, 1964) were also popular. Nevertheless, the now renowned Guillermo Kuitca (Argentina, 1961) was dismissed by most critics as a Kiefer epigone and Tunga (Brazil, 1952–2016), who also gained an important status as an artist, as a Beuys clone, as stated by Ron Kaal in HP/De Tijd on October 7, 1989. Such comparisons indicate not only the little Dutch critics knew about artists from Latin America but also how internationally oriented—and not very “Latin American”—the exhibition was. In that respect, U-ABC did not necessarily reinforce the cliché image of Latin American art as being exotic and colorful. Regrettably, it also failed to give the impression that it could compete with the regular exhibitions shown at the Stedelijk Museum.
Figure 10. Gallery views of the UABC (Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Chile) exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in 1989. The photograph shows the display of works from Tunga. Photo: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
Within the spectrum of perspectives and approaches that were prevalent during the revival of art from Latin America that took place between the mid-1980s and 1990s, however, U-ABC can be deemed atypical and even progressive on several fronts. Amid turbulent times, in which curatorial methodologies shifted and came under scrutiny, Beeren eventually presented, with the (essential) support of Latin American specialists, an original exhibition that contrasted with the other initiatives of the time. Not only was a different course taken with respect to the selection of artworks and artists, which was riskier and more gender inclusive, U-ABC also managed to move beyond stereotypical representations. Recalling the dichotomy between artists who were burdened by the label “Latin American” and artists who had managed to avoid it, U-ABC can be considered an attempt to diversify and thus neutralize identity-based notions of art. Working separately from a theme and categories while providing an exceptionally broad, representative, and integral overview of the independent oeuvres were the main reasons for this to succeed. The exhibition, one can argue, in this way contributed to countering a limited, homogenous, and essentialist perspective on art from Latin America, for which many of the other exhibitions were blamed. On the other hand, while Beeren seems to have sincerely tried to bring Latin American art into the arena of global contemporary art, for which the Stedelijk provided a platform, the works did not make the intended impact. Although U-ABC was meant to be a “standout exhibition,” this was, in the Dutch context at the time, hardly recognized as such. And, sadly, the stigma of being an epigone did not entirely pass over the artists in the exhibition.
Possibly the lukewarm and critical reception kept Beeren, and later other directors, from maintaining the close ties the museum had re-established with this particular region, at least until recent years. The reality is that never so much time had been devoted to researching Latin American art within the Stedelijk Museum as in the run-up to U-ABC. Yet, despite great expectations, little follow-up occurred in the ensuing decades and most of the artworks the museum acquired prior to or in the aftermath of U-ABC have never been shown again to date.[49] Even at the exhibition of acquisitions organized in 1992 on Beeren’s farewell, there was no trace of the significant number of acquisitions of artworks by the artists involved in U-ABC, as mentioned by Din Pieters in NRC Handelsblad on December 28, 1992. “A loving interest gave the impetus,” Beeren wrote in a draft of his foreword, by way of explaining his initial choice to dedicate an exhibition to art from Latin America.[50] Unfortunately, this loving interest proved not very enduring, and it did not lead to much more than that one impetus.
Madelon van Schie is an art historian with a second master’s degree in Latin American Studies. Besides working as an art advisor and collection manager for diverse private and corporate art collections, she is one of the director-curators of the independent presentation space ROZENSTRAAT- a rose is a rose is a rose in Amsterdam.
[1] See Wim Beeren’s inaugural speech, Stedelijk Museum archive.
[2] The complete list of participating artists consisted of Claudia Andujar (CH/BR, 1931), Luis F. Benedit (AR, 1937–2011), Hilton Berredo (BR, 1954), Claudio Bertoni (CL, 1946), Miguel Rio Branco (BR, 1946), Leda Catunda (BR, 1961), Leonardo Crescenti Neto (BR, 1954), Pablo Domínguez (CL, 1962), Paz Errázuriz (CL, 1944), Manuel Espínola Gómez (UY, 1921–2003), Guillermo Kuitca (AR, 1961), Anna Mariani (BR, 1935–2022), Gustavo Naklé (UY, 1951), Emmanuel Nassar (BR, 1949), Francisca Núñez (CL, 1961), Oscar Diego Pintor (AR, 1941), Sabastião Salgado (BR, 1944), Daniel Senise (BR,1955), Raúl Stolkiner (AR, 1957), Marcia Schvartz (AR, 1955), Tunga (BR, 1952–2016), Adriana Varejão (BR, 1964), and Cássio Vasconcellos (BR, 1965).
[3] Mari Carmen Ramírez, “Brokering Identities: art curators and the politics of cultural representation,” in Thinking about Exhibitions, eds. Reesa Greenberg, Bruce W. Ferguson, and Sandy Nairne (New York: Routledge, 1996), 21–38. See also Carolina Ponce de León, “Encounters and Disencounters: A Personal Journey through Many Latin American and U.S. Latino Art Worlds,” in Over Here: International Perspectives on Art and Culture, eds. Gerardo Mosquera, Jean Fisher, and Francis Alys (Cambridge, MA: New Museum of Contemporary Art, MIT Press, 2004), 144.
In Latin American Art Ceases to be Latin American Art (1996), Gerardo Mosquera distinguishes between “Latin American art” and “art from Latin America,” defending the latter because, contrary to “Latin American art,” it does not imply homogeny. For the sake of consistency, I will also use “Latin American art” in this article.
[4] Shifra Goldman, “Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth,” in Dimensions of the Americas: Art and Social Change in Latin American and the United States, ed. Shifra Goldman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 317–325. See also Ramírez, “Brokering Identities,” 30.
[5] In the period 1987–1993, the following retrospective exhibitions of Latin American art were programmed, among others: Hispanic Art in the United States: 30 Contemporary Painters and Sculptors (1987, Houston Museum of Fine Art, Houston, Texas), Art of the Fantastic: Latin America, 1920–1987 (1987, Indianapolis Museum, Indiana), Images of Mexico: The Contribution of Mexico to Twentieth Century Art (1988, Kunsthalle Schirn, Frankfurt, and Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas), Mirá! (1988, Canadian Club Hispanic Art), The Latin American Spirit: Art and Artists in the United States, 1920–1970 (1988, Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York), Brasil Já (1988, Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, and Springer Museum, Hannover), Art in Latin America: The Modern Era 1820–1980 (1989, Hayward Gallery, London, Nationalmuseum and Moderna Museet, Stockholm, and Palacio de Velasquez, Madrid), Cirurgia Plastica: Konzepte Zeitgenössischer Kunst/Chile 1980–1989 (1989, Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst, Berlin), Contemporary Art under Dictatorship in Chile (1989, Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst, Berlin), Transcontinental: Nine Latin American Artists (1990, Ikon Gallery, London), Cross Currents of Modernism: Four Latin American Pioneers, (1992, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.), Art d’Amérique latine, 1911–1968 (1992, Center Pompidou, Paris), Ante America (1993, Queens Museum, New York, organized initially at Banco de la República and Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango, Bogotá), Cartographies (1993, Winnipeg Art Gallery, Winnipeg, Manitoba), and Latin American Artists of the Twentieth Century (1993, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Plaza de Armas, Seville, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, and Hôtel des Arts, Paris, and Josef-Haubrich Kunsthalle, Cologne, under the auspices of Museum Ludwig). U-ABC traveled from Amsterdam to the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon. There were also plans to show the exhibition at the Curaçao Museum, but this could not be realized due to a lack of manpower and budget. More historical exhibitions focusing on pre-Columbian and colonial art included Mexico: Splendor of Thirty Centuries (1990, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and America: Bride of the Sun (1992, Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp).
[6] Gabriela Piñero, “Políticas de representación/políticas de inclusion. La reactualización del debate de lo latinoamericano en el arte durante la primera etapa de la globalización (1980–1990),” Anales del instituto de investigaciones estéticas 1, no. 104 (2014): 29, accessed May 12, 2023. Gabriela Piñero, “Adiós Latinoamérica: historia de un abandono estratégico. Crítica y curaduría en la producción de Gerardo Mosquera,” Caiana: Revista de Historia del Arte y Cultura Visual del Centro Argentino de Investigadores de Arte (CAIA), no. 6 (2015): 19–32, accessed May 12, 2023. Ponce de León, “Encounters and Disencounters,” 143.
[7] Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, “The Accidental Tourist: American Collections of Latin American Art,” in Collecting the New: Museums and Contemporary Art, ed. Bruce Altshuler (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 137.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Carolina Ponce de León, “Random Trails for the Noble Savage,” in Beyond the Fantastic: Contemporary art criticism from Latin America, ed. Gerardo Mosquera (London: inIVA, 1995), 226. See also Kitty Zijlmans, “The discourse on Contemporary Art and the Globalization of the Art System,” in World Art Studies: Exploring Concepts and Approaches, eds. Kitty Zijlmans and Wilfried van Damme (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2008), 137.
[10] Wim Beeren, ed., U-ABC: Schilderijen, beelden, foto’s uit Uruguay, Argentinië, Brazilië, Chili, exh. cat. (Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum, 1989), 4.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid., 14–15.
[13] Beeren and his staff were already aware of this during the preparation period for the exhibition. In addition to general news that was available in the Netherlands about the political situation in Chile, archive material shows the Stedelijk Museum actively requested information about Chile. Why no substantially political art was shown therefore remains remarkable. In the catalogue, this is smoothed over by claiming, “There was hardly any political art to be found.” Beeren and Mignot, however, were in close contact with Lotty Rosenfeld, one of the most important members of C.A.D.A., a Chilean political activist art group. See correspondence between Lotty Rosenfeld and Dorine Mignot, dated March 11, 1987, Stedelijk Museum archive. The museum had even purchased a video by Rosenfeld in 1987, the unmistakably political work Ay de los Vencidos (1986). In the same year, the Stedelijk also acquired Popsicles (1982–1984) by Gloria Camiruaga, which also conceals a political message. Furthermore, Beeren had corresponded in May 1988 about the exhibition Contemporary Art under Dictatorship in Chile that would also open in September 1989 at the Staatliche Kunsthalle in Berlin. See correspondence between Matthias Reichelt of the Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst in Berlin and Beeren and Mignot, dated May 6, 1988, Stedelijk Museum archive. Beeren’s statements and decisions are therefore difficult to reconcile with the reality as it was known to him. For unspoken reasons, Beeren wanted to disregard the “political impulses,” as the leading José Martí Journaal also noted in September 1989, and focus on more “neutral” artistic expressions.
[14] Presumably the fact that right-wing dictatorships in Latin America usually posed no threat to the United States, and that they were often even supported by the country, played a role.
[15] Wim Beeren, Jan Adrichem, and Rini Dippel, Wim Beeren om de kunst (Rotterdam: Nai Uitgevers, 2005), 306.
[16] Ibid., 306. At that time, ten years was considered the minimum for such a position.
[17] Beeren combined the first trip with a visit to the São Paulo Biennial, which he already had to attend. He declined offers from the Indianapolis Museum in Indiana and the Hayward Gallery in London to join forces and organize an exhibition together. To the dissatisfaction of the Dutch art community, Beeren had already taken over several exhibitions from other museums, including François Morellet (1986), Oskar Schlemmer (1987), and Lucio Fontana (1988). The Horn of Plenty (1989), which presented an overview of young New York artists, could not be organized by Beeren, either, who was “completely preoccupied with the Malevich exhibition,” or by his curators, who had returned from their research trip “without any surprising findings.” Beeren was therefore forced to invite a guest curator. It is not inconceivable that the criticism he received about this made him decide to realize U-ABC completely by himself.
[18] Beeren, U-ABC, 9.
[19] See also “Hedendaagse kunst uit Latijns-Amerika,” in Beelding 3, no. 8 (October 1989). Due to the many angles Beeren had considered, he was forced to postpone the exhibition twice. U-ABC was initially planned to take place in 1987 but was moved to mid-1988, simultaneous with the International Congress on Latin American Culture, which was held in Amsterdam that year. In a letter to Andrew Dempsey, assistant director of the British Art Council, dated March 12, 1986, Beeren emphasized the importance of the coincidence of the exhibition with the International Congress on Latin American Culture in June/July 1988 (see Stedelijk Museum archive). Ultimately, however, it would take more than one additional year before the exhibition was realized.
[20] Guy Brett, Transcontinental: Nine Latin American Artists, exh. cat. (London: Ikon Gallery, 1990), 11.
[21] Maria Laura Ise, “Arte Latinoamericano en los ochtenta y noventa: Una mirada desde algunas exhibiciones y catálogos,” in Nómadas (Bogotá: Universidad Central de Colombia, 2011), 33.
[22] Gerardo Mosquera, ed., Beyond the Fantastic: Contemporary Art Criticism from Latin America (London: inIVA, 1995), 9.
[23] This perspective can partly be explained by the fact that, until the 1980s, little was known about Latin American contemporary art. Libraries in the United States had hardly any literature available on Latin American art made after 1965. Remarkably, auction houses had long been important knowledge providers. Thanks to their success in auctioning Latin American art in the United States, they had acquired a certain authority and, in the absence of art (historical) sources and artistic infrastructure in Latin America, they filled a gap. Auction catalogues were thus regarded worldwide as a valuable source of information for students and scientists who focused on art from this region. As a result, the canon of Latin American art in the West was directly influenced by the market created by the auction houses. In most other areas of collecting, by contrast, the market follows (canon-forming) exhibitions and publications. Reductionist approaches to Latin American art, in which market-oriented exotic representations predominated, were stimulated and gradually perpetuated by this situation. See also Pérez-Barreiro in Altshuler, “The Accidental Tourist,” 142; and Gerardo Mosquera, “Some Problems in Transcultural Curating,” in Global Visions: Towards a New Internationalism in the Visual Arts, ed. Jean Fisher (London: Kala/inIVA, 1994), 136.
[24] Oriana Baddeley, ed., New Art from Latin America: Expanding the Continent (London: Academy Editions, 1994), 10.
[25] Beeren, Adrichem, and Drippel, Wim Beeren, 357.
[26] Curator Dorine Mignot commented on this phase afterward: “After a difficult search and through the ‘biennale,’ I came into contact with young artists. Once I got hold of them, things accelerated: one artist pointed me to another.” Jeroen Nugteren and Mariette Malessy, “Wat geweest is, is niet meer te herkennen,” in José Martí Journaal (September/October 1989): 6–7.
[27] Ramírez, “Brokering Identities,” 31.
[28] Beeren and his staff did remain very critical with respect to what was written. For example, one article was rejected because it was too political and replaced by an existing text by Aracy Amaral. See the letter from Wim Beeren to George Helft of Fundación Antorchas, dated July 18, 1989, Stedelijk Museum archive.
[29] Some of the works, such as from Francisca Núñez, were created especially for the exhibition, right before the opening.
[30] In this respect, U-ABC linked up with the exhibitions that Beeren had previously organized, such as Correspondentie Europa (1986) and Uit het oude Europa (1987), which also aimed at showing young artists. Of the artists in U-ABC, one work by Leda Catunda, Japanese Lake (1986), was later included in Latin American Artists of the Twentieth Century, where work by Luis Benedit and Daniel Senise was shown as well. Kuitca’s work was also represented in Art of the Fantastic and Latin American Artists of the 20th century. Tunga was one of the participants in Transcontinental: Nine Latin American Artists (1990, Ikon Gallery, London), an exhibition that took place after U-ABC.
[31] When Beeren started his preliminary research in 1985, he was informed of the plans of the Hayward Gallery. He replied to a letter from the British Art Council announcing the upcoming Art in Latin America exhibition, stating that he wanted to focus on modern art and avoid a chronological approach. See the letter from Beeren to Andrew Dempsey, Assistant Director of the British Art Council, dated March 12, 1986, Stedelijk Museum archive. Dempsey was involved in the planning of Art in Latin America: The Modern Era 1820–1980 (1989, Hayward Gallery, London).
[32] See the letter from Beeren to Maria Corral, who was responsible for the exhibitions of Fundación Caja de Pensiones in Madrid, which would possibly take over U-ABC, dated June 28, 1989, Stedelijk Museum archive.
[33] The forthcoming comparisons are based on the exhibitions Art of the Fantastic: Latin America, 1920–1987 (1987, Indianapolis Museum, Indiana), Hispanic Art in the United States: 30 Contemporary Painters and Sculptors (1987, Houston Museum of Fine Art, Houston, Texas), The Latin American Spirit: Art and Artists in the United States, 1920–1970 (1988, Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York), Latin American Artists of the Twentieth Century (1993, Museum of Modern Art, New York), Art in Latin America: The Modern Era 1820–1980 (1989, Hayward Gallery, London), and Transcontinental: Nine Latin American Artists (1990, Ikon Gallery, London).
[34] With the support and advice of Argentine artist Narcisa Hirsch (wife of Paul Hirsch, director of Lampadia, an important partner of the Stedelijk Museum in the realization of U-ABC) and the Chilean art historian Justo Pastor Mellado, Beeren and Mignot composed a program of Argentine and Chilean films that was screened alongside the exhibition.
[35] As Holliday Day and Hollister Sturges, curators of Art of the Fantastic (1987, Indianapolis Museum, Indiana), also pointed out.
[36] Holliday T. Day and Hollister Sturges, Art of the Fantastic: Latin America, 1920–1887 (Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1987), 8.
[37] In the exhibition catalogue, Beeren stated that he had been looking for art “that is not a flag of a country.” Nevertheless, later he wrote that he had recognized a “dramatic story” of which he was “willing to read the ‘Argentine’” in the work of Guillermo Kuitca. Beeren, U-ABC, 14–15.
[38] This was not exceptional within Beeren’s working method. He had applied the same exhibition structure to the exhibitions Correspondentie Europa (1986), Uit het oude Europa (1987), and Wanderlieder (1991).
[39] Opening speech by Wim Beeren, September 23, 1989, Stedelijk Museum archive.
[40] A comparable strategy was only chosen in the exhibition Art of the Fantastic. See Day and Sturges, Art of the Fantastic, 10.
[41] Mari Carmen Ramírez, “Framing Identity in US Exhibitions of Latin American Art,” in Beyond the Fantastic: Contemporary art criticism from Latin America, ed. Gerardo Mosquera (London: inIVA, 1995), 234.
[42] Shifra Goldman, “Latin American visions and revisions,” in Dimensions of the Americas: Art and Social Change in Latin America and the United States, ed. Shifra Goldman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 350.
[43] Brett, Transcontinental, 105.
[44] Aracy Amaral, “Art in Latin America: permanencia de lo pintoresco,” in Visión del Arte Latinoamericano en la década de 1980 (Lima, 1994), 72.
[45] Roberta Smith, “Review/Art; 20th-Century Latin American Works at the Modern,” The New York Times, June 4, 1993, 32.
[46] Shifra Goldman, “Artistas Latinoamericanos del Siglo XX, MoMA,” Art Nexus 10 (1993): 84–89.
[47] See, for instance, Ron Kaal, “Goede Bedoelingen,” HP/De Tijd, October 7, 1989, 71–72; Jan Bart Klaster, “Kunst uit Zuid-Amerika is niet overweldigend,” Het Parool, September 23, 1989, 47; and Anna Tilroe, “De Illusieloze Illusie,” de Volkskrant, September 29, 1989, 13.
[48] Such as Cees Straus, “Uitersten in Latijns-Amerika onderscheiden zich in kwaliteit,” Trouw, September 23, 1989, 17.
[49] From the works that were included in U-ABC, the Stedelijk acquired the wall sculpture Untitled (1986) by Hilton Berredo; the painting/collage Sozinha no quarto (1985–1986) by Leda Catunda; the painting Atardecer (1989) by Pablo Dominguez; the paintings El mar dulce (1986), Odessa (1987), Porgy & Bess (1988), and Strawberry Fields Forever (1988), the screen print Hannover (1990), the lithograph Untitled (1990), and a poster (1989) by Guillermo Kuitca; the sculpture Jocasta (1985) by Gustavo Naklé; the sculpture El Condor Amarillo (1988) by Francisca Núñez; the painting Woman with Hair (1985) by Daniel Senise; and a drawing, Untitled (1988), by Tunga. After the exhibition, the paintings Anjos (1988) and Anjo em pedaços (1990) by Adriana Varejao also found their way into the collection. The Stedelijk furthermore accepted a donation of twenty-six photos by Claudia Andujar, acquired eight photos by Sebastiao Salgado from the series Sierra Pelada (1986), and six photos by Cássio Vasconcellos, namely Untitled (1987), Untitled (1987), São Paulo (1983), New York (1985), New York (1985), and Rio de Janeiro (1986). The painting Antiguos Rebotes Matinales by Manuel Espínola Gómez, which the Stedelijk had intended to acquire, fell under an agreement between the artist and the Uruguayan state and could not be sold to a foreign institution.
[50] Notes from Beeren for the outline of the preface to the exhibition catalogue for U-ABC. See Stedelijk Museum archive.
Schie, Madelon van. “‘A Loving Interest’ U-ABC: Paintings, Sculptures, Photos from Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Chile.” Stedelijk Studies Journal 14 (2024). https://doi.org/10.54533/. This contribution is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license.
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