ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book deals precisely with the idea of primitivism as an empowering tool for poets and writers from Spanish-speaking Latin America, such as José Martí, Ruben Darío, or Carlos Reyles, amongst others, who inverted the terms and relocated the primitive in Europe, while also renewing language through the incorporation of anachronistic medieval references. It challenges the historiographical narrative that has dominated Cubism studies since the 1920s by questioning the diffusionist thesis that placed Paris as the sole epicentre of the movement’s inception. The chapter discusses the circulation of another Latin American artist with profound ties in Spain, Joaquín Torres-García, approaching the multi-layered primitivist imaginary that his mural painting congregates. It re-directs the discussion on the constraints associated with modernity to expressions of the primitivist imaginary via the theme of the pastoral.
