ABSTRACT
Antonio Berni was one of the most celebrated Argentine leftist figurative artists. His depictions of Argentina's rampant poverty under the country's numerous dictatorships earned him the Grand Prix at the 1962 Venice Biennale. This chapter analyses his early career, paying particular attention to how Berni and Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros – who worked together but epitomised two different ways of doing political art – responded to the rise of Argentine fascism in the early 1930s. At the time, both Berni and Siqueiros exhibited at Amigos del Arte (Friends of the Arts), an elite art association whose most prominent members belonged to the oligarchic families who supported Argentina's recent turn towards authoritarianism and para-fascism. Berni's 1932 show, despite its innovative surrealist aesthetics, did not have any concrete political effect, as his socially engaged art was defanged when exhibited in elite spaces such as Amigos del Arte. By contrast, Siqueiros’ visit to Argentina in the following year caused a ruckus when he was invited by Amigos del Arte, who complemented its conservative politics with artistic pluralism. I will argue that Siqueiros’ 1933 visit was a catalysing moment in which Argentine fascists began paying attention to art as a political field, and in turn, that it jumpstarted South American artists’ reflections on the idea of politically active art. By focusing on the Argentine artistic context between 1932 and 1935 and, in particular, on how Siqueiros’ presence shaped the careers of Argentine artists such as Berni, this essay will begin to unpack how the mobility of artists and fascist aesthetics and ideologies across the Atlantic and the American continent reshaped the idea of “anti-fascist” art in the early 1930s.
