ABSTRACT
This phenomenon has been until now little studied, but the preliminary roster of names is sufficient to warrant attention: from Brazil: Anita Malfatti, 1915; Candido Portinari, 1939; from Colombia: Enrique Grau, 1940; 1 from Cuba: Amelia Peláez, 1924; Marcelo Pogolotti, 1923; and Emilio Sanchez, 1944; from the Dominican Republic: Celeste Woss y Gil, 1922; and Tito Enrique Cánepa, 1937; from Mexico: Jean Charlot, 1928; from Puerto Rico: Lorenzo Homar, 1928; and Miguel Pou y Becerra, 1919. Most of these artists supplemented their time
in New York with residence in one or more of the major art centers in Europe. Then, too, Latin Americans had traditionally looked to Europe rather than their American neighbors as the desirable conduit of culture. This led to the marked inclination to privilege continental cosmopolitanism of Paris or Berlin over what was still regarded before World War II as the less culturally refined environment of New York. Artists’ biographies might, therefore, mention only in passing a New York interlude and emphasize a sojourn in Paris, which placed the Latin American at what was touted as “the center of the arts.” Accounts of the career of Cuban modernist and artistic ceramic pioneer Amelia Peláez, to cite one instance, passes briefly over her six months in New York – when she studied at the Art Students League – and go into great depth about her time in Paris, from 1927 to 1934. Admittedly, the seven years in France chronologically outweigh the six months in New York, and yet one could argue that the primacy of
the American experience in 1924, when she was still in her twenties, was seminal to her overall artistic development. Further research and a shift in attitude about center and periphery, as they apply to art worlds, are necessary before we have the full picture. To accommodate our broad inquiries about the relations between New York artists and their Latin American students in a brief essay, we focus on three key figures from three different countries at important historical junctures: Anita Malfatti, Miguel Pou y Becerra, and Celeste Woss y Gil. All three were transitional figures, poised between 19th-century academic art and modernism, and went home to foment artistic reform and found art schools.
