Ibero-american art in the IVAM Collection

The Latin American Art has had a special presence in the Collection of the IVAM, being decisive the presence of Joaquín Torres-García, a pioneer in the articulation of the South School Constructivism. Among the vertebral artists from the thirties stand Horacio Coppola and Grete Stern, to whom the IVAM dedicated retrospective paths, which made that an important selection of their photographs and photomontages became part of the collection. Other major Latin American artists in the exhibition are Wilfredo Lam and Roberto Matta, fundamental references in the surrealism modulation in the “New World”, Alvarez Bravo Chambi or Humberto Rivas.After the avant-garde modulations of Latin American art, different art trends are introduced in postmodern inflection, highlighting figures like Guillermo Kuitca, Eduardo Kac and Jorge Pineda. Recalling a famous statement of Torres García: “I have said South School; because in fact, our North is the South.It was not only to put the map upside down but to understand and defend the South as a land of invention, deflection and strength, a symbolic area but at the same time, real and fertile to the imaginary that can not live permanently subjected to ” cultural colonialism “and mired in an inferiority complex. The review of Latin American artistic territory from the collections of the IVAM does not suppose in any way, to make a “paternalistic” inclusion or a “strategic” reunification that could finally rebuild the marginal position.What this exhibition with works by avant-garde and current Latin American artists allows, is to visualise plural territories of creation and at the same time, it is an extraordinary opportunity to understand that political and artistic subjectivity has to stand in the gap , in that territory of uncertainties and recognitions, of diaspora and dialogue, conflict and, hopefully, understanding.