Panamerican Dreams

Copyright
by
Michael Gordon Wellen
2012
The Dissertation Committee for Michael Gordon Wellen certifies that this is the
approved version of the following dissertation:
Pan-American Dreams:
Art, Politics, and Museum-Making at the OAS, 1948-1976
Committee:
Andrea Giunta, Supervisor
Jacqueline Barnitz
Frank Guridy
Ann Reynolds
Cherise Smith
by
Michael Gordon Wellen, B.A.; M.A.
Dissertation
Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of
The University of Texas at Austin
in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements
for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
The University of Texas at Austin

December 2012
Dedication
To LALW, PhD.
You have my admiration and my heart.

Acknowledgements
In the course of researching and writing this dissertation I relied heavily on the
hospitality, kindness, and good advice of many. My advisor Andrea Giunta was forever
generous with her time and enthusiasm, guiding me through the most difficult aspects of
writing and research. She helped me keep this project in perspective and showed me how
to make productive, scholarly interventions into history writing. For that, she has my
eternal gratitude. I am honored to call Jacqueline Barnitz a mentor as well as a cherished
friend; she always believed in the importance of my chosen research topics and taught me
how to navigate around potential pitfalls in the field. I found I could rely on Ann
Reynolds to challenge me to think differently and better about the issues that interested
me most in this dissertation. She and Cherise Smith also provided invaluable career
advice in the last few years. I am grateful for the guidance provided by Frank Guridy, an
outstanding teacher who gave this project his full support. For the past year, I have had
the privilege of working with Mari Carmen Ramrez at the Museum of Fine Arts,
Houston. I am immensely thankful for the care she has shown me and for the opportunity
to learn from her wisdom and talent. A special thanks to Graduate Advisor Nassos
Papalexandrou and Graduate Coordinator Maureen Howell, each of whom gave
encouragement and helped resolve the administrative challenges that occasionally
cropped up during my graduate education.
This dissertation would not have been completed without the generous financial
support of the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship, which covered my living and research
expenses for four years. The fellowship allowed me to complete invaluable research trips
in the United States and Latin America. But also, being selected for the fellowship gave
v
me confidence about the relevance of my dissertation and provided the impetus to see this
project through during those inevitable moments of doubt and insecurity. I also received
generous support from the University of Texas at Austins School of Fine Arts, the Art &
Art History Department, and the Center for Latin American Visual Studies (CLAVIS),
for which I am grateful.
Quite a few colleagues, librarians, and archivists helped me in my investigations
concerning the cultural operations of the OAS. My thanks go to Professor Alejandro
Anreus for his scholarship and insights about Jos Gmez Sicre and for his comments on
early versions of this dissertation. Professor Roberto Tejada also gave valuable feedback
in the early stages of this project. I thank him for encouraging me to write with honesty
and verve. I am thankful to Professor Claire F. Fox whose scholarship on the Visual Arts
Department was another key point of reference for me; she kindly shared research
materials that could not be found elsewhere. Professor Florencia Bazzano-Nelson led me
to key documents in the Jos Gmez Sicre papers and historian Stuart Easterling brought
my attention to materials on Rafael Squirru in the National Archives; my thanks to them
both. The libraries at UT served as a second home to me these past few years. At the
Benson Latin American Collection, Jorge Salinas, Christian Kelleher, and the staff at the
Rare Book & Manuscript Collection aided me throughout my research. Laura Schwartz,
Boris Brodsky, and Adam Hatley at the Fine Arts Library not only helped me locate
books, they welcomed me warmly and kept my spirits high.
I wish to express my thanks to my contacts at the OAS. I have great respect for
Maria Leyva, Adriana Ospina, Greg Svitil, and Gabriel Gross at the Art Museum of the
Americas. They guided me through the museums archives, shared their knowledge about
the history of the Visual Arts Department, and connected me with various artists and
experts. My thanks also go to Stella Villagran and Beverly Wharton-Lake at the OAS
vi
Columbus Memorial library, who showed me a forgotten mural by Jos Luis Cuevas deep
in the library stacks. Christopher Shell, James Patrick Kiernan, Rebecca Read Medrano,
and George Compton, all current or former staff at Amricas magazine, provided me with
a broader view of the OAS and its cultural programs. Mary Grothe, daughter of Scott
Seegers (who co-founded and frequently contributed to Amricas magazine), deserves
special mention; she provided me with clippings and materials from her personal archive
that gave me a better sense of the magazines origins. Ramon Osuna, Flix ngel, and
Horacio Sicre kindly and candidly shared their experiences working for Jos Gmez
Sicre, giving me a better sense of the culture of the Visual Arts Division. Artists Jos
Luis Cuevas, Carlos Poveda, Fernando de Szyzlo, David Manzur, and collectors Barbara
Gordon, Diane Beruff, and Jos Martinez Caas also provided insights into Gmez
Sicres world. Artist Carlos Alberto Salatino helped me contextualize Rafael Squirrus
work within the cultural climate of Washington, D.C. in the 1960s. And, in 2010, Rafael
Squirru himself granted me an interview, for which I am grateful. His daughters Maria
and Eloisa Squirru were instrumental in making those arrangements and for providing
further information about the critics life and work.
I owe a great deal to my friendsmany of whom I met through the UT Art
History Department and through CLAVISfor encouraging me and consistently giving
me good advice. Thank you Erin Aldana, Amethyst Beaver, Doris Bravo, Kency Cornejo,
Melissa Geppert, Patrick Hieger, Rachel Mohl, Tatiana Reinoza, Mari Rodriguez, Claire
Ruud, Rose Salseda, Alexis Salas, Luis Vargas-Santiago, Gina Tarver, Sebastian Vidal,
Abby Winograd, and Claudia Zapata. My work has benefited from the input of Doris
Bravo, Melissa Geppert, Alexis Salas, and Abby Winograd, as well as from my
participation in a writing group with Katie Geha and Caitlin Haskell; happily, the Rough
Writersincluding Andy Campbell, Tara Kohn, Laura Lindenberger Wellen, and

vii
Chelsea Weatherslet me drop in and out of their writing group. I have the utmost
respect for their writing and style, and I consider myself lucky to share in their
camaraderie. Special thanks also go to my good friends David Bernard and Roberto,
Susanna and Hutch Hill and their daughter Beatrix, Margaret and Ricky Riccardi and
their daughters Ella and Melody, for having patiently listened to me and for offering a
great deal of laughter, sympathy, and relief.
My most avid support came from my family, and I am forever grateful for the
love, patience, and generosity they bestowed on me. No one worked harder to reach,
understand, and sympathize with me than my parents Carole and Lester Wellen; I am
thankful for their constant love, their receptiveness, their creativity, and their penchant
for problem-solving. Together Kris and Alex Wellen, Nathaniel and Katherine,
encouraged me at every turn and made my life richer. So too did Patrick Armstrong and
Jessica Bertani, who put their faith in me. Jennifer Linden-Beck and Brandon Beck
became my family while living in Texas. They shared their good humor as well as
comforting food and drink, and I love them for it. A special thanks to Betty and Greg
Pepetone, Carla and Greg Lindenberger, and their son Jacob, all of whom warmly
embraced me with open arms. I love you all.
Writing a dissertation means livingat least for a short period of timeon a
special plane of human existence. But, to do it while being married to someone also
pursuing her doctoral degree takes it to a whole new level of crazy. I am thankful to be a
part of that very select category. In fact, I am sure Id have abandoned my graduate
studies long ago, if it were not for the constant motivation and the model of
determination, intelligence, and passion set forth by fellow art historian Laura Augusta
Lindenberger Wellen. Sometime ago, Laura and I began comparing our pursuit of
doctoral degrees to that of two mountain climbers working in tandem. Truth told, I think I
viii
stole the metaphor from statements made by Georges Braque about his early explorations
of Cubism with Picasso. In 1954, Braque recalled: We saw each other every day and
talked a lotthings were said between us that will never be repeatedthings that would
be incomprehensible today and that gave us much joy and that will die with us it was
like we were like two mountain climbers roped together. From my view, our joint
endeavors resonate with that certain specialness captured by Braques statements. My
congratulations and love to you, Dr. Laura!
Dora Vallier, Braque: La Pienture et nous. Propos de lartistic recueillis. Cahiers dart 34, no. 1 (October 1954), 14.
ix
Publication no._____________
Michael Gordon Wellen, Ph.D.
The University of Texas at Austin, 2012
Supervisor: Andrea Giunta
In the 1950s and 1960s, the Organization of American States (OAS), a multinational
political organization headquartered in Washington, DC, attempted to mediate U.S.-Latin
American political and cultural relations. This dissertation traces how, in the United
States, Latin American art emerged as a field of art historical study and exhibition via the
activities of the OAS. I center my analysis on Jos Gmez Sicre and Rafael Squirru, two
prominent curators who influenced the circulation of Latin American art during the Cold
War. Part I focuses on Gmez Sicre, who served as head curator at the OAS from 1946 to
1981 and who founded the Museum of Modern Art of Latin America in 1976. I offer an
analysis of Gmez Sicres aesthetic tastes, contextualizing them in relation to his
contemporaries Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Marta Traba, and Jorge Romero Brest. I also discuss
his efforts to build a network of art centers across the Americas, indicating how his
activities fed into a Cold War struggle around notions of the intellectual. Part II
examines the activities of poet and art critic Rafael Squirru, who served as Director of
Cultural Affairs of the OAS from 1963 to 1970 and who theorized Latin American art in
terms of the new man. I reconstruct how the phrase new man became a point of
ideological conflict in the 1960s in a battle between Squirru and his political rival,
Ernesto Ch Guevara. Throughout this dissertation, I indicate how Gmez Sicre and
Squirru framed modern art within different Pan-American dreams of future world
prosperity, equality, and cooperation. By examining the socio-political implications
behind those dreams, I reveal the structures and limits of power shaping their influence
during the Cold War. My study concentrates on the period from the founding of the OAS
in 1948 to the establishment of the Museum of Modern Art of Latin America in 1976,
and I contend that the legacies of Pan-Americanism continue to affect the field of Latin
American art today.
x
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations ............................................................................................... xiii
PAN-AMERICAN DREAMS: AN INTRODUCTION 1
PART I: JOS GMEZ SICRE AND THE VISUAL ARTS DIVISION 19
Introduction: A Place for Latin American Art .......................................................19
Chapter One: An Eye in Context ...........................................................................28

A Mentor at the MoMA: Alfred H. Barr, Jr. .................................................31
An Ally, then Adversary: Marta Traba .........................................................57
A Distant Rival: Jorge Romero Brest ...........................................................74
Chapter Two: Intellectuals, Networks, and Centers ..............................................80

Building a Pan-American Network ...............................................................88
A Cultural Space at Home ............................................................................95
A Workshop Abroad ...................................................................................107
From Network to Center .............................................................................114
Conclusion: A Museum Personified ....................................................................118
PART II: RAFAEL SQUIRRU AND THE DEPARTMENT OF CULTURAL AFFAIRS 122
Introduction: Phantom Museums and New Men .................................................122
Chapter Three: The New Man Movement in Buenos Aires ................................127
Chapter Four: Refiguring the New Man in Washington, DC ..............................138

The Alliance for Progress: Origins, Development, and Mystique ..............144
Castro and Kennedy as New Men ...............................................................158
xi
Conclusion: The Phantom Museum and the Street ..............................................177
AMRICAS AND LINGERING DREAMS: CONCLUSIONS 180
Illustrations ..........................................................................................................198
Appendix A. Documents concerning Jos Gmez Sicre recovered from a

Freedom of Information Act Request .........................................................233
Appendix B. Rafael Squirrus Speech in Quem Quem, Argentina, 1966. .......251
Appendix C. Alejandro Anreuss Last Interviews with Jos Gmez Sicre .........256
Bibliography ........................................................................................................281
xii
List of Illustrations
Figure 1. Asilia Guilln, Hroes y artistas vienen a la Unin Panamericana para ser
consagrados [Heroes and Artists Come to the Pan American Union
to be Consecrated], 1962. Art Museum of the Americas,
Washington, DC ........................................................................198
Figure 2. Jos Balmes, No, 1965. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. .............199
Figure 3. Courtyard of the Pan American Building, Washington, DC, 1942.
Photograph by John Collier. Library of Congress, Prints &
Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection (LC-DIG-fsac-
1a34529) ...................................................................................200
Figure 4. Washington, DC Under the auspices of the Bureau of University Travel
and the National Capital School Visitors' Council, over 200 high
school students chosen for their intellectual alertness visited
Washington for a week. Students and parrot in the patio of the Pan-
American Union. Photograph by Marjory Collins. Library of
Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection
(LC-USW3-010019-E). ............................................................201
Figure 5. Partial View of the Gallery for the Permanent Collection of Contemporary
Latin American Art of the Pan American Union. Photographer
unknown. Reprinted from the Boletn de Artes Visuales 6. January-
December 1960.Washington, DC: Pan American Union,
frontispiece. ...............................................................................202
unknown. Reprinted from La Union Panamericana en el servicio del
arte. Washington, DC: Pan American Union, 1961. ................203
unknown. Reprinted from Permanent Collection of Contemporary
Art of Latin America. Washington, DC: Pan American Union, 1960.
...................................................................................................203
Figure 8. Alfred Barr, Cubism and Abstract Art (book jacket). New York: Museum of
Modern Art, 1936......................................................................204
Figure 9. Todays Art at So Paulo by Jos Gmez Sicre. Reprinted from Amricas,
vol. 10, no. 1 (January 1958), 32-33. ........................................205
Figure 10. Rogelio Polesello, Faz A [Phase A], undated. Lowe Art Museum,
University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida. ............................206
Figure 11. Hermann Guggiari, Kennedy, 1964. Image reprinted from the inside back
cover of Amricas, vol. 17, no. 6 (June 1965). Lowe Museum Art
Gallery, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida. ..............207
xiii
Figure 12. Fernando de Szyszlo, Cajamarca, 1959. Art Museum of the Americas,
Organization of American States, Washington, DC .................208
Figure 13. Oswaldo Guayasamn, Madre y nio [Mother and Child], 1955. Art
Museum of the Americas, Organization of American States,
Washington, DC ........................................................................209
Figure 14. Art Critic on a Holiday by Jse Gmez Sicre. Reprinted from Amricas,
vol. 2, no. 1. (January 1950), 11. ..............................................210
Figure 15. Detail of Art Critic on a Holiday, by Jos Gmez Sicre. Reprinted from
Amricas, vol. 2, no. 1 (January 1950), 14. ..............................211
Figure 16. The Yapey ship, date unknown, photographer unknown. Courtesy of
Kees Heemskerk, www.shipspotting.com. ...............................212
Figure 17. Jacqueline Kennedy and Rafael Squirru at the Pan American Union.
Photograph by David Chevalier. Reprinted from Amricas, vol. 15
no. 2 (February 1963), 16. ........................................................213
Figure 18. Fidel Castro in Matanzas, 1959. Photograph by Grey Villet. First printed in
Liberators Triumphal March Through an Ecstatic Island, LIFE
Magazine, vol. 46, no. 3(January 19, 1959), 29........................214
Figure 19. Leopoldo Presas, El Hombre Nuevo, 1954. Reprinted from Homenaje a
Rafael Squirru. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Galera Zurbaran, 2005.
...................................................................................................215
Figure 20. Norman Saunders, New Man, November 1964 (left); Norman Saunders,
New Man, September 1965 (right). Original paintings in the
Collection of Richard Oberg. ....................................................216
Figure 21. Lincoln Presno, Sketch of the Monument to John F. Kennedy, 1964.217
Figure 22. Lincoln Presno, Monument to John F. Kennedy, c. 2010. Photographer
unknown. Photograph courtesy of http://QuemQuem.gob.ar218
Figure 23. Stencilled Graffiti along Avenida de Mayo, Buenos Aires, July 2010.
Photograph by author. ...............................................................219
Figure 24. Screenshot of Agrupacion Hombre Nuevo homepage:
http://www.elhombrenuevo.galeon.com/index.html
[accessed August 2011]. ...........................................................220
Figure 25. Display for Amricas 60th Anniversary in OASs main building,
October 12, 2008. Photograph by Juan Manuel Herrera. .........221
Figure 26. Stanislav Szukalski, Maquette for Promerica, 1933. .........................222
Figure 27. Fernando Bryce, Amricas, 2005. Private Collection, Houston. ........223
Figure 29. This Spinning World. Reprinted from Amricas, vol. 4, no. 1 (January
1952), 21. ..................................................................................225
Figure 31. Art Safari by Jos Gmez Sicre. Reprinted from Amricas, vol. 16,
no.11 (November 1964), 16-17 .................................................227
xiv
Figure 33. The Role of Unions. Reprinted from Amricas, vol. 13, no. 10 (October
1961), 26-27. .............................................................................229
Figure 34. The Role of Business. Reprinted from Amricas, vol. 13, no. 10
(October 1961), 36-37. ..............................................................230
Figure 36. Chilean hueso (cowboy) and friend. Reprinted from Amricas, vol. 1,
no. 3 (November 1949), back cover..........................................232
xv
PAN-AMERICAN DREAMS: AN INTRODUCTION
Asilia Guillns painting Hroes y artistas vienen a la Unin Panamericana para
ser consegrados [Heroes and Artists Come to the Pan American Union to be
Consecrated] (1962) shows a row of twenty-one figures on horseback parading through a
lush, green landscape (Figure 1). Each carries the flag of a different nation. The leader of
the march, a figure seated on a white horse in the lower right corner of the painting,
waves the U.S. flag; men with the flags of Brazil, Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, and
Cuba form the tail of the parade. As the horsemen approach the Pan American Union
building from the side, about twenty men and women gather on its front steps and patio.
Most are artists carrying white canvases in their hands. Three figures dressed in suits,
likely diplomats, stand in the archway of the building and watch the scene unfold. Many
of the figures have dark hair except for one seated woman in the foreground, possibly a
self-portrait of the artist. Guilln was 75 years old when she painted this work and she
kept her hair a natural white.1 Born and raised in Granada, Nicaragua, Guilln was a self-
taught artist. In 1962, Jos Gmez Sicre, head curator at the Organization of American
States (OAS), encouraged her to exhibit her work in a solo show at the institutions
headquarters, the Pan American Union. With his prodding, she agreed to show eighteen
of her paintings and to come to the exhibitions opening in Washington, DC, where she
saw all of her works sold before the end of the night. Gmez Sicre was enthusiastic about
1See Jos Gmez Sicre, Embroidery in Oils, Amricas vol. 14, no. 10 (October 1962), 17-20. See also
Orlando Cuadra Downing, Exposicin de Washington de Asilia Guilln, Revista Conservador
[Nicaragua] vol. 5, no. 23 (August 1962), 22-24. Available online at
http://bibliotecageneral.enriquebolanos.org/coleccion_RC/255.pdf [Accessed 16 October 2012]
1
her visit and publicized the exhibition in print and by interviewing the artist on radio
programs.2 He also arranged painting commissions for Guilln after the show had sold
out. The theme of Hroes y artistasthe OAS as a place of consecration for political
heroes and artistsmay indicate that Guilln painted the work after seeing the success of
her solo exhibition, perhaps as a gesture of thanks to Gmez Sicre and the institution for
which he worked. The painting remains in the art collection of the OAS, where it has
been reproduced on holiday greeting cards and on the cover of the institutions magazine
Amricas.
In its cheerful depiction of the people of the Americas peacefully coming
together, Guillns painting resonates with a Pan-American brand of utopian thinking.
The terms Pan-American and Pan-Americanism originated in the late nineteenth
century in the United States as government officials and business leaders sought to
cultivate political alliances and financial relations with Latin America. Although never a
single and cohesive ideology, Pan-Americanism referred to an overlapping set of
ambitions and strategies to cultivate political, economic, and cultural bonds across North
and South America. In the 1920s, Samuel Guy Inman, professor at Columbia University
and one of the earliest to historicize Pan-Americanism, described it as more of a
sentiment and an aspiration than a tangible system....3 For Inman, Pan-Americanism was
characterized by a shared optimism about U.S.-Latin American relations and a desire to
2 One such interview appeared on the HJCK radio program El Mundo en Bogot. The interview was
transcribed and published in Correo de la Cultura, El Espectator [Bogota], Domingo 29 de Julio 1962.
See artist file for Asilia Guilln, Art Museum of the Americas, Organization of American States,
Washington, DC (Hereafter AMA Archives).
3 Samuel Guy Inman, Problems in Pan Americanism (New York: George H. Doran, 1921), 219.
2
build unity, understanding, and appreciations of differences between nations. This set of
desires could be idiosyncratic, intensely personal, and globally shared all at once. During
the twentieth century, Pan-American came to describe a variety of activities, programs,
and organizationssome private and others governmentalwith interests in improving
U.S.-Latin American relations.4 Founded in 1948, the OAS represented the most
influential shaper of Pan-American thought at mid-century.5 After World War II, Pan-
Americanism became virtually synonymous with the Organization of American States,
writes historian Stephen M. Streeter.6
In spite of its characteristic idealism, Pan-Americanism has long been the subject
of criticism and distrust. Since the late nineteenth century, intellectuals and political
4 For a listing of Pan American clubs and societies at mid-century, see Pan American Associations in the
United States (Washington, DC: Pan American Union, 1955). A more recent list is available in the
Directory of Inter-American and Other Associations in the Americas (Washington, DC: General
Secretariat, Organization of American States, 1986).
5 The OAS bills itself as the worlds oldest peacekeeping organization, staking its origins in the nineteenth-
century ideals of Simn Bolvar, leader of the independence movements that freed the viceroyalty of Nueva
Granada from Spanish colonial rule in the 1810s and early 1820s. In launching the struggle towards Latin
American independence, Bolvar envisioned a future where the different regions of the New World could
consolidate into a single, independent nation. How beautiful it would be, he wrote in 1815, while in exile
in Jamaica and plotting revolution, if the Isthmus of Panama should become for us what the Isthmus of
Corinth was for the Greeks! He believed that, united under a single political body, the newly-established
American republics could better align themselves against further foreign domination, protect individual
rights, and mitigate legal disputes. Between 1819 and1830, Bolvar served as President of Gran
Colombiaa vast state formed from what today is Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, and
Venezuela. He also carried significant influence with authorities in Argentina, in Chile, and in the
Caribbean. As President, he took steps to implement his goal of American union, encouraging delegates
from each republic to convene in a Panama Congress in 1826. This meeting was the first in a chain of Pan-
American Conferences, usually held every 8 to 10 years, out of which the Pan American Union was formed
in 1910, and the Organization of American States in 1948. Several examples of institutional literature
praise Bolvar and describe the Pan American Union and the OAS as the embodiment of his heroic vision.
For example, see Pedro de Alba, Bolvar Began It The Rotarian, vol. 56, no. 4 (April 1940), 27-28. Also
see Samuel Guy Inman, Inter-American Conferences, 1826-1954: History and Problems, ed. Harold
Eugene Davis (Washington, DC: University Press of Washington, 1965).
6 Stephen M. Streeter, The Myth of Pan Americanism: U.S. Policy toward Latin America during the Cold
War, 1954-1963 in Beyond the Ideal: Pan Americanism in Inter-American Affairs, ed. David Sheinin
(Westport, CT and London Press, 2000), 168.
3
pundits, especially in Latin America, have warned that Pan-Americanism is, at best, a
nave worldview that dismisses historical and economic differences between the U.S. and
Latin American nations in favor of superficial similarities. At its worst, they argue, Pan-
Americanism served as a smokescreen for U.S. imperialism.7 Pan-Americanism has
always been U.S. led, the friendly face of U.S. dominance in the hemisphere, writes
historian David Sheinin in one of the more recent studies on the subject.8 Critiques of
Pan-Americanism grew during the Cold War as the OAS and its policies increasingly
became tainted by associations with the U.S. imperial project. Three events involving the
OAS drew ire particularly from Latin American institutions and individuals: (1) the
OASs handling of the Guatemalan Revolution in 1954, in which the institution was
pressured by the U.S. to adopt a stronger stance against communism; (2) its instrumental
role in implementing economic sanctions against Cuba in 1962 proposed by the United
States (the sanctions were not repealed until 2009); and (3) its creation of peacekeeping
troops to aid in the 1965 U.S. occupation of the Dominican Republic. Artist and scholar
Luis Camnitzer sums up the disillusionment many Latin Americans felt towards such Pan
American ideals by saying that on its superficial merits, it seemed wonderful to have a
7 The critiques of Pan Americanism can be traced as far back as 1889, when Jos Marti published critical
reports on the First Inter-American Conference of the American Republics. See Jos Marti, Inside the
Monster: Writings on the United States and American Imperialism (New York: Monthly Review Press,
1975). The critiques reached new heights in the 1960s and 1970s. Examples include: Juan Miguel de
Mora, Carnaval de los gorillas (Mexico: Galvala, 1967). Orlando Surez Surez, La jaula invisible:
neocolonialismo y plstica latinoamericana. (Havana: Editorial de ciencias sociales, 1986). For a more
contemporary critique of Pan-Americanism, see Ricardo D. Salvatore, The Enterprise of Knowledge:
Representational Machines of Informal Empire in Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural
History of U.S.-Latin American Relations, ed. Gilbert M. Joseph, Catherine LeGrand, and Ricardo
Salvatore (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998), 69-106.
8 David Sheinin, Rethinking Pan Americanism: An Introduction, in Beyond the Ideal: Pan Americanism
in Inter-American Affairs, ed. David Sheinin (Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Press, 2000), 1.
4
common language, a common currency, a common government. We just had not counted
on the possibility that the language someday might be English, the currency the dollar,
and the government housed in the White House.9 Other artists expressed their discontent
through their work; in 1965, Jos Balmes created a series of Santo Domingo paintings,
one entitled No incorporates news clippings detailing the OAS actions in the Caribbean
over which the painter has written Nomerging gestural painting and protest sign
(Figure 2). In music, Cuban folk singer Carlos Puebla wrote OEA es cosa de risa
(The OAS is a joke), a novelty song that gained popularity in Latin America and in
Europe in the mid-1960s because it tapped into what many left-leaning individuals felt:
that the OAS was a pawn of the United States. Likewise, the OASs cultural policies,
such as its program of Latin American art exhibitions, were assumed to be a
supplementary component of an imperialist agenda.
One of the central aims of this dissertation is to trace how, in the United States,
Latin American art as a field of art historical study and exhibition arose from Pan-
Americanism and to show how the OAS codified a region at the same time that it tried to
assimilate that place. This dissertation considers the work of two leaders of the OAS
cultural section, Jos Gmez Sicre and Rafael Squirru, each of whom wielded incredible
influence in promoting Latin American artists in the United States and who used Pan-
Americanism as a platform from which they drew their power. Even in its heyday, the
term Pan-Americanism was rarely applied to culture and the arts, operating instead
9 Luis Camnitzer, New Art of Cuba (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003), xxii.
5
within discussions of political science, foreign policy, and education.10 By reintroducing
the term to the visual arts, I bring light to a rarely studied set of cultural activities at the
OAS and the structures of power framing those activities. Far from open-ended, the Pan-
American ideals forwarded by the OAS rested on a tacit set of values and expectations.
These included an unquestioned endorsement of constitutional democracy as modeled by
the United States, free-market capitalism, support of private corporate enterprise, and
faith in Christian ideas of charity and good will. In my view, Pan-Americanism was a
malleable rhetorical strategy, in which a set of historical actors could effectively imagine
diverse kinds of continental solidarity between the Americas. Throughout this
dissertation, I investigate concepts of Pan-Americanism that, while generated in
Washington, DC, were consistently chiseled out by Latin Americans, not U.S. policy-
makers. Its utopian nature and rhetoric of equality appealed to people regardless of their
nationality. Even so, the balance of power at the root of Pan-Americanism always
weighed in favor of U.S. models. I set my analysis of Gmez Sicre and Squirru in terms
of Pan-Americanism precisely to demonstrate how they formed positions towards Latin
10 Beginning in the 1930s, in conjunction with President Franklin Roosevelts Good Neighbor Policy,
many primary and secondary schools incorporated lessons about Latin American history, national heroes,
literature, folk songs, and customs, especially in preparation for Columbus Day (October 12 th) and Pan-
American Day (April 15th). Some of the first student Pan-American clubs were formed in New York City
public schools; the largest was known as the Student League of the Americas. For more on this
organization, see Donald E. Kitch, Schools and Pan Americanism The Phi Kappa Delta, vol. 24, no. 3,
Pan-American Intercultural Relationships (Nov. 1941), 124-127, 139. For examples of Pan-American
school lessons, see Pan American Day, ed. Hilah Paulmier and Robert Haven Schauffler (New York: Dodd,
Mead & Co, 1942). For an outline of a typical Pan-American club and its programs, see William Wachs,
Student Pan American Activity Hispania 23, no.1 (February 1940), 59-64. In the late 1930s, with World
War II looming in Europe, U.S. colleges and universities also developed programs in Inter-American
studies, adding courses in Latin American history, political science, literature, and the arts, with the goal of
facilitating international trade and building political alliances across North and South America. Bess
Goodykootnz describes the reasons behind the Universitys expanded efforts in Latin American studies in
her article, Why Education for Inter-American Understanding? Hispania, vol. 28, No 3. (Aug. 1945),
383-389.
6
American art in anticipation of U.S. tastes and expectations about Latin America, modern
art, and the political efficacy of art.
As Guillns painting attests, Pan-Americanism could be artistically generative.
But her image also appears tinged with irony. Looking again at her painting, we see that
the Pan American Union building stands isolated in a dense and exotic forest, far from its
true location in urban Washington. Audiences praised Guillns work for its innocence
and fantastical nature, believing she placed the Pan American Union building in a
landscape similar to that of her home in Granada. That decision might also be read as a
strategic one: if Guilln was to paint the landmarks actually surrounding the OASthe
Washington Monument, the White House, the Lincoln Memorialthe painting would
read very differently. Rather than seeming independent or isolated, the OAS would
appear (as it does in actuality) surrounded by U.S. symbols of political power. Guilln
painted Hroes y artistas the same year that the OAS enforced one of its most
controversial policies to adopt the trade embargo on Cuba. Her decision to paint the
horseman carrying the Cuban flag towards the end of the parade, then, seems charged (as
does painting the Dominican Republic representative near him). As a Granadan, Guilln
may have been wary of the United States imperial ambitions: in 1856 U.S. lawyer
William Walker tried to establish Nicaragua as a U.S. colony, naming himself President
of the region. He and his troops razed the city of Grenada as they retreated later that year;
another of Guillns paintings from 1962 shows the historic burning of the city by U.S.
troops. Her representation of the OAS, then, might be read as ambivalent.
7
I have titled this dissertation Pan-American Dreams to refer to the diverse, yet
historically specific imaginings of U.S.-Latin American relationsacademic and
whimsical, idealistic and ambivalentin the thoughts of many individuals during the
mid-twentieth century. At times when we believe we are studying something, we are
only being receptive to a kind of day-dreaming, writes Gaston Bachelard.11 Much of this
dissertation involves looking at the historical daydreaming of others and considering the
socio-political implications behind those dreams. My choice to use the phrase Pan-
American Dreams partly stems from rhetoric already in place, historically in documents
produced by the OAS and in more contemporary criticism.12 My aim is to suggest the
idealism and intangible nature of Pan-Americanism, its strengths and its limitations. Most
critiques of Pan-Americanism that utilize the word dream do so disparagingly, as a way
to emphasize the disconnect between the OAS and political realities.13 Yet such critiques
often sell short the complexity and importance of the fantasies, desires, and hopes at the
root of the OASs activities. Dreams are productive forces, even if they are misguided
and contradictory; they are often the initial inspiration for creative acts, for travel, for
11 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans. Mara Jolas (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), xxxiv.
12 In a sense, titling this project Pan-American Dreams is a bit playful: it carries the same ring as many of
the old magazines, books, and primary sources from the 1950s that form the basis of my research. Here I
take my inspiration from curatorial approaches evident in the exhibition and catalogue, WACK! Art and the
Feminist Revolution, ed. Cornelia Butler and Lisa Gabrielle Mark (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT
Press, 2007) an exhibition and catalogue where the title riffs on acronyms used by many feminist groups in
the 1970s, such as the Womens Art Coalition (WAC). A new body of scholarship on the cultural and
artistic aspects of Pan-Americanism is starting to emerge. See Robert Alexander Gonzlez, Designing Pan
America: U.S. Architectural Visions for the Western Hemisphere (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011)
and Claire F. Fox, Making Art Panamerican: Cultural Policy and the Cold War (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, forthcoming). Also see the article by Florencia Bazzano-Nelson, Cold War Pan-
American Operations, Oil, Coffee, and 3,500 Years of Colombian Art, Hispanic Research Journal 12,
no. 5 (October 2011): 438-66.
13 For an example of this kind of criticism see Lawerence E. Harrison, Waking from the Pan-American
Dream Foreign Policy, no. 5 (Winter 1971-72): 163-181.
8
scholarship. Dreams are also fictitious scenarios loaded with troubling political and
power relations. Ultimately, I see the optimism and idealism associated with Pan-
Americanism as inextricably bound up with feelings of dissatisfaction, fear, and failure.
This dissertation is divided into two parts. Part I focuses on the work of Jos
Gmez Sicre. As head of the Visual Arts Division, Gmez Sicre curated over five
hundred exhibitions of Latin American art.14 He regularly published articles in Amricas
magazine and created his own semi-annual Boletn de Artes Visuales [Bulletin of Visual
Arts]. He lectured and served as judge for various international biennials including the
So Paulo Biennial, the Crdoba Biennial, and the Esso Salon of Young Artists. He also
wrote and directed over twenty short documentary films about contemporary Latin
American painters. In 1976, he founded the Museum of Modern Art of Latin America
(now the Art Museum of the Americas), the first museum in the United States to
exclusively show Latin American art. In 1994, Peruvian artist Fernando de Szyszlo
described him as the person who really promoted the idea of Latin American art.
Before him, there was Argentinean painting, Colombian painting, Venezuelan or
Mexican painting.15 Gmez Sicre wielded incredible power in the 1950s and 1960s,
14 All exhibitions are listed in the two volumes of Annick Sanjurjo, ed. Contemporary Latin American
Artists: Exhibitions at the Organization of American States, 1965-1985 (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow
Press, 1993) and Contemporary Latin American Artists: Exhibitions at the Organization of American
States, 1941-1964 (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1997).
15 See Patrick Frank, ed. Readings in Latin American Modern Art (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2004), 150. Others, like art historian Alejandro Anreus have corroborated this perception. See Alejandro
Anreus, Jos Gmez Sicre and the Idea of Latin American Art, Art Journal (Winter 2005), 83-84; also
see Claire F. Fox, The Hemispheric Routes of El nuevo arte nuestro: The Pan American Union, Cultural
Policy, and the Cold War, in Hemispheric American Studies: Essays beyond the Nation, ed. Robert Levine
and Caroline Levander (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008), 223-248; also see her article,
The Pan American Union Visual Arts Section and the Hemispheric Circulation of Latin American Art
during the Cold War, Getty Research Journal 2 (2010): 83-106.
9
shaping the dominant tastes of the period. He was considered someone who could make
or break an artists career.
He also was the subject of various critiques, particularly by those who regarded
him as a Cold War hawk. Shifra Goldman, in her book Contemporary Mexican Painting
in a Time of Change (1981), examines the history of Mexicos socially responsive artists
of the 1950s and 1960s, in particular the Nueva Presencia group, illustrating the frictions
they had with the established Mexican school and with their contemporaries. According
to Goldman, these artists had to contend with influential U.S. art institutions and
personages, such as Gmez-Sicre, as they sought exposure outside of Mexico. Drawing
from Eva Cockcrofts Artforum article Abstract-Expressionism, Weapon of the Cold
War (1974), Goldman argues that Gmez Sicres promotion of abstract art, while guised
as apolitical, was closely tied to U.S. cultural imperialism, in which U.S. art institutions,
the government, and corporations utilized abstract art (especially abstract-expressionism)
as propagandistic symbols of American freedom. In particular, she points to
overwhelming corporate influences on the 1965 Esso Salon for Young Artists, which was
organized by Gmez Sicre and which ignited fierce controversy in Mexico.16 In a
separate essay Cockcroft identifies Gmez Sicre as a key contributor to the intensive
campaigns in the United States to destroy [Social Realism] and to promote instead Latin
16See Shifra Goldman, Contemporary Mexican Painting in a Time of Change (Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1981; Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995), 29-35. Citations refer to University of
New Mexico edition. Also see Eva Cockcroft, Abstract Expressionism, Weapon of the Cold War
Artforum (June 1974), 39-41.
10
American abstraction of the so-called International Style.17 In her view, as the OAS
became a key destination for contemporary Latin American artists, it also kept their art
from entering mainstream exhibition channels, such as the New York Museum of
Modern Art (MoMA).18 She criticizes the Pan American Unions exhibition program
saying that it marked the beginning of the ghettoization of Latin American art.19
Whether regarded as the figure who popularized Latin American art or who
ghettoized it, Gmez Sicre and the exhibition program he led were foundational to the
field. In Chapter One, I focus my analysis of Gmez Sicre around the subject of
aesthetic tastes as conceptualized by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. I examine how
notions of taste formed the basis of Gmez Sicres relationships with other key art critics
of his acquaintancenamely, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Marta Traba, and Jorge Romero Brest.
And I show how Gmez Sicres tastes, while not limited to abstract art, shared certain
characteristics based on U.S.-European parameters of modernism. Through his
relationship with these critics, we see Gmez Sicre held a privileged position for defining
the aesthetics that characterized Latin American art. But, in his quest to articulate the
originality of Latin American art, his critical framework relied wholy on criteria
predetermined by comparisons with European and U.S. artistic production. In Chapter
Two, I examine Gmez Sicres efforts to build a Pan-American network of art centers,
paying particular attention to the cultural activities he hosted at the OAS and at his home
in Washington, as well as his creation of the Taller Libre de Arte [Free Art Workshop] in
17 Eva Cockcroft, The United States and Socially Concerned Latin American Art, in The Latin American
Spirit: Art and Artists in the United States 1920-1970 (New York: Bronx Museum of Art, 1989), 184.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid., 194.
11
Caracas, Venezuela. I frame these arts-related activities within the context of mid-century
debates in the U.S. and Europe about the figure of the intellectual. In the 1960s, the word
intellectual carried immense symbolic power among Latin Americas political and
cultural elite. I trace how Gmez Sicres uncertain status as intellectual eroded his
legitimacy from at least two sides: in the McCarthy Era he faced pressures from right-
wing conservatives to avoid mixing art and politics, and in the 1960s, many artists and
critics sympathetic with the Cuban Revolution saw through Gmez Sicres proclaimed
apolitical stance. These debates highlight why Gmez Sicres activities were (and
perhaps still are) treated with suspicion.
Part II of this dissertation focuses on the poet and art critic Rafael Squirru,
another key contributor to the cultural arm of the OAS. Squirru was the first to bring an
expertise in visual arts to the position of OAS Director of Cultural Affairs.20 Before
joining the institution, he founded the Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires in 1956,
and worked for the Argentinean government as cultural attach under President Arturo
Frondizi. At the OAS from 1963 to 1970, Squirru was responsible for overseeing the
Visual Arts Division as well as five other Divisions that comprised the OAS Department
of Cultural Affairs: the Music Division, the Division of Education, the Division of
Philosophy and Letters, the Columbus Memorial Library, and Amricas magazine. He
and his family lived in the Georgetown area of Washington, but Squirru spent much of
his time traveling on behalf of the OAS, attending and organizing Inter-American
20 Squirru was preceded by four other Directors of Cultural Affairs, all who worked as professional
novelists, journalists, and historians. Dr. Jorge Basadre, from Peru, served from 1948 to 1950; Dr. Alceu
Amoroso Lima, from Brazil, served from 1950 to early 1953; Erico Verssimo, also from Brazil, served
from 1953 to 1956; Juan Marn, from Chile, served from 1956 to early 1963.
12
conferences and lecturing.21 He had a strong interest in utilizing literary publications to
raise the prestige of the OAS in Latin America. In his first months in his new post,
Squirru proposed buying and freely distributing three literary journalsEl Corno
Emplumado from Mexico, El Eco Contemporneo from Argentina, and Outcry! from
Washington, DCin an attempt to win over Latin American intelligentsia to a pro-OAS
attitude. The plan was rejected ostensibly for budgetary reasons.22 In lieu of that project,
he worked with the editors of Amricas magazine to give the publication what they called
a change in accent, focusing more seriously on visual art, poetry, and literature.23
Under his direction, the OAS also published an English translation of Martin Fierro, the
nineteenth-century epic poem by Jos Hernandez that continues to be a symbol of
Argentinean national pride. Squirru commissioned Catherine Ward to translate the poem
21 The position of Director of Cultural Affairs came with responsibilities to work with the Inter-American
Cultural Council and the Committee for Cultural Action. Squirru delivered lectures at the Guggenheim
Museum, at various meetings for a Center for Human Understanding (the American Division of the World
Academy of Art and Science), and at the Inter-American Meeting of Directors of Cultural Affairs, which
were published in Squirru, The Challenge of the New Man: A Cultural Approach to the Latin American
Scene (Washington, DC: Pan American Union, Department of Cultural Affairs 1964). Other conference
proceedings are published in John Nef, ed. Towards World Community (The Hague: World Academy of
Art and Science and Dr. W. Junk N.V., Publishers, 1968).
22 Squirru proposed this project to U.S. Ambassador to the OAS, deLesseps Morrison, and S.N. Wilson,
member of the U.S. Coalition of the OAS. In addition to budgetary limits, Morrison and Wilson voiced
their concerns about the OAS financing and distributing magazines whose content they could not control.
They were also upset that Squirru had not followed the chain-of-command, and had purchased the
magazines before receiving approval. With the plan suspended, Squirru gave the magazines away to
embassies. As a letter from Wilson put it, those who had seen the publications were aghast at the type of
material included therein, which they said was beatnik, and in places obscene. They were particularly
bothered by El Corno Emplumado, which included a poem by Fidel Castro. In August 1963, Wilsons
office encouraged Squirru to instead explore the idea of having the PAU sponsor its own magazine
intended for Latin American intellectuals. In this way contributions could be requested and an outlet could
be given to young writers, much of whose bitterness frequently stems from frustrations in obtaining an
audience for the products of their pens. Ward Allan to Rafael Squirru, 10 August, 1963, Record Group 59,
Entry A1-3149, box 17, Bureau of Inter-American Affairs/Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary,
Subject Files 1961-63, folder IA Cultural Council, National Archives and Records Administration,
College Park, MD. My thanks to historian Stuart Easterling for pointing me to these documents.
23 Guillermo de Zndegui, New Accent in Amricas Amricas, vol. 15, no. 6 (June 1963), inside front
cover.
13
and Antonio Berni to illustrate it. He also worked on an Anthology of Latin American
Poetry, fighting for the inclusion of Cuban poets Nicolas Guilln, Jos Lezama Lima, and
Roberto Fernndez Retamar despite protests from anti-Castro groups.24 Interestingly, no
one has written about Squirrus work at the OAS except for his daughter Eloisa Squirru
in her biography about her father, Tan Rafael Squirru! [So Very Rafael Squirru!] (2008).
My analysis of Rafael Squirru focuses on his conceptualization of the new man
as it relates to the creation of art institutions and to cultural diplomacy. In Chapter Three,
I outline the political and cultural meanings he ascribed to the term while creating the
Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires in the 1950s. In Chapter Four, I show how he
adapted the term to a broader context while in Washington during the Cold War, a period
when Ernesto Ch Guevara promoted a competing vision of the new man as a symbol
of the Cuban Revolution. The few parallels between Squirru and Guevara are striking:
both were born and raised in Argentina (they were only three years apart in age; Squirru
was born in 1925, Guevara in 1928), and both used the term new man while working
for diametrically opposed governmental agencies in Washington and Havana. Their
differences of interpretation formed an important, but largely overlooked dialectic of the
Cold Warone that shows how Squirru and the OAS engaged in an ideological global
conflict.
24Rafael Squirru, interview with the author, 1 July 2010. In addition to these book projects, Squirru also
mentioned his feelings of accomplishment brought by giving paints and art materials to David Alvaro
Siqueiros while the artist was in jail. Eloisa Squirru also discusses the importance of these book projects
and the conference papers he gave as Cultural Director. See Eloisa Squirru, Tan Rafael Squirru! (Buenos
Aires: Editorial Elefante Blanco, 2008), 137-141.
14
The two parts of this dissertation cover the period from the founding of the OAS
in 1948 to the creation of the Museum of Modern Art of Latin America in 1976. The title
of this dissertation speaks of museum-making. To be clear, this is not a study the
Museum of Modern Art of Latin America/ Art Museum of the Americas, nor a study of
museums proper, but instead an investigation of particular museological fantasies.
Throughout the dissertation I highlight Gmez Sicre and Rafael Squirrus desires to
create museums for showcasing Latin American art in the United States, finding value in
their interest in building institutions, even if they were unable to attain their goals.
Through a considerate analysis of key terms including Pan Americanism, modern
art, aesthetic taste, the intellectual, development, and the new man, I show how
these mens ideological formation resonated with broader Cold War issues of power,
cultural exchange, the display of art.
My analysis is based upon archival research, oral histories, and close readings of
magazines that the art critics used to transmit their messages and images of Latin
American art across the hemisphere. In 2006, the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American
Collection acquired Gmez Sicres personal papers, which consist of 22 boxes (approx. 9
linear feet) of correspondence with artists, as well as manuscripts, personal writings, and
ephemera. I also conducted research at other archives including the Art Museum of the
Americas and the OAS Columbus Memorial Library (Washington, DC), the Smithsonian
Archives of American Art (Washington, DC), the National Archives (College Park, MD),
the Rockefeller Archives (Sleepyhollow, NY), the Hoover Institution (Stanford, CA), the
Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires, Argentina), and Fundacin
15
Espigas (Buenos Aires, Argentina). My work in and about the archives coincides with a
moment when the field of art historyand, in particular, Latin American art historyis
starting to take what some would call an archival turn.25 I have conducted oral histories
with OAS employees, with artists who showed at the OAS, and with collectors who knew
Gmez Sicre and Squirru; our conversations helped me uncover details, people, events,
and interpretations that had previously gone unrecorded.
This history is important to acknowledge not simply for how it illuminates the
past, but also because it helps reveal many assumptions behind contemporary curatorial
strategies.
I began this dissertation project in the spring of 2006, partly in response to a
debate in my field prompted by the reopening of the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art at
the University of Texas at Austin. The Blanton holds one of the largest collections of
twentieth-century Latin American art in the United States, surpassing that of any other
university museum in the country. With the opening of new museum building, curators
Gabriel Prez-Barreiro and Annette Carlozzi presented pieces from the American and
Latin American collections in an integrated, long-term exhibition known as
America/Amricas. In the months before the opening, I listened to and participated in
various informal conversations about what it meant for displays of Latin American art to
be integrated with art of other regions. The debate became public at a three-day
25 In 2010, Andrea Giunta and Roberto Tejada, together with their students of the Permanent Seminar at
UT, organized ArtArchives: Latin America and Beyond, the second of an annual international forum
for graduate students and emerging scholars; the large turnout and variety in paper topics were the signs of
a growing body of thought around archives. My participation in the forum helped me develop a theoretical
framework for this dissertation and to fine-tune my analysis of Fernando Bryces Amricas series.
16
symposium organized by the Blantons Latin American Art Department called Sin Ttulo,
2006. At the symposium, scholars supporting integration generally argued that Latin
American arts acceptance into the canon of Western art history was long overdue. Those
against integration were concerned that museum visitors might mistakenly read Latin
American art in terms of better-known European and U.S. art movements and, as a result,
see Latin American art as derivative.26
The arguments presented at the symposium were not grounded in the history of
Latin American art exhibitions in the United States. This history dates back to 1929 with
the founding of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, however, despite the
prominence of this institution, there remains little written about its Latin American
exhibitions.27 At Sin Ttulo, 2006, there was a shared sense that integration/separation
was an unprecedented issue, and that showing U.S. and Latin American art together
offered a fresh perspective, from which to better see the modernist traditions they share.
Yet, the precedents for America/Amricas can be found in the cultural policies and
rhetoric of governmental organizations like the OAS and the Center for Inter-American
Relations in New York (now the Americas Society). Pan-Americanism has underpinned
much of the field of Latin American art in the U.S. since the 1940s despite attempts by
many scholars and curators to ignore, forget, or sever those ties. America/Amricas
26 Webcasts of Sin ttulo, 2006: An International Symposium on Latin American Art in the Global Context,
April 27-29, 2006, are available online at: http://theacesbuilding.com/building/blanton/ [Accessed 16
October 2012]
27 For one of the most recent examinations of MoMAs Latin American collecting practices, see Miriam
Basilio et al, Latin American & Caribbean Art; MoMA at El Museo (New York: El Museo del Barrio and
The Museum of Modern Art, 2004). Also see Waldo Rasmussen, Fatima Bercht, Elizabeth Ferrer, eds.
Latin American Artists of the Twentieth Century (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1993).
17
presents a type of side-by-side display that was not undertaken by OAS. But, in their own
ways, Gmez Sicre and Squirru helped create a paradigm of curating and presenting
Latin American art that still resonates today. They traveled widely, organized and
participated in art fairs and biennials across the world, embraced corporate sponsorship of
art exhibitions, and saw some of the artists they promoted quickly rise to celebrity
statusall of this resembles a nascent version of the 21st century contemporary art world
and its production of art centers and art stars. Perhaps, the term Pan-Americanism may
be outmoded, but the conflicts of power engendered and masked by Pan-American
rhetoric are still persist in the way Latin American art is defined. I conclude this
dissertation with a discussion of several works of art, particularly Fernando Bryces
drawings Amricas (2008), based on the OASs magazine of the same name, to consider
the legacies of Pan-Americanism and historical memory.
18
PART I: JOS GMEZ SICRE AND THE VISUAL ARTS DIVISION
Introduction: A Place for Latin American Art

Days after Jos Gmez Sicre passed away in 1991, Peruvian artist Fernando de
Szyszlo published an homage to the curator in Limas newspaper Oiga, describing him as
a pivotal figure in the history of Latin American art: I sincerely believe that when we
speak of this art we can clearly distinguish between two stages: before and after Gmez
Sicres presence was felt in the cultural atmosphere of our countries [where] he began
fightingto give a place to the art of Latin America.28 As early as 1989 Szyszlo claimed
that Gmez Sicre was, in fact, the originator of the idea of Latin American arta claim
that he also reiterated in later interviews:
I think that before Gmez Sicre there was Argentinean or Mexican art, Peruvian
or Venezuelan art, [and] it was he who had the vision that all those
manifestationshad common ties due to the fact that they were the product[s] of
individuals linked by tradition, by heritage, by circumstance and by destiny.
Not only the word Latin American art belongs to Gmez Sicre, but the idea
contained in the expression.29
In memorializing his friend, Szyzlo was also making a strategic effort to alter the
discourse surrounding Gmez Sicre. Gmez Sicre has long been considered a
controversial figure by artists and by art historians for the way he bridged politics and art.
In the 1960s, Mexican artist David Alfaro Siqueiros denounced him as a CIA agent,
28 Fernando de Szyszlo, Pequeo Homenaje Jos Gmez Sicre, Oigo [Lima, Peru], 30 July 1991, 57.
A copy is available in folder 1, box 16, Jos Gmez Sicre Papers, Nettie Lee Benson Latin American
Collection, University of Texas at Austin (Hereafter, referred to as JGS Papers.). All translations from
Spanish are mine, unless cited otherwise.
29 Ibid. In his homage, Szyzlo states that the text is slightly adapted from a speech honoring Jos Gmez
Sicre that the artist delivered in Washington, DC in November 1989.
19
accusing him of forwarding a U.S. imperialist project.30 In the 1970s and 1980s, art
historians Raquel Tibol, Shifra Goldman, and Eva Cockcroft each voiced similar
critiques about Gmez Sicres role as a tastemaker, arguing that his aesthetic tastes
were those of a Cold War hawk; some of these critiques appear in the catalogue for The
Latin American Spirit: Art and Artists in the United States, 1920-70, an exhibition
organized by the Bronx Museum of the Arts, which circulated across the U.S. and Puerto
Rico in 1989-90.31 In retrospect, Szyzlos homage came at a moment when Gmez
Sicres reputation hung in the balance and his activities at the OAS were being heavily
criticized.
While rhetorically compelling, Szyzlos statements are also somewhat misleading.
Latin American art, whether we consider it as a word, a concept, or a field of cultural
production and academic study, has a long and complex history involving a multitude of
historical actors working in different parts of the world and across different time
30 No evidence has surfaced proving Siqueiros claims. Art historian Alejandro Anreus asked Gmez Sicre
directly about Siqueiros allegations. See Alejandro Anreus, Ultimas conversaciones con Jos Gmez
Sicre, ArteFacto: Revista de arte y cultura en blanco y negro [Nicaragua] no. 18 (Summer 2000), n.p.
Reprinted in Appendix C.
31 In the course of my research, I have found the discomfort around Gmez Sicres historical status
persists. I thought he was just a bureaucrat, one classmate commented to me in 2005 when I presented a
seminar paper on Gmez Sicre and his arts writing for Amricas magazine. More recently, at a conference
at the Smithsonian, artist Luis Camnitzer responded to my conference paper about Gmez Sicre and the
Taller Libre de Arte with surprise: Ive never heard anyone say anything nice about him. I always thought
of Gmez Sicre as a treacherous worm. Camnitzer was a major voice for Latin American artists in New
York in the late 1960s who led institutional critiques of OAS and the Center for Inter-American Relations,
arguing that these organizations placed the arts within imperialistic political agendas. Together with several
other artists he formed the Museo Latinoamericano in 1971, and later, the Movimiento por la
Independencia Cultural Latino Americana (MICLA) to rival these institutional programs. His statements
about my paper came during the closing discussion of Encuentros: Artistic Exchange between the U.S. and
Latin America. October 5-6, 2011. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. Webcasts of the
symposium are available online: http://americanart.si.edu/research/symposia/2011/ [Accessed 16 October
2012]
20
periods.32 Further, Gmez Sicres initial interest was in modern art as an international
phenomenon. In the 1950s and 1960s, he was one of several critics, including Alfred H.
Barr, Jr., Marta Traba, Jorge Romero Brest, and Rafael Squirru, who were trying to
define a distinctly American modernism. All were institution builders, creating and/or
directing art museums, many of them titled Museums of Modern Art. These critics
usually couched their projects in terms of the universal appeal of art. For example,
Gmez Sicre in his 1959 editorial for the Boletn de Artes Visuales writes, In this
moment, the art of America is not of indigenismos [indigenisms], campesinismos
[farmworkerisms], obrerismos [factoryworkerisms] nor demagoguery. It is the
affirmation of continental values of a universal essence.33 Such evocations of arts
universality may have been meant to read as exuberant and sincere. Today they seem
particularly problematic for the manner in which they dismiss any of arts ties to race and
the working class as being outside the universal. In fact, the notion of universality has
long been used as both an ideological weapon and shield. As cultural theorist Raymond
Williams writes, claims of universality are deeply tied to experiences of failure: The
formulation of modernist universals is in every case a productive but imperfect and in the
end fallacious response to particular conditions of closure, breakdown, failure and
frustration.34 The failure for Gmez Sicre was that throughout his life Latin American
32 For an extensive history of the term Latin American art, see Mari Carmen Ramrez, Toms Ybarra-
Frausto, and Hctor Olea, eds., Resisting Categories: Latin American and/or Latino? Critical Documents of
20th-Century Latin American and Latino Art, vol. 1 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press and
the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2012).
33 Jos Gmez Sicre, Nota editorial, Boletn de Artes Visuales 5 (May-December 1959): 3.
34 Raymond Williams, Metropolitan Perceptions and the Emergence of Modernism in Politics of
Modernism: Against the New Conformists (New York and London: Verso Press, 2007), 47. Modern art and
21
art would continually be seen as one regional body of work rather than part of the global
modernist narrative.
If he wasnt the inventor of the field, Gmez Sicre along with the staff of the
Visual Arts Division carved out a place in Washington DC for Latin American art to be
shown and collected and for its creators to find support for their work and community for
their ideas.35 Dozens of Latin American artists were hired as curatorial assistants by
Gmez Sicre. These positions allowed them to travel, exhibit, and study in the United
States. In cases where he could not afford more assistants, he found them other part-time
positions at the OAS.36 Ramon Osuna, who served as a curatorial assistant in the 1960s,
describes him as the Diaghilev of Latin American Art, emphasizing that Gmez Sicre
worked behind the scenes to direct and gain acceptance for modern art from Latin
modernism are many things to many people. My own understanding of the concept has been largely shaped
by the writings of Raymond Williams, who points out that modernism has a contradictory logic. One of its
contradictions is that modernism falsely seems unfixed to time, when in fact it denotes a rather specific
period: the early to mid twentieth century. The word modern masks a specific set of tastes and aesthetic
preferences, presenting them as though they were all-encompassing of a historical period. Another major
contradiction is that while modernism is often tied to claims of universality or wholeness, these ideals
mask the reality that the cultural productions of modernism stem from fractures, breakdowns, and
particularly local urban roots. Williams also argues that modernism is largely tied to experiences of
immigration and exile, built by artists and critics who felt foreign in their surroundings.
35 The department that Gmez Sicre oversaw went through various name changes after its founding. When
Gmez Sicre entered the Pan American Union in 1946, he was hired as art specialist within the Division
of Intellectual Cooperation. With the restructuring of the OAS, his post became alternately referred to as
chief of the Visual Arts Unit or the Visual Arts Section. For clarity, I consistently refer to his
department as the Visual Arts Division, a title adopted in 1961, for the entire period of 1948 to 1976,
before the Visual Arts Division became the Museum of Modern Art of Latin America.
36 In the early 1950s, Gmez Sicre gave Mexican artist Jos Luis Cuevas a part-time position at the OAS so
that he could temporarily live and work in Washington, DC. Between 1958 and 1960, Szyszlo worked for
Gmez Sicre. From 1960 to 1968, his assistants were Ramon Osuna and Luis Lustra, who left the OAS to
jointly open the Pyramid Gallery in Washington, DC. In the mid-1960s, Gmez Sicre also found work for
Costa Rican artist Carlos Poveda as gallery guard. In the 1970s, Angel Hurtado and Flix ngel each
worked in the Division of Visual Arts. In the late 1970s and 1980s, he was also helped by Horatio Sicre, his
nephew.
22
America.37 According to Osuna, he had the same violent temperament as the Russian
impresario, and like Sergei Diaghilev, Gmez Sicre cultivated an intimate circle of
friends, composed of artists, writers, poets, and actors bound by their passion for the arts
and their outsider status. Others who knew Gmez Sicre refer to him as The Gertrude
Stein of Latin American Art, again an analogy meant to convey his important position as
an early patron of modern art and his ability to create a salon culture.38
The department concentrated its efforts on creating monthly art exhibitions, either
group or solo shows, which Gmez Sicre initially held in the corridors of the Pan
American Unions main building. Most shows ran for one month. The openings, staged
as after-work events, brought together employees of the OAS, ambassadors and
diplomats from neighboring embassies and government organizations, along with their
spouses and families. James P. Kiernan, who worked at the OAS in the 1980s, remembers
how Gmez Sicre worked the room at these openings: Gmez Sicre would have an
exhibit and would whisper in peoples ears that this artist was going to be famous. He did
not make money on these transactions, but bought for himself and for the museum.39 If
artists were in attendanceas was often the caseGmez Sicre introduced them to the
current Secretary General and to local art collectors, arranging sales. He also worked
37 Ramon Osuna, interview with the author, 20 February 2009.

38 Helen Zayani, Property from the Estate of Dorothy Friestedt Altamirano, featured on Christies.com
beginning 29 April 2011, http://www.christies.com/features/estate-of-dorothy-friestedt-altamirano-1437-
1.aspx [Accessed 16 October 2012]
39 James P. Kiernan, interview with the author, 30 January 2008.
23
with journalists from Washington newspapers and, in some cases, nationally distributed
magazines, such as Time, to publicize the exhibits.40
Based on the success of these monthly exhibitions, in 1957 Gmez Sicre
persuaded the OAS to create an acquisitions fund, and in 1960, the OAS built a
permanent exhibition space. Gmez Sicre and his staff continued to use the main floor
corridors for monthly exhibitions, while the permanent gallery, which was located in the
basement of the same building, rotated exhibitions of the OAS collection approximately
every eighteen months. This permanent gallery accommodated between fifteen to twenty-
five paintings at a time, and its entrance contained a small vestibule displaying
photography and works on paper.
While the Division of Visual Arts operated these exhibition spaces, the
department regularly had to submit to the directives of the Secretary General and
accommodate OAS ambassadors wishing to commemorate a significant historical or
cultural event with an exhibition. Pepe would be furious if any ambassador asked him
to give an opening for so-and-so, remembers his friend and art collector Diana Beruff.
She and many of the DC art patrons cultivated by him intuitively knew which exhibitions
to attend and which to ignore. You could immediately tell from [the wording of] the
invitation when he didnt like what he was exhibiting. And I only went to the ones he
liked, says Beruff.41
40 The best-known instance of this concerns the first exhibition of Jos Luis Cuevas in 1954. See Art: A
Vision of Life, Time, 16 August1954, available at www.time.com/time/archive
41 Diana Beruff, interview with the author, 15 March 2008.
24
Besides exhibitions, the Division also dedicated itself to regularly publishing
magazine articles, pamphlets, and guide booklets about Latin American art. In the 1950s,
Gmez Sicre was a frequent contributor to the OAS magazine Amricas; his book Four
Artists of the Americas (1957) reprints four of his longer essays from the magazine. He
also oversaw his own publication, the Boletn de Artes Visuales [Bulletin of Visual Arts],
a semi-annual review, which ran from 1956 to 1973. Each began with an editorial note in
which Gmez Sicre wrote about his ideas on art; these notes were followed by country-
by-country listings of past and upcoming exhibitions of modern art from Latin America.
Beruff described the Boletines as her bibles, and she avidly collected them all.42 For
aspiring artists and collectors, the Boletn reinforced and reassured them that the artists
showing at the Pan American Union were part of an ever-growing international circuit.
The Division created a number of serial publications intended to educate readers
about Latin American art. These included Art of the Americas, edited by Luis Lastra from
1966 to 1969, which was a small, heavily illustrated publication that similarly gave
information about past and upcoming art events and reprinted articles first published in
Amricas. The Division also produced a series of seven pamphlets entitled Art in Latin
America Today, each by separate art critics who recounts the history of art of his or her
country; most notably, the series includes a monograph on Colombia by Marta Traba and
one on Peru by Juan Acha. A third publication was Highlights of Latin American Art, a
portfolio primarily designed for teaching, which included images of Pre-Columbian
artifacts, textiles, folk art, and contemporary painting and sculpture. Gmez Sicre also
42 Ibid.
25
created a 4-volume Guia de las colecciones pblicas de arte [Guide to Public Collections
of Art], a Spanish-language guide that outlines the hours, operations, and holdings of
museums in the United States and in the Caribbean.
While the Visual Arts Division dedicated itself to educating audiences about Latin
American art through exhibition, publications, and documentary films, its employees
also built and maintained an extensive archive about Latin American art, including
newspaper clippings, exhibition pamphlets, resumes and various manifestos. These
archives (now housed in the administrative offices of the museum) were open to visitors
since the 1960s and were used by the office when fielding questions about a certain artist
or movement. In 1961, Gmez Sicre described the archives as certainly the least
obvious, but perhaps the most important tasks performed by the Division of Visual
Arts,record[ing] the fruitful activity of many thousands of artists from across the
continent.43
Whether or not Gmez Sicre intended to define Latin American art, and whether
or not he successfully did so, his many different undertakings cumulatively offer one of
the first working models of the field. In the following two chapters I situate his writings
and activities within their original contexts to understand what that model was. Chapter
One offers a sustained overview of Gmez Sicres aesthetic tastes, connecting and
comparing his tastes with those of Barr, Traba, and Romero Brest. I show how these
critics started on common ground in the 1940s and 1950s, and chart how they diverged
43La Unin Panamericana al servicio de las arte visuales (Washington, DC: Pan American Union, 1961),
under Los archivos de la divisin de artes visuales.
26
ideologically and aesthetically in the 1960s. Chapter Two discusses the contested nature
of the intellectuala debate that affected Gmez Sicre at mid-century. I set my
discussion of the intellectual in relation to Gmez Sicres efforts to build a Pan-American
network for artists and their work.
27
Chapter One: An Eye in Context
In 1991, art historian Alejandro Anreus asked Gmez Sicre, Who is Jos Gmez
Sicre? He answered, A guy from Matanzas [Cuba] who likes to lookwith care, with
passionbut also with clarity, with objectivity. A few things that I like to see, or to look
at, are paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, and filmsabove all, films.44 Gmez
Sicre prided himself on his vision. He claimed to have a photographic memory, a mind
defined by sight.45 If Gmez Sicre regarded his own eyes very highly, the feeling was
reinforced by comments made by those around him. During his lifetime, he was
repeatedly praised in terms of his eye, the eye of a connoisseur: He has an unerring eye
for the original and fresh, as opposed to the official and traditional, wrote art critic
Leslie Judd Ahlander in her column for the Washington Post in 1962.46 Many of his
surviving friends concur: The good thing about Pepe is that he had a wonderful eye,
says Jos Martinez Caas, an early collector of Cuban art who befriended Gmez Sicre in
the 1960s, I mean nobody that I have ever met had a better eye than Pepe for Latin
44 Anreus, Ultimas conversaciones con Jos Gmez Sicre, reprinted in Appendix C.

45 The eyes so concerned him that he even wrote a short story where the protagonist (a thinly veiled stand-
in for author himself) is abducted by the Cuban government under Fidel Castro and subjected to retinal
experiments. Gmez Sicres unpublished story is written in the first person. The protagonist and he are the
same age and from the same city. In a key passage, a German scientist explains to his prisoner why he has
been arrested: I want to inform youhe now said to me with a more humane tone of voicethat you have
been selected to carry out a painless experiment concerning the human retinas ability for assimilation and
its faculty for incorporating moving images with a certain permanence. That is to say, how the retina
recordsimages in action. Cinema is most specific. Principally, cinema [when it is] administered from
early childhood onward, as is your case, in which you were taken to the movies with a certain regularity
between four and five years old. He opened the folder and verified, Between 1920 and 1921. Gmez
Sicre, untitled document beginning with Cuando por la tarde llegaba del colegio, folder 3, box 4, JGS
Papers.
46Leslie Judd Ahlander, A Success Story at Pan American The Washington Post, 1 April 1962, G6.
Available online through ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Washington Post (1877-1995).
28
American art. And it was something that Alfred Barr noticed and this is why Alfred Barr
used him as his source.47
In the cases above, statements about eyes, vision, looking, watching, etc. all carry
meanings well beyond physiological processes. The eye is a product of history
reproduced by education, writes sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, This is true of the mode
of artistic perception now accepted as legitimate, that is, the aesthetic disposition, the
capacity to consider in and for themselves, as form rather than function, not only the
works designated for such apprehension, i.e., legitimate works of art, but everything in
the world, including cultural objects which are not yet consecratedsuch as, at one time,
primitive arts, or nowadays, popular photography or kitschand natural objects.48
Bourdieus statements about the eye appear early in his famous text on taste,
Distinction: A Sociological Critique of the Judgment of Taste (1984). The eye and
taste operate in the same way: both are metaphors that seem to naturalize our
preferences as the result of basic sensory perceptions (the eye refers mainly to the
visual, just as having an ear refers to music, while taste refers to a broad spectrum of
preferences that includes both music and visual art). 49 In our day-to-day lives, we may
think of our personal tastes as idiosyncratic, as inclinations entirely unique to each of us.
47 Jos Martnez Caas, interview with the author, 31 August 2009.

48 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, trans. Richard Nice
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 3.
49 It should come as no surprise that just as some of Gmez Sicres colleagues remarked about his eye
while others described him as a tastemaker. These words tastemaker and eye tended to have
contrasting connotations. Tastemaker usually came from a critical perspective, suggesting Gmez Sicre
had the power to shape other peoples preferences, but that this was a power he did not deserve, and that his
influence favored the trendy; the eye suggests a more positive meaning: one who is perceptive and has
foresight about the quality and/or value of a work of art, whether it be monetary value, historical value, or
both.
29
What Bourdieus book powerfully shows is that our preferences are not as personalized
as they might seem. Our tastes are not natural, but instead are socially constructedthe
products of history and education. Bourdieu makes it clear that tasteespecially in terms
of cultural mattersfollows a specific logic, that it forms a bond between social groups,
either as a shared value or as a point of contention. Taste not only separates one socio-
economic class from another, it also creates internal divisions within each class. Again
Bourdieu: Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier. Social subjects, classified by
their classifications, distinguish themselves by the distinctions they make, between the
beautiful and the ugly, the distinguished and the vulgar, in which their position in the
objective classifications is expressed or betrayed.50
To speak of Gmez Sicres eye is to speak of his aesthetic tastestastes that
are not entirely unique to him, but that classify and/or distinguish him among his peers.
Scholars have referred to Gmez Sicres tastes in passing but they have never been the
subject of detailed analysis. One reason for this is the social nature of taste; tastes cannot
easily be described in isolation; they are the silk of a wider social web, the way one
relates with others. What follows is an analysis of Gmez Sicres main aesthetic beliefs
as they relate to his contemporaries Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Marta Traba, and Jorge Romero
Brest.
50 Bourdieu, Distinction, 3.
30
A MENTOR AT THE MOMA: ALFRED H. BARR, JR.
The relationship between Alfred H. Barr, Jr.the founding director of the
Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA)and Gmez Sicre is of historical
importance, not only for its influences on Gmez Sicres life and his aesthetic tastes but
also because it was a link with significant cultural cache. On the most basic level, their
friendship lent legitimacy to Gmez Sicres position, making him a curator connected to
the most prestigious institution for modern art in the United States. My goal here is to
suggest that the connections ran deeper than that: the two men shared similar aesthetic
tastes, adopted similar rhetoric about modern art and its historical origins and applied
similar formalist methodologies in their exhibitions and in building permanent collections
for museums they directed. Gmez Sicre spoke of Barr as a friend and a teacher.51
Their most frequent contact occurred in the 1940s, though Gmez Sicre occasionally
sought him out during the 1950s and 1960s. He explains: If I presented an artist of great
promise, [of] genuine talent, in the OAS gallery, I would let Barr know and hed ask me
to hold one or two works for the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, and hed buy
them. Thats what happened with [Jos Luis] Cuevas, [Armando] Morales, [Alejandro]
Obregn, and others.52
The two met in Havana in the summer of 1942, during Barrs eight-day visit to
Cuba. Earlier that year, the MoMA had begun a new initiative, the Inter-American Fund,
51Anreus, Ultimas conversaciones con Jos Gmez Sicre, reprinted in Appendix C.

52Ibid. Gmez Sicre also discusses showing works to Alfred Barr in the Boletn de Artes Visuales. He
writes that after 1947, [with Barr] again in charge of the museums collections, I saw him only when I
wanted to present him with works by a certain Latin American artist. I would personally take them from
Washington. Jos Gmez Sicre, Al lector, Boletn de Artes Visuales 16 (January-June 1967): 9.
31
set up to increase the museums holdings in art from Latin America. The fund was a war
time project created in the weeks following the bombing of Pearl Harbor; although its
funder wished to remain anonymous, by all indications the Inter-American Fund was
launched by Nelson Rockefeller (who was a member of the MoMA Board of Directors
and who had been serving as head of the U.S. Office of Inter-American Affairs since
1940) in an attempt to gain Latin American support for the Allied cause.53 With travel to
Europe dangerous and logistically difficult, the museum turned its attention to the
Americas. Barr and fellow MoMA curator Lincoln Kirstein separately spent the summer
of 1942 traveling through Latin America, learning the field, searching for acquisitions,
and contacts; Kirstein traveled predominantly through South America, Barr spent six
weeks in Mexico before going to Havana.
In Cuba, Barr stepped into a small and fiercely divided art scene, where Gmez
Sicre was already a somewhat polemical figure. Gmez Sicre had first become involved
with the arts in the late 1930s, while still a law student at the University of Havana.
Cundo Bermdez, a fellow classmate in the law school and a practicing artist, introduced
Gmez Sicre to Mario Carreo and Felipe Orlandopainters who were disenchanted
with the paintings coming out of Havanas San Alejandro National Academy of Art. In a
lecture on the history of Cuban art that Gmez Sicre delivered later in his career, he
53Barr openly acknowledges the strong influence World War II had on the MoMAs collecting practices.
See Barr, Alfred H. "Foreword," The Latin-American Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, edited by
Lincoln Kirstein, 3-4. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1943. ICAA Documents of 20th-Century Latin
American and Latino Art Digital Archive. http://icaadocs.mfah.org [ICAA Record ID: 838005] [Accessed
21 February 2012]
32
recounts seeing in February 1937 an exhibition of Bermdezs paintings for the first time.
The works were
hanging on trees in Albear Park, the link between old Havana and the new
downtown area. A group of friends who had no other place to exhibit had decided
to hold an open-air show there. There were no galleries to speak of in the capital
at that time. Artists sometimes exhibited in furniture showrooms, at other times
out on the street. In this case, they had chosen the park named for the engineer
who had provided the city with running water and a statue [that was surrounded]
by trees (alas, not laurels!) whose trunks provided a place to hang their works.54
Inspired by his friends, Gmez Sicre began his foray into art writing and was soon
writing reviews for the Havana newspaper El Mundo.55 In 1939, he began curating
exhibitions at Havanas Lyceum and Lawn Tennis Club.56 With the help of Mario
Carreo, he convinced Mara Luisa Gmez Menaa wealthy heiress and one of the only
collectors of contemporary art on the islandto finance Havanas first commercial
gallery of modern art, the Galera del Prado.57 The gallery, created in 1942 and managed
54 Jos Gmez Sicre, Cundo Bermudez, folder 29, box 1, JGS Papers. Gmez Sicre also refers to this
exhibition in Cuban Painting of Today, trans. Harold Biddle (Havana: Mara Luisa Gomez Mena, 1944),
151.
55 He most likely began writing art criticism during a break in his education between 1935 and 1937 when
the University of Havanas law school was temporarily closed due to strikes. Gmez Sicre discusses his
work for El Mundo in his interview with Anreus. Anreus, Ultimas conversaciones con Jos Gmez Sicre,
reprinted in Appendix C. Mario Carreo also worked in the newspaper business, primarily as an illustrator.
See Gmez Sicres essay on the artist, folder 16, box 2, JGS Papers. According to Jos Luis Cuevas,
Gmez Sicre also wrote for Avance, a daily newspaper started in Havana in 1938 and directed by Jorge
Zays. Jos Luis Cuevas, Gato Macho (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Econmica, 1994), 569.
56 In 1943 he was invited by anthropologist Fernando Ortiz to curate exhibitions at the Institucin Hispano-
Cubano de Cultura (Institution of Hispanic-Cuban Culture). Both of these curatorial positions were unpaid,
and to earn a living, Gmez Sicre also worked in the offices of the national lottery (some of his earliest
notes on contemporary art are written on the backs of paper with the Renta de la Lotera logo). For some of
his writings on the back of lottery paper, see Breve Historia Confusa, an article on the life of Fidelio
Ponce, located in folder 17, box 1, JGS Papers.
57 In the late 1930s and 1940s, there were only three notable collectors of contemporary Cuban art. They
were: Lydia Cabrera, an anthropologist and specialist in Afro-Cuban religious practices who promoted the
work of artist Wifredo Lam; Ramn Garca Osuna, Sr., a diplomat who worked between Havana and the
Cuban embassy in Washington, DC; and Mara Luisa Gmez Mena. Gmez Sicre became close with both
Osuna, Sr. and with Gmez Mena, who at the time was married to Mario Carreo.
33
by Gmez Sicre, was located at 44 Paseo de Prado, a famous promenade for shopping
and strolling in downtown Havana. During the year that it remained open, it sold
absolutely nothing, Gmez Sicre later claimed.58 He was being modest. In fact, Gmez
Sicre was a skillful art dealer. In November 1942, Alfred Barr wrote, I am delighted to
hear of the success of your gallery. Mara Luisa wrote that you sold ten paintings in three
days, which must be nearly a worlds record.59
The Galera del Prado became a central base for one of several rivaling artistic
groups in Havana. If one pole consisted of Gmez Mena, Gmez Sicre, and artists
Carreo, Bermdez, and Orlando; another pole centered around poet Jos Lezama Lima
(1910-1976) and writer Jos Rodrguez Feo (1920-1993), who founded the literary
magazine Orgenes (1944-1956). This influential magazine published modern Cuban
poetry and prose, and included reviews of exhibitions and theoretical writings on
aesthetics. In addition to publishing some of Lezama Limas poetry and his writings
about art, Orgenes frequently included contributions from art critic Guy Prez-Cisneros,
writer Cintio Vitier, and poetess Fina Garca Marruz.60 Images by Amelia Pelez, Ren
Portocarrero, Wifredo Lam and other artists of the Cuban vanguard consistently appeared
on the covers of the magazine.61 The magazine garnered a wide readership in Latin
58 Ibid.
59 Alfred Barr, Jr. to Gmez Sicre, 2 November 1942, folder 2, box 7, JGS Papers.
60 For a recent analysis of the art criticism that emerged from this rivalry, see Alejandro Anreus, Jos
Gmez Sicre versus Guy Perez Cisneros: Lo cubano en las artes plsticas in Cuba Futures: Arts and
Culture in Contemporary Cuba (edited by Mauricio A. Font). Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere
Studies, 2011, 233-244. Available online at http://www.cubaproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Arts-
and-Culture-Final.pdf [Accessed 22 February 2012]
61 According to art historian Luz Merino Acosta, Wifredo Lam, while friendly with Lezama Lima,
represented a third strong and independent pole, separate from both the Orgenes group and the Galeria
34
America and served as an important venue for Spanish-language translations of writing
from the U.S. and from Europe.
The Galera del Prado group and the Orgenes group each believed their country
lacked a respectable venue for the dissemination and critical study of literature and art,
and each sought to rectify the situation. They disagreed, however, on what cultural values
were most important, which artists of the Cuban vanguard represented those values, and
how to most effectively write about art. Gmez Sicre and Lezama Lima, the centers of
each group, generally disliked each other and conflicted in their aesthetic tastes, their
world views, and their opinions about questions of colonialism.62 At the turn of the
twentieth century, Cubans who had been seeking independence from Spain since the
del Prado. Luz Merino Acosta, Orgenes: Otra cara de la modernidad, in La revista Orgenes y la
vanguardia cubano, ed. Teresa del Conde (Madrid: Turner, 2000), 27.
62 Moreover, there were sharp social and economic class divisions between them. Gmez Sicres middle-
class upbringing and his self-taught study of art separated him from Lezama Lima and his circlemany of
whom who had been educated in Paris. Gmez Sicre disliked the clique-ishness of the Orgenes group and
he complained bitterly about their elitism. He later wrote:
I never exchanged words [with Lezama Lima], although I saw him with certain frequency when I
lived in Havana. Lezama presided over his devotees in a bookstore situated on OReilly Street.
Also, at night, I saw him sitting along the Pradowhile various acolytes encircled him and
soaked up all they heard. I never went to listen in his tertulias and I admit we did not get along,
and I always avoided personal contact. Lezama pontificated in a heavy aristocratic fashion, in
which I never felt legitimately included. If one had not been reading Valery or Malerm, he or she
was dismissed. In matters of visual art, I observed absolute confusion. This distanced me from him
further. In the Origenes group, the PAINTER was one such Marano Rodrguez, a creator of
audacious art that today, happily, is insignificant and destroyed in its entirety. [Ren] Portocarrero
was, with his vacillations, timidity, mysticism, the DRAUGHTSMAN. Alfredo Lozano was the
SCULPTOR and denied the significance of all pre-existing sculpture in the country, Jos Ardvol,
was the MUSICIAN. None of the three today hold a position of importance in our cultures
process. They were, more or less, leaders that profoundly respected Lezama, who in each
encounter, would pester them with some thesis he had extracted from the thousands of books he
consulted and read, although could not always digest. Lezama, it seems unnecessary to declare,
was the POET.I was well-intentioned and taking my first steps into art criticism [at that time]. I
read a lot, but without erudition, and in my insignificant writings I did not cite any esoteric thinker
in France. My strength, I now see clearly, consisted in that I paid equal attention to the plastic
artists that emerged in our panorama, and apart from admitting the superiority of Amelia Pelez
over the rest of the movement, I believed in the contributions of Ponce, Carlos Enrquez, Cundo
Bermdez y Mario Carreo.
Jos Gmez Sicre to Israel Rodrguez, 16 November 1983, folder 3, box 5, JGS Papers.
35
1870s, found themselves a colony of another empirethe United States. By most
historical accounts, the cultural exchange between the two countries flourished until the
1959 Cuban Revolution. In the 1930s and 1940s, many Cubans willingly embraced the
democratic ideals at the heart of U.S. government; they admired the efficiency of
countrys institutions and schools, the modernity of its cities and public transportation,
and desired the consumer goods made in the United Statesthe clothing, the beauty
products, the food and alcohol, but also Hollywood movies and baseball.63 Gmez Sicre
was part of this group; he saw potential in U.S. influence. In contrast, Lezama Lima and
his circle resisted such influence on Cuban culture. Even their magazines title, Orgenes,
suggests a search for Cuban heritage and cultural originality. For Lezama Lima, Cuban
culture was more heavily indebted to Spain than the United States. But, above all, he
believed that the country possessed its own hybrid culture, and he employed the concept
of the baroque to describe Latin Americas cultural complexity and exceptionalism, a
theme he later expounded in his book, La expresin americana (1957).64
63 Here I rely upon the work of historian Louis A. Perez, who details the cultural bonds between the U.S.
and Cuba in his book, Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, and Culture (New York: Harper Collins &
University of North Carolina Press, 1999). His argument that Cuba served as a testing ground for U.S.
imperialism appears in his book, Cuba in the American Imagination: Metaphor and the Imperial Ethos.
(University of North Carolina Press, 2008).
64 Unfortunately, La expresin americana (The American Expression) has not been translated into English.
For an introduction to Lezama Lima and his poetry, see Ernesto Livon-Grosman, Transcending National
Poetics: A New Reading of Jos Lezama Lima Jos Lezama Lima: Selections (ed. Ernesto Livon-
Grosman), Poets of the Millennium Series (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
2005), XI-L. For information about La expresin americana, see Brett Levinson, Secondary Moderns:
Mimesis, History, and Revolution in Lezama Limas American Expression (Lewisburg: Associated
University Presses, 1996), available online through Google books. A further discussion of Orgenes
magazine and its opposition to U.S. colonialism and the American way of life, is available in James
Buckwalter-Arias, Cuba and the New Origenismo (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell and Brewer Inc., 2010), 195-
196.
36
Barrs 1942 visit brought many internal artistic disputes to a head as these
factions rivaled for his attention and the possibility of having their work associated with
the MoMA. Barr likely sensed the tensions; he later wrote to Gmez Sicre that he had
no interest in Cuban art politics, but had tried to make a fair though hasty study of Cuban
art.65 Barr may have wished to refrain from engaging in Cuban art politics, or
favoring one group over another, but in the end his choice was clear: with the help of
Gmez Sicre and the Galeria del Prado, the MoMA mounted the Cuban Painting of
Today exhibition in 1944 (its catalogue was funded by Gmez Mena).66 Barr also
encouraged Gmez Sicre to pursue an M.A. degree in art history at New York University,
and helped him secure a tuition scholarship. To my mind it is not actually a degree that
would be useful for you so much as a chance to live in New York for a while, get to
know the museums and private collections[,] dealers and artists, Barr explained to him.67
65 Alfred Barr, Jr. to Gmez Sicre, 12 December 1944, folder 2, box 7, JGS Papers.
66 Gmez Sicre edited the catalogue accompanying the MoMA exhibition, arranged the loans, framing, and
transportation of works from Cuba, and helped to install the works at the museums galleries that year.
Controversy about the MoMAs selection of artists for the Cuban Painting of Today exhibition continued
after the show left New York to travel through the U.S. and abroad. The main dispute concerned the work
of Wifredo Lam, who had been included in the catalog but not in the exhibition. Rumors circulated that
Lam had refused to participate in the exhibition because of his dislike for Gmez Sicre and Gmez Mena.
This dispute with Lam is well-documented in the MoMA and Gmez Sicre archives. For further
information also see Todd Florio, MoMA #255: Modern Cuban Painters: Promulgating Cuban
Modernism, Toddflorios Blog, 29 May 2009, http://mcp1944.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/moma-255-
%E2%80%9Cmodern-cuban-painters%E2%80%9D-promulgating-cuban-modernism-by-todd-florio/
[accessed March 2010]. As late as 1945, Barr was encouraging Lam and Gmez Sicre to make amends (a
peace he said would be for the good of Cuban painting), but to no avail. Alfred Barr to Jos Gmez Sicre,
16 February 1945.
67 Alfred Barr, Jr. to Jos Gmez Sicre, 23 July 1943, folder 2, box 7, JGS Papers. At NYU, Gmez Sicre
studied under Erwin Panofsky, famed scholar of iconography and the Renaissance. Barr also encouraged
him to take courses at Columbia with Meyer Schapiro, describing him to Gmez Sicre as a very brilliant
teacher, more brilliant, in fact, than any teacher of history of modern art at New York University. Alfred
Barr, Jr. to Jos Gmez Sicre, 22 December 1943, folder 2, box 7, JGS Papers. Schapiro, whose early
scholarship concerned Romanesque sculpture, garnered high esteem among art historians in the 1930s for
his writing on leftist politics and modern art. In 1937, he co-founded the Marxist Quarterly and in it
published The Nature of Abstract Art, which remains his best-known essay.
37
So why did Barr take an interest in Gmez Sicre? Perhaps, it was because Gmez
Sicre was in the right group of moneyed art patrons; he was working at an art gallery and
could easily be brought into the growing international museum-gallery-academy
networka network that Barr was already comfortable working with in Europe. More
importantly, they shared a set of curatorial methods and ideas about modern art. Both
men approached art formally through notions of quality and international standards. As
Barr turned attention southward to Latin America, he struggled with a particular form of
culture shock: his knowledge and skills assessing the merit of artso well-honed in
Europe and the U.S.held little traction. In 1945, he remarked that, despite his hopes,
objective judgments of Latin American contemporary art were difficult because of
what he called a problem of standards.68 To Barrs mind, the problem was the complete
absence of standards. Essentially, he was concerned that the U.S. had taken interest in
Latin American art initially for political reasons, albeit altruistic ones, and not for the
quality of the works themselves.69
In Gmez Sicre, Barr found an art professional that embodied his sense of
objective methodology. Barr writes that upon first meeting Gmez Sicre, he found him
68 See Alfred H. Barr, Jr., "Problems of Research and Documentation in Contemporary Latin American
Art." In Studies in Latin American Art: Proceedings of a Conference held in the Museum of Modern Art
New York, May 28-31, 1945, edited by Elizabeth Wilder, 37-43. Washington, DC: The American Council
of Learned Societies, 1949. Available online: ICAA Archives #833746 [Accessed 27 February 2012].
69 As Gmez Sicre helped prepare Cuban Painting of Today, Barr expressed to him his belief that Latin
American art previously received little recognition in the U.S. because of this issue of quality: As you can
guess, there have been in this country during the past several years a great many exhibitions of Latin
American art, some of which unfortunately have been very mediocre indeed. As a result, there has grown
up in people genuinely interested in painting a certain prejudice or [skepticism] about the art of the other
American republics. I say this to you in confidence and quite frankly for our Museum intends to maintain
its interest in Latin American art whenever the quality of that art seems to us to justify the interest.Alfred
Barr, Jr. to Jos Gmez Sicre, 16 October 1943, folder 2,box 7, JGS Papers.
38
to be a very remarkable man, [who combined] intelligence and knowledge with
extraordinary fairness and disinterested appreciation of a great variety of artists and of
art.70 He continued to vouch for him throughout the 1950s; for instance, telling Nelson
Rockefeller about his unique qualifications as a man with a very wide knowledge of
Latin American art, an exceptional lack of bias, and a good critical gift based on
European and North American standards.71 Gmez Sicre shared Barrs concerns about
issues of quality; in a 1959 article for Art in America he pinpointed the problematic
tendency to equate Latin American art with that orthodox, descriptive taste of a souvenir
of a holiday across the border or a memento of a honeymoona tendency he attributed
to the failure (within various countries) to establish a set of artistic values that
recognizes and includesrather than ignoressome of the interesting new art
movements.72 He also expressed concern that judgments of quality were being sacrificed
to regional politics: My personal feeling is that with few exceptions some of the group
shows sent out officially are of dubious quality and are produced under the pressure of
what is termed democratic intervention by all the artists active in the participating
country.73
Just as Barr saw someone who shared his sense of standards, Gmez Sicre found
a curatorial role model. He described Barr as having a total lack of prejudice in judging
art, explaining that when he brought works to him, Barr
70 Alfred Barr, Jr. to Jos Gmez Sicre, 16 August 1942, folder 2, box 7, JGS Papers.
71 Alfred Barr, Jr. to Nelson A. Rockefeller, 13 July 1952, folder 1227 Museum of Modern Art, Books -
Latin America,1953, box 125, Record Group 4: Projects (Hereafter RG4), Nelson A. Rockefeller Papers,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York (Hereafter NAR).
72 Jos Gmez Sicre, Trends-Latin America Art in America, vol. 47, no. 3 (1959), 22-23.
73 Ibid.
39
attentively observed the work, changing position as he searched for suitable light;
he repeatedly returned to [a work], approaching carefully and, if it provoked his
interest, finally he would ask about the artist and the country of origin, or for any
additional information about his/her personality. The samewith whether the
artist was mature or young, from a powerful country or a small and poor one.
What mattered was what the work posed to him.74
Both Barr and Gmez Sicre were curators who insisted on judging a work entirely on its
inherent formal qualities, putting aside politics, personal relations, or other extenuating
circumstances (Whether they actually abided by these principles has long been the cause
of debate).
Another common aspect of their formalist approaches concerned the ways they
chose to physically display art. From the Cuban Painting of Today exhibition onwards,
Gmez Sicre adopted Barrs innovative style of installing exhibitionsa style now so
commonplace we take its historicity for granted: white or neutral-colored walls, works
hung horizontally in a row, arranged chronologically and thematically, rather than by size
or symmetry; sculptures and three-dimensional works placed on white bases; the creation
of wall labels explaining the relationships across works in the room.75 Gmez Sicre
praised Barr for his curatorial method, noting that Barr knew how to see; he was brilliant
with his installations and exhibitions.76 When he came to Washington in 1946, Gmez
Sicres central task involved curating monthly art exhibitions in the institutions main
74 Jos Gmez Sicre, Al lector, Boletn de Artes Visuales 16: 9

75 Margaret Scolari Barr, art historian and Alfred Barrs spouse, explained his innovations to exhibition
practices during an oral history interview with Paul Cummings. See Oral history interview with Margaret
Scolari Barr concerning Alfred H. Barr, 1974 Feb. 22-May 13, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian
Institution. Transcript available online: http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-
interview-margaret-scolari-barr-concerning-alfred-h-barr-13250#transcript [Accessed 27 February 2012].
For further analysis of Barrs method of installing exhibitions, see Mary Anne Staniszewski, Power of
Display: A History of Exhibition Installations at the Museum of Modern Art (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1998).
76 Anreus, Ultimas conversaciones con Jos Gmez Sicre, reprinted in Appendix C.
40
building. The original space, however, was not ideal for displaying art: sandwiched
between the meeting room for the OAS general assembly and a lush sky-lighted
courtyard, which contained tall palm trees, tropical plants, and two chattering parrots, the
art space could easily be overlooked (Figure 3). Visitors relished attention on the birds, as
indicated by photographs by Marjory Collins for the U.S. Farm Security Administration
(Figure 4). Gmez Sicre later told Anreus, I had to make the parrots disappearthey
maintained that picturesque and exotic image of the Americas that is so dear to the
gringos. I was going to transform the section and gallery into a serious place to exhibit
modern art.77 For over a decade, he made do with the space given to him. Eventually, he
persuaded the OAS to create a white-walled exhibition space in the buildings basement
in 1960.78 This permanent gallery accommodated between fifteen and twenty-five
paintings at a time. Installation shots show a Barr-inspired installation of the permanent
collection in place (Figures 5-7). For Gmez Sicre, it was important not only to have a
modern exhibition space, but also to publicize it. The Boletn and other pamphlets, such
77 Alejandro Anreus, interview with Jos Gmez Sicre, 21 February 1991, referenced and translated in
Alejandro Anreus, Teaching it to the Gringos: Jos Gmez Sicres Definitions of Latin American Art, a
conference paper delivered at the Examining the State and Practice of Latin American Art History:
Language, Structure, and Content session, College Art Association Annual Conference, 23 February 2006,
Boston; a copy of the conference paper is in the possession of the author. The first parrots to the Pan
American Union arrived in 1930, when U.S. Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson brought his pet parrot,
named Old Soak to be watched by a co-worker while he went to London naval meeting. The press reports
that the bird, bored with his surroundings, would repeatedly say Hello, Old Soak! Hello, Old Soak!
punctuating each self-congratulation with a shriek that split the silence of the patio and cut into the air of
busy offices. Nothing could stop him; visitors only made him more self-assertive Stimsons Old Soak
Vexes His Guardians, The Florence Times-News [Florence, AL], vol. 7, 17 Feb 1930, 1. Available online
in the archives of news.google.com [accessed March 2010]. The birds were ultimately removed by
Secretary General Alejandro Orfila, perhaps under Gmez Sicres prodding.
78 According to the brochure La Unin Panamericana al servicio de las arte visuales, Gmez Sicre and his
staff continued to use the corridor gallery for monthly exhibitions, while the permanent gallery, which was
located in the basement of the same building, rotated exhibitions of the collection approximately every
eighteen months.
41
as Permanent Collection of Contemporary Art of Latin America (1960) and La Union
Panamericana al servicio del arte [The Pan American Union at the Service of Art]
(1961) circulated different images of the gallery. Together the images offer a composite
view of the gallerywhich was modestas well as a view of some of the works Gmez
Sicres prized: Joaqun Roca Rey, Maqueta para Prisionero Poltica Desconocido [Study
for the Unknown Political Prisoner] (1952); Oswaldo Vigas, Gran Signo [Imposing Sign]
(1956); Mara Luisa Pacheco, Composicin (1960); Fernando de Szyszlo, Cajamarca
(1959); Roberto Matta, Hermala II (1948); Alejandro Otero, Coloritmo 24 [Color-rhythm
24] (1957-58); Wifredo Lam, Lisamona (1950); Alejandro Obregn, El Velorio [The
Wake] (1956).
Barr and Gmez Sicres formalist method was buttressed by a particular kind of
rhetoric: each spoke of modern art as a visual language with the potential to be spoken
and understood in any culture. This metaphor of language holds a prominent position in
Barrs What is Modern Painting?, a paperback booklet designed to introduce teenagers
and adults to the MoMAs collection. The text was first published in 1943, the same year
that Gmez Sicre began living in New York. In the booklets Introduction, Barr notes
that the art of painting is like a language which you have to learn to read.But one
thing is easy, there are no foreign languages in painting as there are in speech; there are
only local dialects which can be understood internationally, for painting is a kind of
visual Esperanto79 Gmez Sicre utilized similar metaphors. In the Boletin de Artes
79 Alfred Barr, What is Modern Painting? (New York, NY: Museum of Modern Art, 1943), 3.
42
Visuales, Gmez Sicre states that the plastic arts requires no translator or interpreter.80
Elsewhere he speaks of Latin American art as a body of work made up of many different
accents; when asked by Mirta Blanco-Padrn, Do you believe in the existence of Latin
American art per se? he replies, Yes, just as there exists Spanish spoken with a Latin
American accent, and within each region, a regional accent, so too exists an art with our
accent. I have been occupied with this problem for three decades, always going in search
of accents.81
Other commonalities between Barr and Gmez Sicres tastes concern the
significant emphasis they placed on abstract art. In 1936, Barr created the exhibition
Cubism and Abstract Art; on the jacket of the exhibition catalogue appeared his chart of
modern art, a flow chart that has subsequently become iconic because of its attractive and
stream-lined design, but also because it so well-embodies the methodological approach
that Barr popularizednamely, to classify artists within or outside of particular avant-
garde movements, and to trace their artistic influences and evolution over time (Figure 8).
Barrs chart runs from 1890 to 1935, presenting a cluster of European movements in the
first two decades of the 20th century (Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, Orphism, Suprematism
and others) bound by an intertwining set of red and black arrows indicating influences.
(Barr who considered republishing the book in the early 1940s, continued to tinker with
the chart in the period he knew Gmez Sicre).82 At the bottom of the chart, labeled 1935,
80Jos Gmez Sicre, Nota editorial, Boletn de Artes Visuales 9 (January-June 1962): 3.
81 Mirta Blanco-Padrn, Jos Gmez Sicre, Vanidades Continental, vol. 16, no. 7 (March 30, 1976), 30-
35, 112.
82 Barrs 1940s alterations to the chart appear in Alfred Barr, Defining Modern Art: Selected Writings of
Alfred H. Barr, Jr., 1926-64, ed. Irving Sandler and Amy Newman (New York: Abrams, 1986).
43
Barr distills all these movements into two tendencies Non-Geometrical Abstract Art
and Geometrical Abstract Art.83 Barr did not believe these were the only two paths for
modern art, but the chart does point to the importance he placed on the development of
abstraction as a mainline of modern art.
Likewise, from the 1950s onward, Gmez Sicres reputation as art critic was
bound up with abstract art, and what seemed like polarizing attitudes for or against it. His
opponents like the Mexican Muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros described him as an agent
of abstractionism, who promoted abstract art over all other modes of art making,
particularly what could be categorized as social realism.84 This common criticism, while
not entirely unfounded, oversimplifies Gmez Sicres aesthetic tastes and the work of the
artists he promoted. When Gmez Sicre exhibited and wrote about abstract art, he used
methods of categorizations and groupings similar to Barrs. This is particularly evident in
his contribution to the fourth edition of the So Paulo Biennial (1957) (where, it turns
out, Barr was serving as a juror). For at least three consecutive biennials (1953, 1955, and
1957), Gmez Sicre arranged for the Pan American Union to host its own art booth at the
83 Students of art history have long adopted similar dichotomies when speaking of abstraction: hard-
edged vs. lyrical, or geometric vs. abstract expressionist, wherein one is described in terms of of
reason, logic, and idealized or pure forms, such as the square, while the other is assumed to more
emotive, and based on abstracting organic or naturally occurring forms.
84 Siquieros is quoted as calling Gmez Sicre an agent of abstractionism in Mara Luisa Mendoza,
Tamayo es un hipcrita!: Dice Siqueiros en una entrevista exclusiva para Hoy sobre la Bienal Hoy
(Mexico, D.F., Mexico) 21 June 1958 (ICAA Record ID: 768083) [Accessed 30 April 2012]. On at least
one occasion, Gmez Sicre was directly asked by a journalist about this perception that he favored abstract
art. He answered that It is certain that Ive been accused of this. It is false, and while its true that I have
been a promoter of abstract art, I sometimes like the figurative much more than the abstract. Mirta Blanco-
Padrn, Jos Gmez Sicre Vanidades Continental (Miami, FL) vol. 16, Issue 7 (30 March 1976), 34.
44
fair.85 In an article for Amricas magazine, Gmez Sicre notes that for the 4th biennial he
organized the PAU section around a theme: I decided to give unity to the group and
show abstract art in five different stages, through the work of artists of importance in
their respective countries.86 He then, in the course of a single paragraph, briefly outlines
the stages, through which painters progressively move away from realist subject matter.
He speaks of Carlos Mridas work as emblematic of the first stage, which he describes
as a free geometrical interpretation of reality; Enrique Zaartu of Chile represents what
he calls a second step on the road towards abstraction with his prefiguration of the
cosmos; the third phase is represented by the Ecuadorian painter Manuel Rendn, whose
canvases use patches and planes of color that suggest emotional states or evoke some
circumstance, something real, at a poetic distance.; Edgar Negret represents the fourth
stage, related to an invention of forms that becomes a symbol of the machine age; and
he presents Alejandro Otero who searches constantly for the most absolute art, the most
unrelated to reality as emblematic of the fifth stage. Only images of three works (by
Zaartu, Otero, and Mrida) are illustrated in the article (Figure 9). The layout of the
article places the PAU entries in between images of two prize winners from the Biennial,
a sculpture by Spanish artist Jorge de Orteiza and a painting by British artist Ben
85 He pitched the pavilion as an opportunity for a showing several Latin American artists who for
various reasons had not appeared [in the Biennial] before. This project occurred to me when I saw the
difficulties and internal conflicts that arose in some of our countries over the sending of works abroad.
Jos Gmez Sicre,Todays Art at So Paulo, Amricas, vol. 10, no. 1 (January 1958), 33. According to
art historian Florencia Bazzano-Nelson, the first such exhibit focused on representing Colombian artists
who had been overlooked during the Colombian military government and had not been selected for the
biennial. See Florencia Bazzano-Nelson, Theory in Context: Marta Trabas Art-Critical Writings and
Colombia, 1945-1959. (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, July 2000, 379 -380.
86 Jos Gmez Sicre, Todays Art at So Paulo, Amricas, vol. 10, no. 1 (January 1958), 33.
45
Nicholson. All except Zaartus painting could be classified under Barrs label
Geometrical Abstract Art since they are composed of sharp, straight lines and
industrial-like curves. Perhaps Gmez Sicres five stages of abstract art are not as tidy
and methodical as Barrs diagram. Yet, the tendency to chart the flow of art history
remains a predominant feature shared by both curators, with abstraction and its many
permutations holding great importance.
Additionaly, both Barr and Gmez Sicre took great interest in what they
commonly referred to as popular, folk, nave, or primitive art. They saw this art as pure
in the sense that self-taught artists had avoided exposure to academic traditions. In the
1930s, Barr promoted primitive art as a central component of modern art, a counterpart to
Dada and Surrealism, and to abstract art movements like Cubism. With input from
curator Holger Cahill and Sidney Janis, a member of the MoMA Advisory Board, the
museum mounted several exhibitions that focused on what Barr called modern
primitives: highlights include Fantastic Art, Dada, and Surrealism, which incorporated
works by children and the mentally insane; the first solo show of stone sculptures by
William Edmundson in 1937; Masters of Popular Painting: Modern Primitives of Europe
and America in 1938; Contemporary Unknown American Painters, which featured the
work of Grandma Moses and Morris Hirschfield in 1939; and They Taught Themselves:
American Primitive Painters of the Twentieth Century in 1942.87 Under Barrs guidance
87Barr used the phrase modern primitives in the MoMAs first exhibition of its permanent collection,
Painting and Sculpture from the Museum Collection [MoMA Exh. #127, May 6-April 30, 1941]. The
phrase also appeared a year later in What is Modern Painting, 15. Works by Grandma Moses and Morris
Hirschfield were presented in Contemporary Unknown American Painters [MoMA Exh. #90a, October 18,
46
the museum actively collected work by nonacademic artists; by 1941, the first MoMA
exhibition dedicated to showing its own permanent collection included two galleries full
of folk art.
It was precisely during the period when Barr and Gmez Sicre were collaborating
on Cuban Painting of Today that Barrs passion for self-taught art led to great upset: he
was removed from the position of Director at the MoMA ostensibly because of his
exhibition in 1943 of Joe Milones shoe shine stand, which Barr treated as a vernacular
sculpture. Barrs spouse and fellow art historian Margaret Scolari Barr also cites as a
cause for his dismissal Barrs exhibit of nude puppet-like works by Morris Hirschfield,
the look of which deeply upset the museums President Stephen Clark.88 Scholars
specialized in the history of vernacular art point to 1943 as a turning point in the status of
the genre within the U.S., when collecting by MoMA all but stopped, and Barrs belief in
self-taught art as a component of modernism began fading from view.89
Despite these controversies, folk art continued to crop up in MoMA exhibitions.
Cuban Painting of Today notably included a portion on popular painting focusing on
the paintings by artists Matamoros, Acevedo, and Rafael Moreno. And while Barr may
have needed to play down his passion for such art, Gmez Sicre faced no such pressures.
He touted the importance of primitive art and the art of children in his 1946 article Mi
credo [My Creed] for El Nacional, stating his belief that arts common origin across
1939-November 18, 1939]. See Museum of Modern Art, Exhibition History List, available online:
http://www.moma.org/learn/resources/archives/archives_exhibition_history_list
88 Oral history interview with Margaret Scolari Barr concerning Alfred H. Barr, 1974 Feb. 22-May 13,
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
89 See Charles Russell, ed. Self-Taught Art: The Culture and Aesthetics of American Vernacular Art.
(Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2001), 9.
47
all races[its] common, universal beginning can be found more than ever in the art of
primitives and that of children.90
While in Washington, Gmez Sicre collected and exhibited primitive art for the
OAS, most notably work by Haitian artists such as Antonio Josph, Luce Tournier,
Lucien Price, and Georges Liautaud. In the 1960s, he heavily promoted the work of
Asilia Guilln from Nicaragua and the work of Jos Antonio Velazquez from Honduras
in OAS exhibitions and in his writing; he also created documentaries that focused on their
work.91
The historical conceptions of modernism shared by Barr and Gmez Sicre may
seem paradoxical in how modern and primitive art worked in tandem. But what
linked these two fields, in the minds of the curators, was that they were both defined in
opposition to academic painting. Gmez Sicre, like Barr and others of their generation,
conceived of modern art as historically related to European artists break from
academicism in the late nineteenth century.92 He viewed the academy in the 19th and 20th
90 Jos Gmez Sicre, Mi Credo, El Nacional (Caracas, Venezuela), 5 Mayo 1946, 9. My thanks to Claire
F. Fox for providing me with a copy of this article.
91 For Gmez Sicres writing on Haitian primitive arts, see folder 1, box 4, JGS Papers. Also see 20 th
Century Latin American Nave Art, in folder Latin American -General, box 1964, AMA Archives.
Films include Jos AntonioValezquez: The World of a Primitive Painter and Arte actual de Centro Amrica
y Panam panorama de la coleccin ESSO en la Feria Mundial de Nueva York y sus artistas.
92 This line of thinking is evident in the seminar paper Gmez Sicre wrote for art historian Meyer Schapiro,
whose class he audited in the spring of 1944. In this paper, Gmez Sicre begins by arguing that after the
first impressionist exhibition, there exists perhaps no other date more decisive and crucial for contemporary
art than those three years from 1904 to 1906 in France. These years, according to Gmez Sicre,
represented a period of artistic upheaval, defined by artists rebellion against Impressionism and plein-air
techniques. After succinctly reviewing the contributions of Van Gogh, Cezanne, Gauguin, Seurat, Lautrec,
Rousseaua generation he referred to as new heroes of the late nineteenth centuryhe focused on the
Fauves, including artists Andre Derain, Albert Marquet, Henri Matisse, Maurice de Vlaminck, and several
others who first trained under Gustav Moreau. He argued that the Fauves, like their heroic predecessors,
fought against the traditions of art through their participation in the 1905 Salon dAutomne (Salon of
48
century as increasingly retrograde. He later would write that academic art suffered from
immobility, [surviving] in the same way as waxwork figures, in a bloodless repose,
through representations which, though possibly perfect, were lifeless and sterile, without
allowing for any negligence, for any inconformity or for any agony of the spirit.93 He
expected that artists, to be truly avant-garde or modern, needed to rebel against
established techniques or the institutions that would not recognize their vision or talents.
They needed to be non-conformists. These were beliefs reinforced by experience: in
Cuba he had witnessed his friends struggle with the San Alejandro Academy of Art. In
1944, in the catalogue to accompany Cuban Painting of Today, he describes the artistic
contributions of the Cuban academy in harsh terms:
[San Alejandro] has produced innumerable painters of varying degrees of

proficiency but has yet to yield one inspired, creative artist. Contemporary Cuban
painters owe little or nothing to their fellow countrymen who preceded them:
progressive Cuban art was born as a direct result of the courageous struggles
waged against inflexible academic conceptions and influence. The stunted tuition
of San Alejandro reached only the fringe of Impressionism there, alas, to remain
forever. The technique and spirit of Czanne, Gauguin, and Van Gogh have been
sadly ignored even up to the present time.94
Both Gmez Sicre and Barr articulated a history of modern art based on the European
break from academicism. They situated the beginnings of modernism with the work of
Independents). Jos Gmez Sicre, La Pintura en Francia (de 1904 a 1906), 1, folder 29, box 2, JGS
Papers.
93 This statement comes from his 1983 essay on Alejandro Obregn, an artist who he says had no feeling
for wax figures, [and] began to eat away, to dismember that pictorial world, to perforate it like a termite.
Jos Gmez Sicre, Alejandro Obregn, Alejandro Obregn: Recent Paintings (Washington, DC:
Museum of Modern Art of Latin America, 1983), 16. In the 1950s, Barr also spoke of academic art as a
kind of waxworks. See Patricia Hills, Truth, Freedom, Perfection: Alfred Barrs What is Modern
Painting? as Cold War Rhetoric, in Pressing the Fight: Print, Propaganda, and the Cold War, ed. Greg
Barnhisel and Catherine Turner (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010), 274, n50.
94 Jos Gmez Sicre, Cuban Painting of Today, 15.
49
the post-impressionists in France. And they each considered Picasso a hinge-figure in the
history of modern painting, an artist who personified rebellion and non-conformity.95
Gmez Sicre applied his critiques of academicism and realism (two terms he
tended to conflate) not only to sculpture, painting, and primitive art, but to film as well.
Both men considered film a vital component of the visual arts, and modernism in
particular. Barr, who had written about film throughout the 1920s and 1930s, spoke of
cinema as the only great art form peculiar to the 20th century.96 With film critic Iris
Berry, he had established the MoMAs film department in 1929. The department was the
first of its kind, and Gmez Sicre spent significant amounts of time there while he lived
in New York (1944-1946). Throughout his career, Gmez Sicre also wrote extensively
about film, especially the cinema of the silent era, a period that he said remained the
95 By the 1940s, Barr had established himself as an expert on Picasso, particularly by mounting Picasso:
Forty Years of His Art in 1939-1940; the exhibition included Picassos Les Demoiselles de Avignon, a work
which Barr had helped the MoMA acquire several years before and which became the centerpiece in
subsequent installations of the museums permanent collection. Barr continued to write extensively on
Picasso. In 1946 he published Picasso: Fifty Years of His Art; he was awarded a doctoral degree for the
publication in lieu of writing his dissertation.
In the years of his closest contact with Barr, Gmez Sicre also gained an expertise on Picassos work. In
June of 1942, he and Alejo Carpentier co-organized an exhibition of Picasso works on paper at the Lyceum
& Lawn Tennis Club in Havana. While in New York, Gmez Sicre wrote a term paper for a graduate
course led by Meyer Schapiro; the paper focused on the rivalry between Matisse and Picasso around 1905
and draws the conclusion that while Matisse and the Fauves stagnated, becoming overly routine or
commercial, Picasso continued working in a state of puritybetween the art of yesterday and that of the
future. Later, in 1949, when Gmez Sicre traveled to Europe for the first time, he sought out Picasso
directly, carrying in hand a letter of introduction from Barr. See Jos Gmez Sicre, La Pintura en Francia
(de 1904 a 1906), 13, folder 29, box 2, JGS Papers. For mention of the Picasso exhibition at the Lyceum,
see Jos Veigas, Picassos First Arte por Excelencias. no. 7 The Archivist. Available online:
http://www.revistasexcelencias.com/Arte/English/a(277484)-Picasso-s-First.html [accessed 13 April 2012]
96 Alfred Barrs statement comes from the 1932 pamphlet The Public as Artist, in which he announced his
desire to build a film department at the MoMA. For analyses of Barrs interest in film and excerpts of the
pamphlet, see Thomas Y. Levin, Iconology at the Movies: Panofskys Film Theory, The Yale Journal of
Criticism 9.1 (1996), 27-55; available online:
http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic235132.files/LevinPanofsky.pdf [accessed 12 April 2012]
50
most pure that cinematography has bequeathed to universal culture.97 In the 1940s, he
spent many hours watching films and his writings indicate that many of his friendships,
including those with Spanish filmmaker Luis Buuel and Chilean writer Mara Luisa
Bombal, took shape around the film screenings at MoMA.98 Movie-going, autograph
hunting, and gossiping about film stars were activities that continued to solidify many of
his friendships with artists, writers, and actors throughout the rest of his career. For
Gmez Sicre, the boundaries between film, literature, drawing and painting were fluid
all part of an inter-connected world cultureand his arguments about modernism vs.
academicism could be transposed from one medium to another.
Why is Chaplin lost? asks Gmez Sicre at the beginning of a short, untitled
note he wrote circa 1940. He praises Chaplins comic agility and his heroic
obliviousness: Life brings punches to the blind, and he keeps on zigzagging,
determined to take on new, insignificant exploits. He also recalls his amusement upon
seeing the fake beards worn by hotel bellboys in Chaplins filmsThey are unusual
beards, truly artistic.before lamenting that contemporary cinema is afflicted by an
awful realism, a sinful naturalism. It lacks grace, charm, playful humor, and expectancy
of the unexpected. The public progressively demands verisimilitude, a balance of truths,
and cinema is weighed down by dense academicism. Now, after the history of little
Charlie Chaplin, we are only left with Disney.99 Chaplins silent comedies, Gmez Sicre
97 Jos Gmez Sicre, Luis Buuel, apasionado creador descreido, 3, folder 8, box 2, JGS Papers
98 Ibid. For more on his relationship with Mara Luisa Bombal, see Gmez Sicre, untitled document, folder
6, box 1, JGS Papers.
99 Gmez Sicre, untitled document beginning with Por qu Chaplin pierde?, folder 1, box 3, JGS
Papers. I extrapolate that the note was written circa 1940 because it appears on the back of paper with the
51
believed, represented a very serious act: a spurring on of human imagination and
creativity. In the context of 1940s Havanathe period when Gmez Sicre and his artists-
friends were frustrated with the San Alejandro Academy and when he likely wrote the
noteChaplin also represented a key anti-academic figure, a rogue modernist who set off
on his own to direct and star in his own films. Not only that, Chaplin possessed a
stubborn confidence; notorious for his unwillingness to compromise on his creative ideas,
he continued creating silent-era style films about his little tramp character long after the
advent of sound films.
Another reason Gmez Sicre was critical of realism and academic art had to do
with the global politics of the 1940s. Over the course of World War II, Gmez Sicre
increasingly tied realism and academic art to totalitarian regimes, specifically Nazism. In
1947, he published an article for the Venezuelan paper El Nacional about an exhibition at
the National Gallery of Art in Washington showcasing Dutch paintings that had been
confiscated by Nazi forces during the war. The article offered a means for the critic to
vent about Adolf Hitlers criteria for realist art. From Gmez Sicres point of view,
Hitlers censorship of modern art stemmed from his experiences as a frustrated artist:
Adolf Hitler was a poor academic painter, who received very little recognition for his
decadent style. All his artistic frustration progressively turned into a hatred for new forms
of art, which in time would trigger a persecuting fanaticism as soon as he was given
access to political power.100
Lotera Nacional letter head and likely comes from the period in the early 1940s when Gmez Sicre
worked for Cubas national lottery.
100 Jos Gmez Sicre, Un Botin de Hitler, El Nacional (16 February 1947), folder 5, box 4, JGS Papers.
52
His arguments parallel those made by Alfred Barr throughout the 1940s. As art
historian Patricia Hills has shown, Barrs What is Modern Painting? was partly an
evolving piece of wartime propaganda.101 Hills focuses on the concluding portion of
booklet, subtitled Truth, Freedom, Perfection, where Barr describes the role of the artist
as the embodiment of individual freedom. In the first edition, he aimed his critique at
ongoing Nazi censorship in Europe, noting that Hitler crushed freedom in art. Hills
points out that Barr updated later editions with sharp criticisms of Soviet tyranny, arguing
that modern art embraced a sense of freedom that remained the bane of authoritarian
regimes.
Finally, both Barr and Gmez Sicre became increasingly anti-communist in the
post-war period, and both defended modern art as an instrument of the free world. During
the McCarthy Era, as many conservative politicians in the U.S. accused modern artists of
communist-leanings, Barr became a prominent champion of modern art as a form of free
expression. In his 1952 article Is Modern Art Communistic?, he argued that many
Russian artists had long been persecuted and prevented from expressing themselves
under the Soviet Unions totalitarian regime. Gmez Sicre adopted a similar point of
view, never skipping an opportunity to criticize art under the Soviet Union and its
demands for artists to produce propagandistic art based in realism.
Within his art criticism Gmez Sicre added something else to the mix: an explicit
endorsement of free market capitalism. In his editorials for the Boletin de Artes Visuales
and in various other writings, he was vocal about the importance of private industry to
101 See Patricia Hills, Truth, Freedom, Perfection 251-276.

53
supporting the arts of Latin America. Gmez Sicres views were partly shaped by his
work at the OAS; given that fundraising was extremely difficult at the institution, Gmez
Sicre became reliant on corporate sponsorship for many of his exhibitionsespecially
from Esso (the Latin American branch of Standard Oil, now Exxon-Mobile).102 He
pointed to corporate funding behind the major art initiatives in Latin America in the
1960s as part of an international trend: the Bienal Americana de Arte in Cordoba,
Argentina supported by Kaiser Industries; the So Paulo Biennial founded by the
industrialist Francisco Matarizzo Sobrinho; the Instituto Di Tella in Buenos Aires funded
by Torcuato di Tella.103 As early as 1962, he described a new phase in the cultural
activity in Latin America, a phase in which private capital has instrumental importance
for culture, principally for the visual arts, for the freedom to create and admire them,
maintaining the most enduring areas of spirit of our people.104 He describes private
capital as opening the gateway to artistic freedom, a means to get out of a vicious circle:
the unyielding academy-scholarship-abroad-national-salon-prize-professored hierarchy
that has restrained the life of the Latin American visual artist for a long time.105 In other
editorials for the Boletn he complained bitterly about the importation taxes and
government regulation limiting the exportation and importation of art in Latin America,
102 The budget for the Visual Arts Division, and later the Museum of Modern Art of Latin America, was
always very tight and only covered basic operating costs. In building a collection, Gmez Sicre relied on
the generosity of artists to donate their works to the OAS. He also relied on the support of Washington art
philanthropists and art collectors, such as Barbara Gordon, who founded the Friends of the Museum, a non-
profit organization that helped Gmez Sicre raise money for museum events and acquisitions. Barbara
Gordon, interview with the author, 14 March 2008.
103 See Jos Gmez Sicre, Nota editorial, Boletn de Artes Visuales 9: 4.
104 Ibid.
105 Ibid., 1.
54
saying they constitute a death sentence and that for art to progress, enliven itself, and
obtain the oxygen it needs for maturation and for reproduction, it is absolutely
indispensible that it circulates, that it visits, and that it, at the same time, receives
visits.106
His strongest endorsements of corporate capitalism arose while organizing the
Esso Salon of Young Artists in 1964-1965. This international competition attracted over
3,000 applications from artists under the age of forty in Latin America; Esso Salon
competitions were held in each country, where national panels of judges (that always
included Gmez Sicre) awarded prizes and honorable mentions in two categories
painting and sculpture. The four or so finalists from each country were then sent to
Washington, where grand prizes were awarded by a three-person jury composed of
Thomas Messer, Director of the Guggenheim, Gustave von Groschwitz, Director of the
Carnegie Institutes Museum of Art, and Alfred Barr. 107 In the exhibition catalogue for
the final round of the Esso Salon, Gmez Sicre explains the impetus behind the
competition, stating, Of singular importance was the fact that it was private industry
the capitalistic initiative of a free worldthat was thus seeking to foster the things of the
spirit by an undertaking of broad cultural repercussion. The financial support provided by
the Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) is eloquent testimony of an understanding of the
balance which should prevail between the practical and the aesthetic which too often
106 Jos Gmez Sicre, Nota editorial, Boletn de Artes Visuales 4 (October 1958-April 1959): 3.
107 The final exhibition traveled for 5 years across the U.S, and included exhibitions at the IBM Gallery in
New York and at the San Antonio Hemisfair 68, before going to the Lowe Art Museum, where they are
part of the permanent collection. A list naming each panel of judges is available on inside back cover of the
catalogue, Esso Salon of Contemporary Latin American Artists; A New, Permanent Collection (Coral
Gables, Florida: Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, 1970).
55
escapes the upper echelons of economic power.108 He believed the competition would be
an art historical watershed; in the Mexican brochure for the competition he proclaims,
When the history of contemporary art in Latin America is written, the historians will
have to distinguish two periods: pre-Esso and post-Esso.109 Ironically, while Gmez
Sicres statements about a Pre-Esso and Post-Esso do not adequately apply to the
history of Latin American art, they could be applied to Gmez Sicres own career. In the
Pre-Esso phase, Gmez Sicres power as cultural broker grew substantially.110 Shortly
after the Esso Salon, his cultural cache immediately plummeted, primarily since the
competition brought a spotlight onto Gmez Sicres right-leaning politics. The winners
of the Esso Salon were fairly conservative picks for 1965: Rogelio Polesello and Herman
Guggiari represented two modes of abstraction (Figures 10 & 11). That same year, the
OAS faced international protest for forming a military troop to keep peace in the U.S.
occupation of Santo Domingo. Gmez Sicres competition was compromised by its links
to U.S. Imperialism. And his position on corporate patronage, his connection to Alfred
Barr, and the political nature of the organization for which he worked signaled that he
was the member of the establishment.
108 Jos Gmez Sicre, Introduction, Esso Salon of Young Artists (Washington, DC: Pan American Union,
1965), 3.
109 Jos Gmez Sicre, El Saln Esso, Esso Mexicana, 1965, cited in Alejandro Anreus, Jos Gmez
Sicre: Cold War and Internationalism at the O.A.S., an unpublished paper in the possession of the author.
110The notion of Latin American curators as cultural brokers was first theorized by Mari Carmen
Ramrez in her essay, Brokering Identities: Art Curators and the Politics of Cultural Representation, in
Thinking About Exhibitions, ed. Reesa Greenberg, Bruce Ferguson, and Sandy Nairne. (London and New
York: Routledge, 1996), 21-38.
56
AN ALLY, THEN ADVERSARY: MARTA TRABA
Gmez Sicre and Alfred Barrs relationship was defined by professional distance:
Barr served as a positive role model for the Cuban critic and as a figure to emulate, but
the two men were never close friends. Compared to his dealings with Barr, Gmez
Sicres relationship with novelist and art critic Marta Traba was much more personal and
complicated. The two formed a friendship in the 1960s, at a time when they were two of
the most prominent art critics in Latin America. They were the rare individuals who
traveled throughout Latin America when commercial travel was still in its infancy; they
were outspoken figures who used every medium available to them to broadcast the
message that contemporary art in Latin America was strong and of great importancea
message that caught the ears of artists, academics, businesses, newspaper journalists and
radio broadcasters wherever they traveled. They were each known for being polemical,
delivering arguments in speeches, interviews, and writings with intensity and wit. Despite
their common goal to get Latin American art international recognition, the political and
cultural climate of the Cold War radically transformed each of them and ended their
friendship.
Traba and Gmez Sicre came from different backgrounds, which point to the
roots of their different approaches to art. Compared to Gmez Sicrewho began as a
self-taught scholar of art, with a talent for reading formal qualities, for pinpointing the
strengths of a painting, for curating and for selling artTrabas training was more
traditionally academic. Born and raised in Buenos Aires, Traba earned a degree in
literature at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, where she also took courses on art history
57
and criticism taught by Jorge Romero Brest. In 1949, she began publishing her first art
criticism in Romero Brests magazine Ver y Estimar. That same year she moved to Paris,
where she continued studying art history at the Sorbonne. Soon after arriving in Paris she
met the Colombian journalist Alberto Zalamea, whom she married in 1950. They lived
together in Paris for the next four years, before relocating to Bogota, Colombia in 1954.
Working as an art history professor at the Universidad de los Andes and a freelance
writer, she quickly rose to national prominence for hosting numerous television specials
on the history of art and for producing the arts magazine Prisma. In 1963, Traba became
the Director of the Museo de Arte Moderna de Bogota (MAMBO). Still, she remained an
educator all her life, someone who associated with university students and faculty. By the
1970s, Traba had become one of the most highly visible cultural theorists in Latin
American arta position solidified when she published Dos dcadas vulnerables en las
artes plsticas latinoamericanos, 1950-1970 [Two Vulnerable Decades in Latin
American Art, 1950-1970] in 1973the text that articulates the aesthetic beliefs for
which she remains best-known.
It is uncertain exactly when or under what circumstances Gmez Sicre and Traba
first met. There is a slight chance they were introduced to one another in Paris in 1950,
during Gmez Sicres first trip to Europe; however, it is more likely that they met in
Colombia, when he visited in 1955 on official OAS business.111 In November 1958,
Traba published an interview with Gmez Sicre in El Tiempo newspaperthe earliest
111 Florencia Bazzano-Nelson, Theory in Context, 453.

58
known evidence of their professional connections.112 Their collaborations continued over
the next few years. In 1959, Traba wrote a brief history of Colombian art, published by
the OAS in its Art in Latin America Today series. They also collaborated together as
judges for various art competitions, including the 1962 Bienal de Arte Americana in
Cordoba, Argentina and the Primer Salon Intercol de Artistas Jovenes organized by
MAMBO in 1964; that same year, Traba served as judge for the Esso Salon in Colombia.
Traba and Gmez Sicre were drawn together because of their shared vision for
Latin American art, but they eventually parted ways because of their radically different
opinions about the Cuban Revolution. Initially, both were in strong favor of Fidel Castro
and his revolution; artist Fernando de Szyzlo recalls Gmez Sicres excitement in 1959:
While I was there in Washingtoneveryone celebrated and was in strong support

of [the Cuban Revolution], especially Pepe. Pepe brought out champagne he
had saved for ten years to celebrate the fall of Batista. And, when Batista fell in
December of 59, hundreds of people came to Pepes house to celebrate.
because Pepe was very politically active, in support of Fidel and the war in the
Sierra Maestra.113
But this changed by December 1961, when Castro announced that Cuba would become a
Communist state. According to de Szyzlo, before the revolution,
all of the people on the left were at peace with Gmez Sicre. He was a very
political person and very leftist. But Fidels decision was so strong that it became
grave, so fatal for Pepe, because afterwards he became anti-Fidel with such
force that he did damage to himself: he closed the door, he became intolerant.
That is to say, those who had something to do with Cuba were bad and those who
attacked the regime were good. I dont know how I survived our friendship....114
112 Marta Traba, Crtica de arte. Jos Gmez Sicre habla sobre el arte americano, El Tiempo [Bogota] 2
November 1958: 11. Available online http://www.eltiempo.com/seccion_archivo/index.php
113 Fernando de Szyzlo, interview with the author, 26 April 2009
114 Ibid.
59
While Gmez Sicre drifted right, Traba became associated with the New Left.115
She sympathized with the aims of the Revolution and the student movements of the
1960s; through her book Dos dcadas vulnerables she became famous for theorizing the
role of resistance in the aesthetics of Latin American arta philosophy that resonates
with her support of student-led protests in the late 1960s and 1970s.116 Though there is
little record of their political falling out, tensions between Traba and Gmez Sicre likely
began in 1966 when she went to Havana to receive the Casa de las Americas prize for her
novel Las ceremonias del verano (1966); Szyszlo notes that Gmez Sicre shunned him
for at least a year when the artist decided to visit Cuba for similar reasons.117 And yet, the
two maintained some professional relations. In the late 1970s, Traba received a
fellowship to write a history of Latin American art using the OAS collectiona decision
that the institution could not have made without Gmez Sicres tacit approval. Her
115 The New Left refers to an ideological position that emerged in Latin America, Europe, and the U.S.
in the 1960s tied to student activism and grass-roots political organizing, and often regarded as culminating
in international student protests of 1968. Those who identified with the New Left tended to distinguish
themselves from traditional Marxists focus on class struggle and labor issuesas well as distancing
themselves from Soviet authoritarianismto address issues of civil rights and free speech and to protest
wars brought by Cold War conflict, particularly the Korean War and the Vietnam War. The term New
Left was first popularized by C. Wright Mills in his essay Letter to the New Left (1960), and
increasingly became associated with the writings of sociologist and activist Herbert Marcusenicknamed
The Father of the New Left. In Latin America in the 1960s, members of the New Left took a
confrontational position against imperialism and military dictatorships, protesting state-sanctioned torture
and human rights abuses. Most members of the New Left identified with the Revolutionary aims of Fidel
Castro and Che Guevara until the 1970 Padilla Affair, which marked a turning point when the Cuban
government imprisoned and censured intellectuals and writers. In the last decade, journalists have revived
the term to describe populist- and socialist-inspired leaders in Latin America like Hugo Chavez of
Venezuela, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Cristina Fernandez Kirchner of Argentina. For a historical analysis of
the New Left in Latin America, see Van Gosse, Where the Boys Are: Cuba, Cold War America and the
Making of a New Left (New York: Verso, 1993).
116 Juan Gustavo Cobo Borda notes that she gave shelter to students wounded in violent skirmishes of the
1960s and 1970s. See. Belasario Bentancurs Foreward, in Marta Traba, Art of Latin America, 1900-1980
(Washington, D.C: Inter-American Development Bank; Distributed by John Hopkins University Press,
1994), viii.
117 Fernando de Szyzlo, interview with the author, 26 April 2009
60
decision had practical considerations: it provided a means to live with her second
husband, the writer Angel Rama who had received a teaching position at University of
Maryland. In 1981, Gmez Sicre supported a campaign that denied Rama tenure and the
visa required to stay in the U.S. on account of his purported communist leanings.
Afterward, Traba and Gmez Sicres relationship turned fiercely antagonistic.
At the center of Gmez Sicre and Trabas relationship was a paradox: while their
interpretation of Latin American art took on different political valences, their aesthetic
tastes remained largely in sync. In the early 1960s, they championed many of the same
artists in their writing and their exhibitions: Jos Luis Cuevas, Fernando de Szyszlo,
Armando Morales, as well as the Colombian artists Fernando Botero, Alejandro Obregn,
Edgar Negret, and Eduardo Ramrez Villamizar. It is important to note from the outset
that neither Traba nor Gmez Sicre felt comfortable with the avant-garde art trends that
came to define the 1960s and 1970s, particularly pop art, minimalism, conceptual art,
happenings and performance. They were advocates of what has become known as high
modernism, with a particular passion for drawing, painting, and sculpture.118
Both believed that drawing was of particular importance in Latin America.
Gmez Sicre regularly commented on the importance of the technique for artistic
expression. Drawing has always fascinated me. I consider it the most serious of all
exercises. The artist who cannot draw, cannot make anything; it is the beginning and end
118 For a discussion of high modernism and its political implications, see James C. Scott, Seeing Like a
State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1999), 87-102.
61
of all the plastic arts, he told an interviewer in 1976.119 He was speaking about his
interest in Jos Luis Cuevass work in particular. In that same interview he shares a story
where after Cuevas is asked, When are you going to paint? the artist replies, First I
paint as a way of sketching for my drawings. I make my sketches with paint, but as easy
as it is, I then transfer it to drawing, which is a method equally as difficult.120 Gmez
Sicre appreciated Cuevas dedication to the medium of drawing, his resistance to treating
it as a minor art or a preparatory stage. Even before he met Cuevas in 1953, Gmez Sicre
expressed his predilection for the medium of drawing. His book Spanish Drawing XV to
XIX Century (1949) deserves mention; the book was published in the early years of his
career at the OASa time when Gmez Sicre wrote articles on the history of European
art and travel guides about U.S. art institutions, all intended for Latin American
audiences. In this book he speaks of drawing as an intellectual art formone that
underlines the structure for paintingand that he delighted in those instances when
artists subverted that expectation.121 Overall, he considered it a medium defined by its
directness, its ability to express the immediate thoughts and feelings of the artist. Curator
and scholar Mari Carmen Ramrez points out that drawing has long been conceptualized
in this way, referring on one hand to the most authentic imprint of the artists self and,
119 Mirta Blanco-Padrn, Jos Gmez Sicre, Vanidades Continental, vol. 16, no. 7 (March 30, 1976), 32.
120 Ibid.
121 Specifically, he calls drawings profound intellectual executions and relates this intellectualism to the
Spanish temperament. Jos Gmez Sicre, Spanish Drawing XV to XIX Century (Washington, DC: Pan
American Union, 1949).
62
on the other, to the unmediated projection of his/her intellect.122 These aspects she calls
the autographic, and the diagrammatic, and she notes that what distinguishes Latin
American drawing from its North American and European counterparts is the added
axiomatic element artists and critics in South America placed on the medium in the
post-war period.123 Drawing came to represent not only an exploration of form, but a
signifying practice of the Boom generation, in some cases an act of defiance, but also
an artists act of communion with the people, place, and times in which she or he lived.
Ramrezs interpretation of the South American drawing follows a line of thought
first popularized by Marta Traba, who theorized drawing to a much greater degree than
Gmez Sicre ever would. 124 For Traba, drawing had socio-political implications in Latin
America: to pursue it was to reject the market and international trends coming out of the
U.S. and Europe. In Dos dcadas vulnerables she states her case:
Drawing represents an explicit rejection to producing painting, sculpture, objects,

happenings, environments, proposals, reconstructions, to giving clues, and to
accepting juggling acts. This means, then, a rejection of impact as a system, of
spectacle as a result, and of the subsequent gratification on the part of the
vanguardist society that hires the circus.
Drawing has been positioning itself as testimonial, and from such a position it
becomes aggressive and nonconformist. By drawing, the new artists seem to have
stopped cheating and playing with legitimate conventions. Nevertheless, it does
not seem correct to speak of draftsmen or printmakers, but of new artists who
draw and make prints, or of recognized artists who take up drawing and
printmaking again, because the great number of people who have done so because
122 Mari Carmen Ramrez, Un-Drawing Boundaries: A Curatorial Proposal, in Mari Carmen Ramrez
and Edith A. Gibson, Re-Aligning Vision: Alternative Currents in South American Drawing (Austin:
Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery, University of Texas at Austin, 1997), 20.
123 Ibid., 22.
124 Gibson notes that no single individual was more instrumental in recognizing, conceptualizing, and
defining the Boom in South American drawing than Colombia-based critic Marta Traba. Edith Gibson,
Re-Aligning Vision: Alternative Currents in South American Drawing in Re-Aligning Vision, 47.
63
they feel comfortable in black and white, in the velocity of direct annotation of
the image, in the capacity to connote it sharply on the margin; they feel good in
the contempt that drawing implies for the ostentatious exploration of new
materials; it feels good by returning to human sizes after the apocalyptic sizes of
North American op-artists, signalists, and minimalists.125
Traba describes a renaissance in drawing in Latin America, identifying it as one of three
currents causing a state of alarm in the plastic arts (the other two currents are the value
of eroticism and the nationalization of Pop art).126 She describes drawing as a deliberate
and collective act, preempting any accusations that drawing be seen as a solitary process
or simply a trend in Latin America caused by economic limitations. For Traba, drawing is
a medium for rebellion and critique, for conscientious rejection of the status quo, an act
of regional resistance.
Traba saw Jos Luis Cuevas as a key artist in this regard, touting his drawings as
the embodiment of her ideals. In her 1965 study, Los Cuatro Monstruos Cardinales, she
identified Cuevas as one of the leading international artists concerned with neo-
figuration, placing him in the ranks of Jean Dubuffet, William de Kooning, and Francis
Bacon. Gmez Sicre too hinted at drawings capacity for rebellion and critique,
especially in his writings about Cuevas, who he saw as the modern-day torchbearer of a
Spanish tradition established by Francisco de Goya. He wrote that Cuevas early portraits
of asylum patients reached the limits of hallucination that can be compared only to
125 Marta Traba, A la busqueda del signo perdido in Dos dcadas vulnerable en las artes plsticas
lationamericanas, 1950-1970 (Mexico City: Siglo Vientiuno Editores, 1973). Excerpts reprinted and
translated by Albert G. Bork in Re-Aligning Vision, 225-226.
126 Ibid., 225.
64
that exhibited by Goyas black period.127 For the Cuban critic, Cuevas shared with the
Spanish master a tendency to use macabre and grotesque images of monsters, the
mentally insane, and the marginalized as metaphors for the horrors of everyday life.
For both Gmez Sicre and Traba, the anxious subject matter of Cuevass work placed
him in dialogue with neo-figurative artists in Europe, Latin America, and the United
States. They each read his work as an expression of existential angst felt globally in the
postwar period.128
Both Gmez Sicre and Trabas interest in Cuevass art also stemmed from the
fact that they saw him working in resistance to Mexican Muralism. Early in his career,
Cuevas published The Cactus Curtain,an article which criticized the conventions put
in place by the Mexican School. This article, as well as his statements in subsequent
interviews and newspaper columns helped make him a spokesman for his generation.129
Scholar Claire F. Fox has pointed out that Gmez Sicre and Traba supported artists like
Cuevas whose aesthetic represented a golden mean between what they characterized as
the antiseptic, mannerist abstraction favored in the United States, and the dogmatic social
realism associated with the Soviet Union.130 In Cuevass case, the macabre nature of his
drawings seemed rooted to a particular Mexican identity associated with melancholia and
127 Jos Gmez Sicre, A Backward Glance at Cuevas (Washington: Museum of Modern Art of Latin
American, 1978), n.p.
128 Seldon Rodman also framed Cuevas in a similar way in his book The Insiders: The Rejection and
Rediscovery of Man in the Art of Our Time (Baton Rouge, LA: Lousiana State University Press, 1960). I
discuss Cuevas, the notion of Insiders, and the perceived ties between existential writing and neo-
figurative visual art in my M.A. thesis. See Michael Wellen, Renewed Legacy: Revising Jos Clemente
Orozcos Place in Mexican Art History and His Relevance for Jos Luis Cuevas (University of Texas at
Austin, 2005).
129 I examine the Cactus Curtain and Cuevas perspective on the Mexican Muralists in depth in my M.A.
thesis. See previous note.
130 Claire F. Fox, Hemispheric Routes of El Nuevo Arte Nuestro, 230.
65
popularized by the writings of Octavio Pazs The Labyrinth of Solitude (1950). Fox
argues that not only was Cuevass aesthetic important, but also that he acted as as public
figure in his country, independently speaking out against the influences of Mexican
Muralism.
Likewise, both critics were aligned in a fight against Indigenism, an artistic and
literary movement that emerged in the Andean region in the 1920s, which they viewed as
a parallel to Mexican Muralism and as politically dogmatic. In Dos dcadas vulnerables,
Traba describes Indigenism as a style of art that emerged primarily in closed nations,
those places curtained off from European immigrations and its cultural influences. Art
historian Michele Greet indicates that the dichotomies that Traba drew between open
and closed nations, between international and nationalistic art trends, remained
largely unquestioned until recently, and as a result, Indigenism has been subsequently left
out of the history of modernism.131 Gmez Sicre never spoke of open and closed
societies, but he subscribed to a similar belief system concerning the national and
international: he viewed social realism and modern art as opposing forces, interwoven
with the distinctions between nationalism and internationalism. Social Realism interests
me as a historic phenomenon, Gmez Sicre told a Caracas newspaper in 1964, but
presently it does not interest anyone in Latin America. Rather what is very important to
many of our young artists is what is happening now in the United States with abstract-
131 See Michele Greet, Beyond National Identity: Pictorial Indigenism as a Modernist Strategy in Andean
Art, 1920-1960 (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2009).
66
expressionism. Inclusively, its influence in Europe is decisive.132 These statements
represent one of Gmez Sicres many attempts to redirect attention away from the
influence of social realism in Latin Americaan influence that he saw originating with
the Mexican Muralists and carried on through Indignenism. He explains in the same
interview that many erroneous concepts exist in the United States about Latin American
visual art. [Most notably], the belief that painting from Latin America is Mexico and
nothing else. It is evidently an error of information and, in all fairness, should be
mended. According to Gmez Sicre, Traba was even more adamant about the follies of
Mexican Muralism:
We were allied from the beginning, in opposition to reactionary and stale

Indigenism, in opposition to the dogmas of Mexican Muralismalthough in this
case, Marta was more extremist than me, since she detested the work of Orozco,
Rivera, and Siqueiros, and more than anything the work of their followers in
South America, like [Oswaldo] Guayasamn. Together we defended abstraction,
informalist and geometric alike, and we were united by a passion for drawing.133
In 1960, Traba famously launched a debate about the work of Ecuadorian painter
Oswaldo Guayasamn, attacking his art as entirely derivative of Mexican Muralisma
debate that Greet states sealed the fate of Indigenism in the 1960s.134 Greet argues that
Indigenism was not as unified nor as narrow an art movement as Traba and Gmez Sicre
cast it. She points to the case of Fernando de Szyszlo, an artist who Gmez Sicre and
Traba favored over Guayasamn as representative of modernism in Andean regions, and
132 Jovenes Artistas de Nuestro Hemisfero Expondrn en la Unin Panamericana, El Nacional. Caracas,
Venezuela 15 July 1964. folder Latin American -General, box 1964-1965, AMA Archives.
133 Anreus, Ultimas entrevistas con Jos Gmez Sicre, reprinted in Appendix C.
134Greet, Beyond National Identity, 193. Traba published a string of articles after visiting Ecuador in 1960,
where Guayasamns work was already well-established. Her attacks appeared in El Diario de Ecuador
and in her book La pintura nueva en Latinoamerica [New Painting in Latin America] (1961). See Greet,
Beyond National Identity, 193-196.
67
she argues that the work of Szyszlo and Guayasamn shared more common ground than
either Traba or Gmez Sicre acknowledged. In the 1950s, both artists created Pre-
Colombian inspired works that employed rich colors and highly abstracted forms, and
both added marble dust to their paints to create highly textured surfaces.135
Two works from the OAS permanent collection highlight the stark differences
that Gmez Sicre and Traba viewed between the artists work.136 Szyszlos painting
Cajamarca (1959), which the museum acquired in 1960, takes its title from the town
where Spanish Conquistador Francisco Pizarro captured, tortured, and killed the Incan
Emperor Atahualpa in 1534 (Figure 12). If this abstract painting references this historical
event, it does so obliquely, relying on the violence of painterly gestures and the creation
of a solemn mood. The canvas is bathed in a deep purples, blues and ocher that seem to
form swirls and mist. Over this muted ground appear bright red and orange slender
shapes, which seem to cut or burst across the surface of the work. Guayasamns drawing
Madre y nio [Mother and Child] (1955), a work that Gmez Sicre donated to the OAS in
1955, is an image of total contrast, exhibiting differences in subject-matter and style, as
well as medium and scale (Figure 13). Gmez Sicre probably appreciated the stark
composition of Madre y nio, where the human figure is attenuated in a manner not
unlike the pen-and-ink drawings by Jos Luis Cuevas. But the social message of
Guayasamns drawing is explicit: it presents a family facing starvation. A mother, with
135Ibid., 191.
136Beginning in 1957, Gmez Sicre had a policy to acquire one work from every exhibition for the OAS
permanent collection. This one may have been an unwanted gift given to the critic after the Pan American
Union held a solo exhibition of Guayasamns worka show that Michel Greet indicates that Gmez Sicre
may have organized because of diplomatic pressures. Greet, Beyond National Identity, 189.
68
an outreached hand, and her child turn their half-moon shaped head towards the sky in a
gesture of grief. The child is emaciated. His/her ribs are clearly visible. The mother
suffers from the need to nurse her baby. Her breasts are small, overwhelmed by the
broadness of her shoulders and arms, suggesting she cannot easily feed her young.
Guayasamns drawing exhibits the strong influence of Picassos Guernica (1937), which
includes a depiction of a mother mourning the loss of her baby (not pictured). As Picasso
does in Guernica, Guayasamn depicts the hands with thick, coarse fingers, using
simplified lines to indicate fingernails and joints. Both compositions show the mothers
faces upturned to express their agony. Both works rely entirely on a black and white
palette. Picassos Guernica draws from contemporary political events, as does many of
Guayasamns own works. Madre y nio come from a long period of work the artist
called the Age of Rage (1953-1993), in which his paintings and drawings drew
inspiration from tragedies of the twentieth-century. Whereas Madre y nio is a
generalized image of suffering brought by poverty, other works in the series refer to more
specific political events like U.S. bombing of Hiroshima and the Vietnam War. In
contrast to Guayasamn, Szyszlo never directly addressed contemporary issues of race
and politics in his work.137 This was part of the reason Traba and Gmez Sicre preferred
him. In their view, the artist tapped into his homeland and its Pre-Columbian heritage in a
137 Michele Greet has shown that most indigenist art and literary movements shared a particular political
stance critiquing North American and European imperialism. Working in Washington, DC likely meant
that Gmez Sicre would not feel comfortable showing Latin American art that could be read as anti-
American.
69
poetic way thereby representing a distinctly Latin American contribution to modern
art.138
Both critics were also wary of Pop art. In the Boletn de Artes Visuales, Gmez
Sicre writes about it as a regional art movement without any relevance to Latin America:
Pop is a movement that originatesand this is one of its tenetsin the

rejection or critique of industrial civilization, where man lives overwhelmed by
the constant onslaught of advertising. Within the United States, where [Pop art]
was born, its making is, in fact, unique to a region, almost a single city: New
York.However, an artist in the rural region of our America, separated from the
living conditions that gave rise to this artistic expression, is conducting a
mannerism, is simply copying something whose meaning cannot be understood
because it is not a part his/her own life, but a movement conditioned by another
cultural situation from another geographic region, distant and unlike their own.
For someone from our provinces to start doing Pop is like the Indians of Matto
Grossodeciding to hunt alligators while dressed in a tailcoat, having seen this
piece of clothing in an illustrated magazine.139
These statements by Gmez Sicre were fundamental for Traba, who cites his editorial at
length in the conclusion of Dos dcadas vulernables and calls them prophetic.140 He
criticized Pop art for being a regional art movement, misunderstood as an international
138 For more on Traba and Gmez Sicres statements comparing de Szyszlo and Guayasamn, see Greet,
Beyond National Identity, 189-196.
139 Jos Gmez Sicre Al Lector, Boletn de Artes Visuales 13 (January-December 1965): 2-3. Available
online: http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000497067 [Accessed 14 October 2012]. Gmez Sicres
statements are intriguing because they seemingly contradict the ways Gmez Sicre has been historically
cast as a cultural imperialist, who championed U.S. art movements like Abstract Expressionism as models
for Latin Americans. Rarely did Gmez Sicre make comments that could be read as a critique of U.S.
culture or U.S. art trends, but in this same editorial he mentions the hegemony of neon lights, a hint of
Gmez Sicres dislike for the abundant commercialism he found living in the United Statesa topic he
only commented on more forcefully towards the end of his life. See Appendix C.
140 Marta Traba, Dos dcadas vulnerables en las artes plsticas latinoamericanas, 1950-1970 (Buenos
Aires: Siglo Vienteuno Editores, 2005), 214. All subsequent citations refer to this edition.
70
one. His discomfort also had to do with his belief that Pop artists valued the conceptual
over the craftsmanship of the art objectan opinion that Traba also shared.141
While Traba saw many valid points in Gmez Sicres perspective, she became
more accepting of Pop art towards the end of the 1960s as she witnessed an emergence of
artists in Colombia, such as Santiago Crdenas, Sonia Gutierrez, Ana Mercedes Hoyos,
and Clemencia Lucena, who approached Pop art (she says) with a blend of humor and
formal discretion that saved them from the pitfall of mimeticism.142 She writes of the
nationalization of Pop art with enthusiasm, as a feature of Latin Americas challenging
contribution to the history of art. Pop is not a working system, but a repertoire of signs
of New York, hence the only possibility for transference is to ridicule those signs or
employ them in an attack. 143 To support her argument she cites the work of Brazilian
artist Givlan Samico, saying that he uses graphic designs from commercial posters and
lettering to create images that comment on Brazilian life. She also discusses the work of
Ana Letizia Quadros, who adapts a Pop-inspired style to address the issues of a consumer
society in Brazil.144
Dos dcadas vulnerables is the text where Traba posited some of her most
influential aesthetic ideasmany of which I have cited, including her notions of open
and closed regions of Latin America, the importance of regional resistance to foreign
influence, the socio-political meanings she ascribed to drawing and to Pop art in Latin
141 Gomez Sicre speaks of Pop artists lack of craftsmanship in an interview, Jovenes Artistas de Nuestro
Hemisfero Expondrn en la Unin Panamericana, El Nacional. Caracas, Venezuela 15 July 1964. See
folder Latin American General, box 1964-1965,AMA Archives.
142 Traba, Dos dcadas vulnerables, 216.
143 Ibid., 219.
144 Ibid.
71
America. Ultimately, the book was a means for Traba to define and defend the
originality of Latin American art of the 1950s and 1960s. She took to heart the critiques
proposed by various artists and theorists in the 1960s about the so-called death of
painting and struggled with the idea that painting had been entirely exhausted, and could
no longer be used to produce meaningful art.145 Like Gmez Sicre and Alfred Barr, Traba
spoke of modern art in terms of languagea set of signs used to communicate messages
universally. In Dos dcadas vulnerables she argues that Latin American artists are in
search of a lost sign, reclaiming painting, drawing, and sculpture as viable art forms in
Latin Americaand in doing so, she reinforced those tastes she shared with Gmez
Sicre.
Traba and Gmez Sicre promoted many of the same artists, yet their historical
legacies are radically different. Why? The most obvious answer concerns their radically
different political positions. But we should also acknowledge the differences created by
their discursive roles: Traba was primarily a writer and her legacy hinges on the left-
leaning cultural theory she produced in the 1970s; Gmez Sicre was a curator, not a
theorist, and his strongest achievements took place in the gallery, in shaping the OAS art
collection, and in building an extensive archive of Latin American art. In the 1980s and
1990s, scholars of Latin American culture and art continued to find relevancy in Trabas
145 Debates about the death of painting or the end of art arose in the U.S. and Europe in response to
artist growing preferences for minimalism and monochromatic painting, pop art, conceptual art, land art,
and performance. Its roots are found in essays like Clement Greenbergs The Crisis of the Easel Picture
(1948) included in Clement Greenberg, Art and Culture: Critical Essays (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961;
reprinted 1989), 154-157. For a history of this debate see, Yves-Alain Bois, Painting: The Task of
Mourning in Painting as Model (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), 229-244, originally published in
Endgame: Reference and Simulation in Recent Painting and Sculpture (Boston: Institute of Contemporary
Art and MIT Press, 1986). Also see Arthur C. Danto, After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale
of History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).
72
writing, particularly her critiques of U.S. cultural imperialism, the dangers of copycatting,
and her arguments that Latin American artists had the power to culturally resist these
influences, and in turn be models of originality for the rest of the world. But these were
arguments that, time has shown, need not be dependent on Trabas aesthetic tastes to be
compelling. In fact, scholars of Marta Trabas art criticism have pointed to the
disjunction between Trabas theoretical writing and the art she believed best represented
her ideas. Mari Carmen Ramrez notes that the coterie of artists Traba insisted were
emblematic of artistic resistance no longer represent those ideals today, stating that the
group (including Fernando Botero, Fernando de Szyszlo, Alejandro Obregn, Eduardo
Ramrez Villamizar and Jos Luis Cuevas) that was once so controversial [are] totally
inoffensive today.146 The power of Dos dcadas vulnerables rests in Trabas intellectual
agility and graceful rhetoric about the social role of art. Traba did all in her power to
remain at the forefront of intellectual conversations taking place worldwide, and adapted
her argumentsnot her aesthetic tastesto fit with the times. Gmez Sicre, by contrast,
dropped out of those conversations in the 1970s; he remained committed to showing and
selling the art he liked, even if his aesthetic tastes no longer fit with the times. As a result
he and the OAS art gallery increasingly became alienated from the figures shaping the art
world.
146Mari Carmen Ramrez, Sobre la pertinencia actual de una crtica comprometida, in Traba, Dos
dcadas vulnerables, 37.
73
A DISTANT RIVAL: JORGE ROMERO BREST
Comparing Gmez Sicre to Jorge Romero Brest reveals just how conservative the
Cuban critics tastes seemed in the 1960s and 1970s. Romero Brest was Argentinas most
prominent art critic in the post-war period. He taught art history classes at the
Universidad de Buenos Aires and founded Ver y Estimar magazine (1948-1955) where he
published extensively on art and theory. In assembling that publication, he mentored a
young generation of art critics, the most notable of which were Marta Traba and Damin
Bayn. From 1955 to 1963 he served as Director of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes,
he then headed up the Centro de Artes Visuales del Instituto Torcuarto de Tella (ITDT)
an institution he made into Buenos Aires most recognized site for experimental art and
performance.
Romero Brest and Gmez Sicre had very little contact with one another. There
seems to have been a profound antipathy between them, writes Andrea Giunta, who in
her study of Argentinean art of the 1960s points out that they could not reconcile their
aesthetic differences.147 Theirs was not only a disagreement in aesthetic tastes, but a
power struggle over whose aesthetic tastes would hold more sway as they competed for a
similar position within the cultural field: to be leaders that shaped perceptions of Latin
American (specifically Argentinean) art inside and outside of the region.
147AndreaGiunta, Avant-Garde, Internationalism, and Politics: Argentine Art in the Sixties, trans. Peter
Kahn (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 354, 84n.
74
Before further addressing their differences, it is worth noting the very few
qualities they shared. They were both confrontational figures; each earned a law degree
before dedicating themselves entirely to careers in the arts, and perhaps because of this,
they each approached the task of the art critic with a particular knack for oral and written
argument. Both were modernists, seeking recognition and progress for the visual arts in
Latin America; throughout their careers, they led institutions and art competitions in the
hopes of sustaining what each saw as avant-garde art in Latin America.
Both were also critics who, early in their careers, staked great value on abstract
art. However, their approaches to abstraction reveal some of the underlying differences in
their idea of modern art. I have already indicated that Gmez Sicres sense of
modernism was largely shaped through his experiences in New York and his
apprenticeship with Alfred Barr; they each saw abstract art as a branch in the historical
evolution of art, defending it as a universal languagea language as relevant and
intelligible in Latin America as in Europe and the United States. I have tried to show that,
to Gmez Sicre, abstract art, neo-figurative drawing, folk art, sculpture, and film all
played a part in his aesthetic taste. At mid-century, Romero Brest took a more
pronounced view of the importance of abstraction. He had seen the rise of concrete art in
Argentina in the 1940s though artists like Ral Lozza, Toms Maldonado, and the artists
of the Mad group. He returned from trips to Europe (1948-1949) and to New York
(1950-1951), believing that abstraction, non-objective art, and concrete art together
formed the most radical modes of contemporary art making, and he predicted that they
would only continue to grow in importance. In the pages of Ver y Estimar, as well as his
75
books such as Qu es el arte abstracto? [What is Abstract Art?] (1951) and La pintura
europea (1900-1950) [European Painting (1900-1950)] (1952), he posited abstract art as
the form through which painting, sculpture, architecture, and design stood in direct
relation to one another. He wrote adamantly about the integration of the arts, which
represented a long-desired goal of the avant-garde: the merger of art and everyday life.148
And through Ver y Estimar he sought to foster support for these values, establishing a
network of contributors first in Europe and then throughout the urban centers of Latin
America. Gmez Sicre sought to create separate networks of his ownnetworks that
were Pan-American in scope and that disavowed the importance of European centers,
particularly Paris (More on this topic in the following chapter).
While Gmez Sicre and Romero Brest initially shared a belief that abstract art
would play a transformative role in Latin America, their perspectives were never fully
aligned. They diverged more dramatically during the 1960s, as Romero Brest radically
reformulated his aesthetic tastes, becoming a strong advocate for the importance of pop
art, happenings, kinetic art, conceptual art and installation art in Argentina. In 1960,
Romero Brest traveled again to Paris and New Yorktrips that he described as a form of
cataract surgery that allowed him to see contemporary art, particularly assemblages and
informalist painting, with new vision.149 In New York, the Argentinean critic encountered
Rauschenbergs combines and Oldenburgs deflated hamburger sculpture, works that
148 These aspects of Romero Brests philosophy are discussed in Andrea Giunta, Rewriting Modernism:
Jorge Romero Brest and the Legitimation of Argentine Art, in Listen, Here, Now! Argentine Art of the
1960s: Writings of the Avant-Garde, ed. Ins Katzenstein (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2004), 80-
81.
149 See Jorge Romero Brest, What is Informal Painting? in Katzenstein, Listen, Here, Now!, 93-98.
76
prompted a sense of astonishment.150 For Romero Brest, the trip was a strong
indication that the nature of art was profoundly changing, and that the criteria he had
clung to during the 1950s, particularly his expectations about the promise of concrete art,
were not matching up with reality. While the shift in Romero Brests aesthetic
preferences began as early as 1960, Andrea Giunta cites 1964 as the year that his
transformation took full shape as a result of that years ITDT competition, for which
Romero Brest, Clement Greenberg, and Pierre Restany served as judges. The jury
distributed two prizes, an international prize and national prize; the international prize
went to U.S. artist Kenneth Noland, who Greenberg and Romero Brest both favored.
However, for the national prize, Romero Brest and Restany teamed up against Greenberg,
awarding the prize to Argentinean artist Marta Minujn, who presented a group of
sculptures made of mattresses. Both Minujns piece and the submission by artist Emilio
Renart, in which the artist created a gigantic vagina on the floor and walls of the ITDT,
attracted media attention and public ridicule. All three jurists considered these pieces in
relation to U.S. pop art and its European counterpartswhat Restany termed Nouveau
ralisme [New Realism]. While in Buenos Aires, Greenberg was particularly vocal
about his dislike of pop art: It is minor art, a fashion, and it is horrible to say this about
any kind of artistic expression. The proof is the ease with which it achieved success,
without struggle or resistance.151 Greenberg even criticized the works at the ITDT
saying there is no originality, it resembles New York twenty years ago. At that time, art
150 Giunta highlights the importance of the term asombro (astonishment) for Romero Brests theoretical
approach to the art of the 1960s. See Giunta, Avant-Garde, Internationalism, and Politics, 172-173.
151 Greenbergs statements appear in El premio Di Tella a la plstica nacional, La Nacin, 3 October
1964, 6; cited in Giunta, Avant-Garde, Internationalism, and Politics, 214.
77
in New York was provincial in relation to Paris.152 This competition was the first
instance (of what would become a regular occurrence) where Romero Brest felt the
pressure to justify to fellow critics and to the wider public why such experimental art as
Minujns was significant. He employed a number of explanations, switching from one to
another, like a juggler performing his craft, as Giunta puts it. 153 He turned to theories
of phenomenology, particularly the writings of Merleau-Ponty, believing that
appreciating these works required privileging experience over formal concerns.154 Just
as Romero Brests position on Pop art put him at odds with Greenberg, so too did it put
him at odds with Gmez Sicre, who like Greenberg distrusted the movement.
Over the course of the 1960s, the gulf between Romero Brests and Gomez
Sicres aesthetic preferences grew and grew. Unlike Gmez Sicres feud with Traba, the
critics rivalry with Romero Brest was tied to the cultural politics of Argentina. In the
1960s, contemporary art in Argentina gained global prominence, receiving more attention
in exhibitions and publications than any other Latin American country at the time. Some
of Europes most notable art critics, such as Andre Malraux, Pierre Restany, and Sir
Herbert Read were drawn to Buenos Aires; so too were New York critics like Clement
Greenberg, Lawrence Alloway, and Jacqueline Barnitz. Gmez Sicre and Romero Brest
were stalwart supporters of very different artists in Argentina. And by the mid to late
152 Ibid.
153 Giunta writes that by the mid-1960s, like a juggler performing his craft, Romero Brest conveniently
switched from one explanatory principle to another Giunta, Avant-Garde, Internationalism, and
Politics, 179.
154 Romero continued to theorize the relation of art and phenomenology throughout the 1960s; by 1967, he
eliminated the Di Tella prizes, replacing them with an annual exhibition he called Experiencias Visuales
[Visual Experiences] in 1967, and simply Experiencias [Experiences] in 1968 and 1969all of which
focused on installations, conceptual, and process-based art.
78
1960s, Romero Brest monopolized Buenos Aires art scene in a way that left little room
for Gmez Sicre to exert influence.
* * *
In this chapter, I have worked to situate Gmez Sicres aesthetic tastes in relation
to three art critics promoting modern art in the Americas, highlighting various points of
overlap and points of friction in their views. Unlike the other critics, Gmez Sicres
aesthetic tastes were coupled with a particular set of Pan-American ambitions. In the next
chapter, I describe some of the activities through which Gmez Sicre put his aesthetic
tastes into practice and consider some of the historical and ideological conditions that
shaped his work in the U.S. and in Latin America.
79
Chapter Two: Intellectuals, Networks, and Centers
Jos Gmez Sicres aesthetic tastes and knowledge of Latin American art trends
earned him respect from fellow curators and art critics like Alfred Barr and Marta Traba
during the 1940s, 1950s, and the early 1960s. And, yet he remains absent from
intellectual and cultural histories of the period, largely because of his ambiguous
relationship to the discourse surrounding the role of the intellectual. During the Cold
War, the word intellectual was a potent and highly-politicized term loaded with
conflicting expectations and historical meanings. In his study Keywords, cultural theorist
Raymond Williams notes that intellectual began as a pejorative, only gaining positive
connotations in the last century.155 In the United States, the negative associations of the
term came to the fore during the McCarthy Era as right-wing conservatives led a variety
of campaigns vilifying their political rivals as intellectualsexploiting the vagaries of
the term to attack leftists, homosexuals, and Jews. 156 At the same time, many writers and
155 Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1985), 169-171.
156The McCarthy-era witch-hunts to expel communists from government positions quickly became tied to
campaigns designed to remove homosexuals, who the government and the news media identified as moral
pervertsa label conflating homosexuals with pedophiles and other sexual deviants. The persecution of
gays and lesbians in the Federal Government during the Cold Wara phenomenon historian David K.
Johnson has termed The Lavender Scarealso had repercussions in the art world. For further
information about the Lavender Scare in Washington, see John DEmilio, Homosexual Menace: the
Politics of Sexuality in Cold War America in Making Trouble: Essays on Gay History, Politics, and the
University (New York, NY: Routledge, 1992); William Parker, Homosexuals and Employment, Essays
on Homosexuality. Essay no. 4, (San Francisco and Washington, DC: The Corinthian Foundation et al,
1970); and David K. Johnson, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the
Federal Government (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004). For a case study of the effects of
the Lavender Scare on the New York art scene, see Gavin Butt, Between You and Me: Queer Disclosures in
the New York Art World, 1948-1963 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005). The anti-Semitic
undertones of anti-communism most clearly manifested in the 1949 race riots in Peekskill, New York. See
Howard Fast, Peekskill USA: Inside the Infamous 1949 Riots (New York: Civil Rights Congress, 1951).
For another discussion of McCarthyism and anti-Semitism, see Aviva Weingarten, Jewish Organizations
80
scholars defended the leftist intellectual, writing texts in the 1950s and 1960s that
grappled with the term, trying to justify the importance of the intellectual and progressive
thinking in the face of what they perceived as growing political conservatism and outright
anti-intellectualism.157
Adding fuel to the fiery debate was the fact that, at best, intellectual remains a
contested identity, not a label that can be fixed with any certainty. Art critic Harold
Rosenberg summed up the problem in 1965, stating that there is a tendency of the
intellectual to slip out of every category, leaving its shell for the observer.The
intellectual cannot be stabilized as a type, a style of behavior, or a member of a social
category. By nature, his condition is ambiguous and subject to change: one does not
possess mental freedom and detachment, one participates in them.158 The term
intellectual is a catch-all that cannot be identified with a particular institution or
profession (lawyer, doctor, university professor, etc.). Nor, as historian Richard
Hofstadter wryly points out, is the word necessarily related to intelligence: We know,
for instance, that all academic men are not intellectuals; we often lament this fact. We
know that there is something about intellect, as opposed to professionally trained
Response to Communism and to Senator McCarthy, trans. Ora Cummings (Portland, OR: Vallentine
Mitchell, 2008).
157 For an extensive history of anti-intellectualism, see Richard Hofstadter, Anti Intellectualism in
American Life (New York: Vintage Books, 1963). Hofstatdter points out the term egg heads and other
pejorative names were used by politicians during the McCarthy Era. Other key texts on the intellectual at
the time include Jacques Barzun, The House of Intellect (New York: Harper, 1959); Lewis A. Coser, Men
of Ideas: A Sociologists View (New York: Free Press, 1965); Raymond Aron, The Opium of the
Intellectuals (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1957), H. Stuart Hughes, Is the Intellectual Obsolete?
Commentary [New York] October 1956; John Gross, Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters: A Study of the
Idiosyncratic and Humane in Modern Literature. (New York: Collier, 1969).
158 Harold Rosenberg, The Intellectual and his Future, in Discovering the Present: Three Decades in Art,
Culture, and Politics (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 190-194. Orig. published
in The New Yorker in 1965.
81
intelligence, which does not adhere to whole vocations but only to persons.159 How,
then, do we identify the intellectual? Some see intellectual as a designation for a small
and exclusive group, usually a subset of the ruling elite who possess valuable knowledge
and offer advice; occasionally, scholars of Cold War history still utilize the term
mandarin, a word for a caste of Chinese scholar-officials, to describe such an
intellectual.160 Others potentially see the intellectual everywhere; Marxist writer Antonio
Gramsci famously coined the term organic intellectual to describe the potential for the
masses to identify and cultivate intellectuals at all levels of society. For Gramsci, organic
intellectuals were rooted in working class culture, able to identify and combat flows of
hegemonic power from above.161 Yet, even some liberals who self-identified as
intellectuals in the 1950s and 1960s tended to express their ambivalence about the
label. For example, Rosenberg writes, The independent intellectual feels no anxiety
about the possible vanishing of his breed; there are moods in which he wishes that it
would vanish, since he thinks intellectuals are fakes and invalids anywayincluding
himself and the marvelous minds that have produced humanitys art and ideas. As Kafka
159 Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, 26.

160 See Nils Gilman, Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America (Baltimore:
John Hopkins University Press, 2004). Tyrsh Travis, Professor of Women and Gender Studies, also utilizes
the word in her conference paper, The Other Mandarins: Book Man and Cold War Democracy, presented
during the panel Literary Intellectuals and the Cultural Cold War at the Cold War Cultures Conference;
University of Texas at Austin, 2010.
161 Excerpts from Antonio Gramscis Prison Notebooks, where he describes the organic intellectual, are
included in The Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916-1935, ed. David Forgacs (New York:
New York University Press, 2000), 300-323. The secondary literature on Gramscis terms organic
intellectual and hegemony are extensive. One of the texts I found most helpful is T. J. Jackson Lears,
The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities, The American Historical Review 90, no.
3 (Jun.,1985): 567-593.
82
noted: in his fight against the world, the intellectual backs the world.162 Rosenberg
highlights the conflictive nature of the intellectual, an identity in which feelings of self-
assuredness and education coexist with feelings of self-doubt and belligerence.
In his book Qu es un intelectual? [What is an Intellectual?] (1998), Argentinean
artist and theoretician Toms Maldonado writes a history of the changing roles of
intellectual during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the West. Recognizing the
variety of forms that intellectuals take, he offers provisional classifications: the scientific
intellectual, the collective intellectual, the man of letters, the multi-tasker, and
others. He describes one type from the early Cold War period, the intellectual as guiding
beacon, as follows:
The figure of the intellectual reemerges with a predominantly laudatory function

in the contexts of leftist political and social movements, a figure that acquires the
highest point of popularity in the period immediately following the war until
approximately the mid-1970s. It is the intellectual that takes a position, or invites
others to do so, over the most diverse questions of public life.It is the
intellectual who is the signer of manifestos and sometimes the leader of protests.
In sum: it is the intellectual as the guiding beacon of light, as privileged bearer of
the sun of the future163
Maldonados characterization sums up what many writers, artists, and students in Latin
America, Europe, and the United States in the 1960s believed defined the intellectual. In
particular, being an intellectual typically meant being sympathetic to the Cuban
Revolution and the aims of the New Left.164 His definition is also tied to a notion of the
162 Rosenberg, The Intellectual and his Future, 194.

163 Toms Maldonado, Que es un intelectual?: aventuras y desventuras de un rol (Barcelona: Paidos,
1998), 17.
164 Many Latin American writers identified with this meaning of intellectual, see Claudia Gilman, El Fusil
y la pluma: Debates y dilemmas del escritor revolucionario en Amrica Latina. Coleccin Metmorfosis
83
avant-garde in the sense that the intellectual has a privileged view of the future. Under
those criteria, Gmez Sicre could never be mistaken for an intellectual. Not only was he
staunchly anti-communist, but his publication record placed him far afield of those
journals and little magazines generally regarded as avant-garde by their reading
publics.165 His writing was not as theoretical as writing by other critics, such as Jorge
Romero Brest; although Gmez Sicre himself an avid reader, he rarely cited the ideas of
other writers, philosophers, or art critics in circulation at the time.166 His articles appeared
mostly in OAS publicationsparticularly Amricas magazine in 1950s and the Boletn
de Artes Visuales in the 1950s-1970s.
The publication of Gmez Sicres articles in these two magazines is important: it
situates him within a non-academic context. Amricas was not an arts publication, but a
magazine published for general audiences, particularly for readers in the United States.167
(Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno, 2003). Also see Silvia Sigman, Intelectuales y poder en la dcada sesenta
(Buenos Aires: Puntosur, 1991).
165My usage of the term publics is based on literary scholar Michael Warners writing on the subject. He
defines a public as an association among strangers based in reading (whether it be reading a literary text or
a visual text) that calls itself into being merely through the attention of its readers who identify that they
and strangers are simultaneously being addressed. Warner maintains that publics are a phenomenon
different from a community, nation, or audience for they form with or without a state and exist
temporally without requiring the face-to-face dialogue. See Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics
(New York: Zone Books, 2005).
166 One rare exception is he mentions Andre Malrauxs Imaginary Museum, but this can be explained by
the popularity of Malrauxs writing in the early post-war period. The interchangeable phrases Museum
without Walls and Imaginary Musuem gained currency in the United States after Malraux revised and
republished his Psychology of Art (1949-1950) series into single-volume edition known as Andre Malraux,
The Voices of Silence (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1953). Malraux likely appealed to Gmez Sicre
because the French art critic held a prominent position within the French government directing the artsa
position tied to politics and art, not so unlike working at the OAS.
167 According to Christopher Shell, who worked for Amricas for over twenty five years and served as
Managing Editor, the publication was conceived as a means to teach U.S. audiences about their Latin
American neighbors. He said that at one time the magazine had thirty-three staff members and 160,000
subscribers. In 2007 the staff was down to three people with some 40,000 subscribers. Christopher Shell,
interview with the author, 25 April 2007. Information charting Amricas circulation can also be found in
84
Unlike arts magazines produced in Latin America such as Romero Brests Ver y Estimar
or Trabas Prisma, the aims of Amricas were unabashedly propagandistic: it was
intended to promote the activities of the OAS and highlight different aspects of Pan
American cooperation between North and South America. Amricas more closely
parallels magazines such as Mundo Nuevo and Cuadernos, which were pivotal in
disseminating the literature of the Latin American Boom of the 1960s, but which were
funded partially by the CIA, a fact that elicited controversy in the late 1960s.168 In
contrast, Amricas was explicitly a government-issued magazinean aspect reinforced
by the total absence of advertisements in the publication (this also qualified it to circulate
through the U.S. postal system for free). Perhaps closer equivalents are to be found in the
Cuban governments Casa de las Americas magazine or, for that matter, the Americas
Societys Reviewtwo other literary magazines that became prominent vehicles for Latin
American writers in the 1960s to disseminate their work.169 An important distinction
the Annual Report of the Secretary General. January 1 1963-June 30, 1964 (Washington, DC: Pan
American Union, 1964), 124.
168 The CIA did not fund the magazines directly. Both magazines were funded through the Congress of
Cultural Freedom, which received funding from the CIA. For more on the Congress of Cultral Freedom,
see Francis Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (New
York: New Press, 2000); Peter Coleman. The Liberal Conspiracy: The Congress for Cultural Freedom and
the Struggle for the Mind of Postwar Europe (New York: Free Press, 1989); and Giles Scott-Smith, The
Politics of Apolitical Culture: The Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Political Economy of American
Hegemony 1945-1955. (New York: Routledge, 2001). Studies focused on Mundo Nuevo include Mara
Eugenia Mudrovcic, Mundo Nuevo: Cultura y Guerra Fra en la dcada del 60 (Rosario, Argentina:
Beatriz Viterbo, 1997); Russell Cobb, Promoting Literature in the Most Dangerous Area in the World:
The Cold War, the Boom, and Mundo Nuevo in Barnhisel et al, Pressing the Fight, 231-250; and Russell
Cobb, The Politics of Literary Prestige: Promoting the Latin American Boom in the Pages of Mundo
Nuevo. A Contra corriente: A Journal on Social History and Literature in Latin America 5, no. 3 (Spring
2008), 75-94, available online at http://www.ncsu.edu/acontracorriente/spring_08/Cobb.pdf [Accessed 25
October 2012]
169 See Nadia Lie, Transicin y transaccin: La revista cubana Casa de las Amricas (1960-1976)
(Gaithersburg, MD: Hispamrica Leuven University Press, 1996) and Judith Weiss, Casa de las Amricas:
An Intellectual Review in the Cuban Revolution (Chapel Hill, NC: Estudios de Hispanfila, 1977).
85
between these magazines and Amricas is that these, as well as Mundo Nuevo and
Cuadernos, were primarily tailored to Latin American intellectuals, while the editors of
Amricas directed the magazine towards an unspecified audience. Judging from the
letters to the editor, it seems the magazine reached many different readers, including
teachers, students, business travelers, arm-chair adventurers, scientists, doctors, artists,
home-makers, and prison inmates.170
Amricas often reported on Gmez Sicres art exhibitions, however the curator
had little if any editorial control. Instead his articles were interspersed with articles on
politics, economics, literature, and human interest stories. Gmez Sicres articles waffle
between informative texts and fluff pieces. He contributed several types of articles: some
summarize his reactions to exhibitions he saw in Latin America, the U.S. and Europe; he
also reported on each of the So Paulo Biennials in the 1950s and 1960s. These reports
were painted in very broad strokes. In them, he names award winners and identifies
weaker entries (especially artists from the Soviet Union), but he gives readers very little
to go on about the individual pieces and the contexts from which they emerged.171 His
longest and most intimate pieces consist of profiles of artists, actresses, and film
makers.172 Surprisingly, his strongest arguments are found embedded within travelogues
170 The Norfolk Colony Stamp Club, composed of about thirty-three penitentiary inmates had their letter to
the editor published in Amricas, vol. 11, no. 1 (January 1959), 44.
171 See Jos Gmez Sicre, Europe on the Easel, Amricas, vol. 3, no. 12 (December 1951), 23-27, 35. He
writes about his visit to East Berlin as follows, As the visitor enters the Soviet zone, he finds creative
freedom losing itself in a realistic-academic kind of art used in all the propaganda. Since modern art is also
proscribed b the dictatorship of the proletariat, artists with new ideas living in the Russian zone must either
give them up or seek refuge in other zones. Ibid., 26.
172 His profiles of Rufino Tamayo, Roberto Burle-Marx, Amelia Pelez, and Alexander Calder, which
originally appeared in Amricas magazine, are reprinted in Jos Gmez Sicre, Four Artists of the Americas
(Washington, DC: Pan American Union, 1957). He also wrote articles about cinematographer Gabriel
86
of Europe. In these articles he downplays the importance of European art centers,
especially Paris, in the period after World War II. And these articles suggest that there is
no longer a single art center.
His writing for the Boletn de Artes Visualesfor which he served as editor-in-
chiefhad a different character. There he directed himself to a Spanish-speaking
audience, particularly art collectors and OAS institutional partners across Latin America.
His editorials more candidly focus on the issues facing the field of Latin American art,
and usually cite a recent event or the death of a key artist to make a larger point about the
current state of the arts.173 In many of his pieces he discusses the economic conditions
affecting Latin American artists and the reception of their art. He also argues for
deregulation and financial support to open up avenues for exhibiting Latin American art
internationally. His editorials were followed by extensive country-by-country lists of past
and upcoming exhibitions, competitions, and news related to Latin American art, giving
an impression that Gmez Sicre and his staff were tapped in to every event that had to do
with Latin American art.
Perhaps Gmez Sicre did not fit within the mode of intellectual Maldonado
describes as guiding beacon, but that does not mean Gmez Sicre can be discounted
from the role of intellectual altogether. In The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the
Figueroa and actress Dolores de Rio. See Jos Gmez Sicre, Depth of Focus, Amricas, vol. 2, no. 5
(May 1950): 24-28 and Jos Gmez Sicre, Dolores del Rio, Amricas, vol. 19 no. 11 (November 1967),
8-17.
173 He discusses Carlos Mrida in Jos Gmez Sicre, Nota editorial, Boletn de Artes Visuales 8 (July-
December 1961): 3-4. An homage to Emilio Pettoruti appears in Jos Gmez Sicre, Nota editorial,
Boletn de Artes Visuales 10 (July-December 1962): 3-5. Another dedicated to Giorgio Morandi appears in
Jos Gmez Sicre, Nota editorial, Boletn de Artes Visuales 12 (January-December 1964): 2-6.
87
Literary Field, sociologist Pierre Bourdieu argues that the way the intellectual weaves
together art and politics conforms to a specific logic: the intellectual builds influence and
cultural capital within the cultural field, earning recognition for his or her artistic and
literary accomplishments; she or he then leverages that cultural capital to intervene into
the political sphere, while maintaining the appearance of autonomy. Gmez Sicre
constantly negotiated between the cultural and political spheres, and he justified his
interventions into both spheres by maintaining that his aesthetic tastes were objective.174
Nonetheless, he wielding incredible cultural and political influence and generated
audiences through exhibitions and in print. Ultimately, debates around the intellectual
provide the historical context in which to see the logic behind Gmez Sicres cultural
posturing; they also expose the gulf between his Pan American rhetoric and the political
realities he faced in Washington.
BUILDING A PAN-AMERICAN NETWORK
Throughout his career, Gmez Sicre made various statements about the
importance of Pan-American cultural exchanges. Perhaps his most compelling statements
on the subject appear in his 1959 editorial for the Boletn de Artes Visuales. There he
proclaims: The young artist in America knows that new international centers of art are
174 Bourdieu writes Far from there existing, as is customarily believed, an antimony between the search
for autonomy (which characterizes the art, science or literature we call pure) and the search for political
efficacy, it is by increasing their autonomy (and thereby, among other things, their freedom to criticize the
prevailing powers) that intellectuals can increase the effectiveness of a political action whose ends and
means have their origin in the specific logic of the fields of cultural production. Pierre Bourdieu, Rules of
Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field, trans. Susan Emanuel (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 1996), 340.
88
being born on this continent and they are already prerequisite points of reception, from
New York to Buenos Aires, from Rio de Janeiro to Lima, from Mexico City to So
Paulo, from Caracas to Washington.175 This sentence (perhaps the one most often cited
by scholars) is significant for the way it so clearly draws the cultural map Gmez Sicre
envisioned extending across the hemisphere.176 Gmez Sicres comment is part of a
larger editorial, in which he takes aim at the cultural hegemony that Paris has held over
artists from Latin America. In his editorial, he suggests that this situation is changing, as
Paris has left behind being the center to convert into one center more.177 He
describes the feeling of inadequacy that many artists felt for not having been born in
Paris, raised under the shadows of Chartres or passing through the galleries of the
Louvre.178 And he encourages his U.S. and Latin American readers to join their efforts
175 Jos Gmez Sicre, Nota editorial, Boletn de Artes Visuales 5: 2. This translation comes from Andrea
Giunta, Avant-Garde, Internationalism, and Politics, 189.
176 Notice that Havana is conspicuously absent from the cities he enumerates. His statement came at a
pivotal time when the Cuban Revolution was bringing new attention to the cultural politics of Latin
America; but it was still early enough that Gmez Sicres attitudes towards Havana were still in formation,
he could avoid mentioning it altogether. In the 1960s the situation would change, and Gmez Sicre would
have to face the fact that his dream of Pan-American network could not square with the reality of
revolutionary Cuba playing a major cultural role in Latin America.
177 Ibid. Harold Rosenberg was one of the first to note a paradigm shift taking place in art world at mid-
century, in which Paris would no longer serve as the foremost center for avant-garde art. See Harold
Rosenberg, The Fall of Paris in The Tradition of the New (New York: Horizon Press, 1959): 209-220.
Art historians often describe New York as the international center that dominated the arts in the post-war
period. The history of this transfer of power is examined in Serge Guilbaut, How New York Stole the Idea
of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom, and the Cold War, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1983). As New York galleries and institutions became more accepting of
Latin American in the 1960s, they framed the growing presence of Latin American art as further proof of
New Yorks status as art center. This is most clearly the case with Magnet: New YorkA Selection of
Paintings by Latin American Artists Living in New York (New York: Galeria Bonino and The Inter-
American Foundation for the Arts, 1964) and The Emergent Decade: Latin American Painters and
Paintings in the 1960s, with text by Thomas Messer (New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,
1966). Also see Florencio Garca Cisneros, Latin-American Painters in New York (Miami, Rema Press,
1964). By contrast, Gmez Sicre argued for the emergence of a plurality of art centers across the Americas,
rather than a single center in New York, Washington, or elsewhere.
178 Jos Gmez Sicre, Nota editorial, Boletn de Artes Visuales 5: 2.
89
in establishing cultural autonomy: Our job, he writes, today more than ever, is to
create our own value-scale for the art of this continent and to develop our own support
system, and centers for the evaluation of art. Further, he urges artists from Latin
America to take stock of their own cultural heritages, not to undervalue them. If we can
appreciate the grand Victory [of Samothrace] that presides, fluttering, over the stairs of
the Louvre and we can mentally reconstruct the Middle Ages through the spires of
Chartres [cathedral], we also can feel the emotion of the anonymous sculptor of
Coatlicue, of the pre-hispanic architects that made Machu Picchu, of the extraordinary
tile artists of Uxmal. If we cross the Atlantic, certainly we will enrich ourselves by the
amplifying our experiences and lifeways, but we should not underestimate ourselves if
we cannot make the tour of Europe that before was considered indispensible.179
In this editorial, we see Gmez Sicre criticizing the Old World Europe while
heroicizing the Americas and its diverse ancient heritage. These were arguments that he
employed throughout the first three decades he worked at the OAS. This approach is
evident in his first feature article for Amricas magazine, entitled Art Critic on a
Holiday, published in January 1950 (Figure 14). In it, he reflects on his first trip to
Europe, which he took in December 1949. He offers his perceptions of public life in each
of the major cities he visitedLondon, Paris, Florence, Venice, and Rome. He also
discusses and illustrates his interactions with some of Europes most famous modernists:
Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Henry Moore. Within a magazine dedicated to
coverage of North and South America, a travel account of Europe may seem an anomaly.
179 Ibid.
90
But underlying Gmez Sicres observations rests his strategic attempt to reconfigure the
art historical canon by reducing the looming presence of Europeespecially Franceas
a source of artistic influence, and to relocate the cultural center to the Americas.
Through Gmez Sicres narrative of his trip runs a thread of biting critiques of
European art museums and the contemporary artistic culture of the cities he visited. He
disapproved of several museums for ignoring their countrys contemporary artists. In
particular, he criticized the Tate in London for ignoring Henry Moores work. Likewise,
he disapproved of Pariss Museum of Modern Art for its curators excessively tolerant
criterion [which] gives places of equal rank to insignificant painters and the great figures
of the School of Paris: Matisse, Picasso, Braque, and so on.180 Upon visiting Aix-en-
Provence, Gmez Sicre expressed surprise to find that the work of Paul Cezanne received
so little attention in the artists former home town: though he was the greatest figure of
nineteenth-century art, the local museum had only one insignificant drawing of his.181
Seeking to find the house where Cezanne kept his studio, Gmez Sicre discovered that
the residence was now private property closed to visitors. Such disappointment led
Gmez Sicre to think it is not necessary to leave the United States to see the best of
French nineteenth- and twentieth-century art.182
Writing about the cultural climate of Paris, Gmez Sicre acknowledged that the
city held historical importance for art, but he found post-war Paris intellectually aimless.
France undeniably carved out a world-wide cultural empire for herself in the last two
180Jos Gmez Sicre, Art Critic on a Holiday, Amricas, vol. 2, no. 1 (January 1950), 14.
181 Ibid., 15.
182 Ibid., 14.
91
hundred years, wrote the art critic, But todays boulevardiers, facing the dilemma of
having no great theses to defend, turn to Jean-Paul Sartre as the only thing that can hold
their attention.183 According to Gmez Sicre, the citys young artists were floundering in
existential crises, unable to overcome their reverence for the works of older avant-garde
artists such as Kandinsky and Mondrian; further, they were unable to create original
works bearing the true native seal of Paris.184
Gmez Sicre also attempts to defuse the major role Paris plays in the history of
art, reminding his readers that Frances past masters had to escape the intellectually
claustrophobic city to achieve greatness. Speaking of Southern France, he writes that
this was the same environment that helped Cezanne to discover the cone, the cylinder,
and the sphere in naturefor Paris was never the artists best advisor. Corot had to shut
himself up in Fontainebleau to achieve his suave landscapes... Gauguin chose exile in
Tahiti, and Van Gogh did his best work in Provence.185
After critiquing England and France, Gmez Sicre turns his attention to Italy,
which he describes as beautiful, but frozen in time. He explains that Florence and Venice
each appeared to him an inhabited museum.186 In his article, he describes the art of the
Italian Renaissance as steeped in realism. This is most evident in a photograph of a
contemporary Venetian woman seated with a child, which Gmez Sicre included with the
article (Figure 15). The caption beside the photograph reads: This Venetian girl and
183 Ibid., 13.

184 Ibid., 14.
185 Ibid., 14.
186 Ibid., 43.
92
baby [show] a striking resemblance to a Madonna and Child by Giovanni Bellini,
proving the deep realism of Italian Renaissance. The photograph is largely Gmez
Sicres own artificial construction; in a later issue of Amricas he explains that the
woman and child are not related, but he asked the true mother of the child if she would
permit the boy to be photographed with another woman.187
At the core of Art Critic on a Holiday exists another seemingly contradictory
construction: Gmez Sicre was generally critical of Europe for its lack of artistic
contemporaneity, and yet, in this article, we also see Gmez Sicre eagerly seeking out the
living legends of European modern art. Photographs on the articles first page highlight
these encounters. The topmost image places the curator and Matisse in close proximity as
they are casually seated atop a drafting desk in Dominican Chapel of Venice. In the
second image, a white stone sculpture acts as an intermediary between curator and Henry
Moore, as both men place their hands upon the arms of Moores sculpted figures. For the
other two portraitsone of Marino Marini (1901-1980) alone with his sculptures and one
of Picasso outside his ceramics studioGmez Sicre acted as photographer.
Several photographs showing Picasso and Gmez Sicre together were taken
during his visit to Picassos ceramics factory in Vallauris. Gmez Sicre enjoyed telling
friends that during his encounter with Picasso, the artist had taken such a liking to Gmez
Sicres Cuban guayabera shirt that he asked to wear it.188 This anecdote about Picasso
187Letters to the Editor, Amricas, Vol 2, no. 6 (June 1950), 48.

188Presumably, Picasso appears with no shirt in Amricas because the photograph was taken while the artist
and curator were trading shirts. Authors interview with Diana Beruff. 15 March 2008. Gmez Sicre later
wrote down the story and his first impressions of Picasso, but to my knowledge never published it. See
Picasso, folder 2, box 20, JGS Papers.
93
and the guayabera extends a central theme of Art Critic on a Holiday: throughout much
of the article, Gmez Sicre attempted to stake the identities of Europes major living
artists in terms of their apparent Latin Americaness. Gmez Sicre described Picasso as
looking and speaking like a man of the Caribbean.189 And he quoted Picasso as saying,
the police kept me under observation [in Madrid] because they thought I was one of
the exiled Cuban revolutionaries with whom I had been associating.190 Gmez Sicre,
similarly, emphasized Henry Moores connections to Latin America: he described
Moores interest in Pre-Columbian culture, stressing that the ancient art of the Americas
represented a starting point in the development of his ideas [about art].191
Many of Gmez Sicres statements in Art Critic on a Holiday serve to situate
the U.S. and Latin America in relation to existing art historical discourse about European
modernism. He envisions North and South American nations working together at the
forefront of cultural and artistic growth, at a time when many still assumed Latin
America to be underdeveloped. He concludes Art Critic on a Holiday by insisting that
European imperial and creative powers had been overtaken by the Americas. In
particular, he claimed that todays Romans were now learning from the modern empire of
the United States.192
In 1950, Gmez Sicre spoke of the modern empire of the United States with a
tone of admiration. Throughout the Cold War, he would continue to describe an
189Gmez Sicre, Art Critic on a Holiday, 15.

190 Ibid.
191 Ibid., 12.
192 Ibid., 44.
94
international cultural field in which the U.S. played a cultural, economic, and political
role model for the rest of the world. He believed that cultural progress could only be an
international, cooperative efforta Pan American project. However, despite the
triumphal tone of articles such as Art Critic on a Holiday, Gmez Sicre faced major
challenges at home and abroad.
A CULTURAL SPACE AT HOME
When Gmez Sicre relocated to Washington in 1946 to take a position as art
specialist at the Pan American Union, he was entering a city known for its conservative,
if not poor, treatment of the artsa situation that only worsened in the early 1950s.
Washington was considered a cultural wasteland by the New York art pundits, writes
Leslie Judd Ahlander, a long-time art critic for the Washington Post, who also served on
the acquisitions committee for the OAS art collection.193 Despite the existence of several
museums, including the Smithsonian, the Corcoran, and the National Gallery of Art, there
was a general lack of visibility for modern art in Washington, a situation brought on by
the absence of art collectors and galleries, of coverage in the press, and of institutional
193Leslie Judd Ahlander, The Washington Color School Revisited: The Sixties, Sept 9-Oct 4, 1980, an
exhibition pamphlet for Fendrick Gallery, folder Exhibition Catalogs undated, 1957-1986, box 1, Leslie
Judd Ahlander Papers (hereafter referred to as LJA Papers), Archives of American Art, Smithsonian
Institution (hereafter abbreviated as AAA). Ahlander had long-standing connections to Gmez Sicre. In
1941, Ahlander helped create the Pan American Unions visual art program and directed it until Gmez
Sicre succeeded her in December1945. Her connection to Gmez Sicre and the OAS continued long after
she left to join the Washington Post; she served officially on the Visual Art Division (and later Museum of
Modern Art of Latin American Art) acquisitions committee, and unofficially as a PR person, consistently
writing reviews of Gmez Sicres exhibitions during her thirteen years with the Post. I refer to Leslie Judd
consistently using Ahlander as her last name since her archives at the Smithsonian are identified that way.
However her maiden name was Leslie Judd Switzer. While working with the Washington Post, she mainly
used her married name Leslie Judd Portner, and in 1959, she married Bjorn O. Ahlander.
95
support.194 Artist Jos Ignacio Bermdez, who moved from Cuba to Washington in 1953
to work at the OAS, noted that in New York and Paris there are so many distractions and
you spend too much time talking. But here in Washington there is nothing to distract you.
The competition is tremendous and on the other side, the lack of reaction from viewers
makes you work hard so that you develop. Washington is a good place to hide in order to
work.195
In the 1950s, Washington became the ground-zero for a battle waged by U.S.
politicians against modern art. Inspired by the attention Senator Josph McCarthy
received for his mission to identify and rout out communists in government, politicians
began attacking modern art, describing it as a means of subversion by foreigners. In
1952, Congressman George Dondero of Michigan proclaimed:
The art of the isms, the weapon of the Russian Revolution, is the art which has
been transplanted to America, and today, having infiltrated and saturated many of
our art centers, threatens to overawe, override and overpower the fine art of our
tradition and inheritance. So-called modern or contemporary art in our own
beloved country contains all the isms of depravity, decadence, and
destruction.All these isms are of foreign origin, and truly should have no place
in American art.All are instruments and weapons of destruction.196
According to art critic William Hauptman, Congressman Dondero had no trouble
resorting to name-calling in his speeches:
194 Gmez Sicre spent a great deal of time in Washington trying to convince his co-workers, their friends,
as well as visitors of neighboring embassies to purchase Latin American works and begin art collections of
their own. Diana Beruff, whose husband worked for the OAS, began collecting art because of her contact
with Gmez Sicre. Diana Beruff, interview with the author, 15 March 2008.
195 Leslie Judd Ahlander, An Artist Speaks: Jos Bermudez, Washington Post, 29 July 1962, G7.
196 George Dondero, Communist Conspiracy in Art Threatens American Museums, Congressional
Record, 82nd Congress, 2nd Session (March 17, 1952), 2423-7; cited in Richard Hofstadter, Anti-
Intellectualism in American Life, 14-15.
96
He described [modern artists] as human termites, germ-carrying vermin and
international art thugs. [Dondero] also concluded that modern artists who
advocated freedom to experiment in a nontraditional style were charlatans
because 1) they really could not draw; 2) they were insane; 3) they were in a plot
to make the bourgeoisie nervous; and 4) they were committed to degrade their art
for the purpose of Communist propaganda.197
Donderos comments were symptomatic of a broader body of distrust about the U.S.
government financing exhibitions of modern art. For instance, between 1946 and 1948,
Dondero represented one of several right-wing politicians and journalists drumming up
discontent about Advancing American Art, an exhibition organized by the U.S.
Department of State and sent to Europe and Latin America to highlight U.S. contributions
to modern art. Newspapers and magazines lambasted the works in the show. Even
President Truman famously joined in on the attack with his off-hand remark: if thats
art, Im a Hottentot.198 Most of all, those critical of the exhibition found fault with its
inclusion of artists Arthur Dove, John Marin, Ben Shahn and several others who,
according to Hauptman, seemed to reflect communist-leanings.199
197 William Hauptman, The Suppression of Art in the McCarthy Decade Artforum, vol. 12, no. 2
(October 1973), 48-52.
198 Ibid., 49. Trumans comment was indicative of his and the countrys disdain of modern art as well as
the racism inherent to those views. In choosing a body to contrast himself against, Truman chose a
Hottentot a perjorative term for the Khoikhoi peoples of Southern Africa. Trumans statement is a
particularly resonant example of the ways discrimination and invective language about racial difference
shaped U.S. politics and culture that gave rise to the Civil Rights Movements of the 1950s and 1960s.
199 Ibid. This exhibition, which was one of several terminated for its inclusion of left-wing artists, and its
surrounding controversy has become one of the most often studied case studies about the troublesome
relationship between U.S. art and politics during the Cold War. See Taylor D. Littleton and Maltby Sykes,
Advancing American Art: Painting, Politics, and Cultural Confrontation at Mid-Century (Tuscaloosa:
University of Alabama Press, 1989); Michael L. Krenn, Fall-out Shelters for the Human Spirit: American
Art and the Cold War (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2005); David Caute, The
Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy during the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2003); Louis Menand, The Unpopular Front: American Art and the Cold War, The New Yorker, 17
October 2005, http://www.newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/articles/051017crat_atlarge.
97
The best-known refutation of Dondero came from Alfred Barr, who published the
article Is Modern Art Communist? in the New York Times magazine in 1952. Barr
insisted on setting the record straight about modern art from Europe, explaining that, in
the Soviet Union, modern artists were victims of Communist censorship and forced into
exile, rather than the agents of propaganda. In February 1955, Barr planned to visit
Washington to lecture on the topic further. The lecture is not actually on art and
communism, he wrote to Leslie Judd Ahlander, but a much broader review of the
impact upon art of political intolerance or, in the case of the Nazis and Communists, of
despotism. I intend, at the same time, to discuss some of the attitudes and actions of
American legislators and government officials towards modern art. Needless to say, these
have not been so overt as in totalitarian countries, but they have at times been quite
disturbing and I believe quite contrary to the best American traditions.200
Many of Gmez Sicres views about art and politics coincided with Barrs, as I
discussed in the previous chapter. In Washington, he had to fight the battle on at least two
fronts, combating general ignorance about modern art and about Latin America. He took
his job of educating the public seriously, creating cycles of exhibitions, publications, and
lectures on the importance of modern art.201 And there is evidence that he faced serious
pressures during the McCarthy Era for his efforts. Though he rarely spoke about the
scrutiny he faced during the witch-hunts of the 1950s, he once commented in an
interview that he witnessed some of the left-leaning co-workers at the OAS being
200 Barr to Leslie Judd Portner, 1 February 1955, folder Correspondence undated, 1954-1980, box 1, LJA
papers, AAA.
201 One of the earliest defenses of Latin American art appears in a letter to the Washington Post. See Jos
Gmez Sicre, Letter to Editor of the Washington Post 20 January 1946, folder 1, box 5, JGS Papers.
98
hounded and expelled; I was on the verge of losing my post, he states, but through my
brother, who was a military man, [Cubas] Autntico party protected me.202
An interrogation of Gmez Sicre by U.S. Customs officials more fully shows the
political pressures he faced during the period. The interrogation occurred in Miami on
May 5, 1952 as Gmez Sicre was returning to the United States after a trip to Puerto
Rico, Haiti, and Cuba.203 The interrogator quickly moved from gathering basic
biographical information to questions that were more pointed and accusatory:
Q: Mr. Gmez, have you ever been the author of any publications?
A: Yes; I have been the author, first, of a book on the Cuban painter Carreo,
published in 1943, in Havana. The second one is a book called, in English,
Cuban Painting of Today. It was published in early 1944 and was brought
personally by me to the Museum of Foreign Art in New York [italics mine],
which was the distributor of the book. I have some other publications. I have
another publication called Spanish Drawings from the 15th to the 18th or 19th
Century published by [name redacted by FOIA] press, New York, in 1949 or
1950, I do not remember.
Q: Mr. Gmez, have any of your publications a political significance?

A: Not at all. My publications are all based on art. For about ten years I have been
only writing on that subject.
Q: Did you ever write an article for a newspaper known as El Nacional, a

Caracas, Venezuela, newspaper?
A: Yes, I did.
202 Anreus, Ultimas Conversaciones con Jos Gmez Sicre, reprinted in Appendix C.
203 In a letter to the Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization, Gmez Sicre explains that he and his
wife, Lucila Ballarin, initially were held at the airport with the slightest explanation, for more than four
hours, only to be told that, because of some discrepancies in his visa, he should report to the Immigration
Office in Miami the next morning. They arrived when the office opened at 9 a.m., but he explains, they
were kept there, without any explanation, until 4 p.m., when I was asked to record answers to questions
made to me by Mr. Kiser, but not related to the visa problem but many different political topics. Gmez
Sicre to Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization, 31 July 1952, document received through FOIA
request. See Appendix A, for this letter and a full transcription of the interrogation.
99
Q: Were you aware, Mr. Gmez, that the newspaper El Nacional published at
Caracas featured columnists who were left of center in their political beliefs and
opinions, and that the newspapers policy in political matters coincides with that
of the Communist Party?
A: Well I never thought that. I thought that was a popular paper, and was invited
to contribute to that paper by an independent writer, Venezuelan writer called
Juan Liscarna (phonetic), and who came to see me in the Pan American Union
and proposed to me to contribute art articles to that publication. I never thought
there were any political implications in that.
Q: Mr. Gmez, what is your attitude towards the Communist ideology?

A: I am against it, absolutely against it, because I believe in the integrity of a
family and in the concept of nations as it is conceived by the democratic mind.
Q: Have you ever publicly or privately made any statements which could be
interpreted by a reasonable person as being in support of communism?
A: I would never, I did never, do it.
Q: Do you know any of your acquaintances who are sympathetic to the cause of
communism?
A: I told you, I live in a quite isolated way, and I have no chance to talk very
much about politics, only about the politics of my own country.
Q: What is your present attitude toward the conflict in Korea?

A: I am completely on the part of the United States.
Q: Do I understand that to mean you are in accord with the position of the United
States?
A: Of the United States, absolutely.
Q: Have you ever made any statement which could be construed as supporting the
aid which the Soviet Union is apparently giving to the North Koreans and the
Chinese Reds?
A: I never have.
Q: You never have?

A: no.
Q: Have you ever made the statement that in your opinion the United States was
actually the invader in the Korean situation?
A: I never have said that.
100
Q: Do you believe that the Soviet Government is the savior of Asia?
A: I never believed such thing.
Q: Have you ever to your knowledge made any statement admiring Stalin?
A: No. I do not admire dictators.
Q: You have no recollection of having made any statement admiring Stalin?

A: Not at all, and as I told you, I never write about politics.
Early in the interrogation, the U.S. Customs official transcribes the Museum of Modern
Art as the Museum of Foreign Artit is a telling mistake, a symptom of the U.S.
governments conflation of modern art with foreignness during the McCarthy era. To
reassure his interrogators, Gmez Sicre repeatedly indicated that he was anti-communist
and that he writes only about art, not politics. Gmez Sicre insisted on his autonomy from
politics as a cultural producer. Bourdieu describes such autonomy as a condition defining
the intellectual: To be entitled to the name of intellectual, a cultural producer must
fulfill two conditions: on the one hand, he must belong to an autonomous intellectual
world (a field), that is, independent from religious, political, and economic powers (and
so on), and must respect its specific laws; on the other hand, he must invest the
competence and authority he has acquired in the intellectual field in a political action,
which is in any case carried out outside the intellectual field proper.204 In Gmez Sicres
case, his institutional affiliation always called into question his claims of autonomy. So
did his behavior. While he spoke of his own objectivity and apoliticism, his actions
indicated something different: he acted not as a disinterested party, but as a galvanizing
204Pierre Bourdieu, Fourth Lecture. Universal Corporatism: The Role of Intellectuals in the Modern
World. Poetics Today 12, no. 4, National Literatures/Social Spaces (Winter 1991): 656. Available through
JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1772708
101
figure who personally involved himself in the lives of the artists whose work he
preferred.
Within the tense anti-intellectual atmosphere of Washington, the critic took bold
actions by creating a cultural space at his home, in the form of tertulias. Tertulia, a
Spanish word which finds its closest English parallel with salon, refers to an informal,
usually private and late-night gathering of friends who meet to discuss art, literature, and
poetry of common interest. Gmez Sicre was host to a constant stream of short-term and
long-term guests at his house.205 Some artists, including Flix ngel, Cundo Bermdez,
Jos Luis Cuevas, and Carlos Poveda, lived for years in spare rooms of Gmez Sicres
home in Adams Morgan. Many others, including Fernando Botero, Enrique Grau,
Guillermo Trujillo, David Mansur, Armando Morales, Alejandro Otero, Alejandro
Obregn, and Elmar Rojas would stay with him for a few days or a few weeks whenever
they visited Washington.206 And, along with the set of regulars around his home, Gmez
Sicre frequently invited different guests over to join the group for dinner. Gmez Sicres
dining room, a lively and eccentric setting for discourse, was decorated with Cuevass
drawings of the mentally insane, and had cages containing various parakeets and exotic
animals. Whereas the parrots at the Pan American Union building bred a certain
exoticism for a so-called gringo audience, at Gmez-Sicres home rare birds became
205 Gmez Sicre first hosted gatherings in his apartment in Georgetown, and later in his townhouse in
Adams Morgan.
206 These visitors became a sort of extended family for Gmez Sicre and they became well-acquainted with
Gmez Sicres relatives, especially after the Cuban Revolution, when he brought many of his family
members to Washington; his mother Guillermina Sicre lived with him from approximately 1960 until her
death in 1974, and his sisters, Elisa and Guillermina, and his uncle, the sculptor Juan Jos Sicre, each lived
down the street.
102
part of a comforting, even amusing, ambience for his Latin American visitors.207 After
dinner and its drawn-out conversations about art and politics, guests might tour Gmez
Sicres home to see his personal collection of art and have cocktails in the living room or
his upstairs library, where they would converse until early morning. In addition to the
nightly tertulia, Gmez Sicres home also became a site for visiting artists to paint; and,
in his bedroom, his assistants from the OAS edited documentary films about
contemporary Latin American painters.208
Literature was a key topic of discussion at these gatherings. Szyszlo describes
Gmez Sicre as a voracious reader, saying he was grateful to the critic for introducing
him to Robert Musils The Man Without Qualities, a work now regarded as a modernist
masterpiece.209 Likewise, Jos Luis Cuevas credits Gmez Sicre with introducing him to
the writings of Franz Kafka; Cuevas subsequently created paintings and print series
inspired by the copies of Metamorphosis (1916) and The Trial (published posthumously
in 1925) given to him by Gmez Sicre.210 Both Cuevas and artist Carlos Poveda recall
the critic separately introducing them to writer Jorge Luis Borges.211 Poveda recalls that
207 Some visitors, such as Jos Martinez Caas, recall the constant coo of Gmez Sicres doves in the
background at dinner. Others, like Diana Beruff, remember the screeches of his small squirrel monkeys.
He also kept lots of parakeets, and according to his cousin Horatio (who lived with Gmez Sicre from 1973
until 1991), he smuggled many other rare and exotic creatures in from Latin America. From trips to Brazil,
he brought back the monkeys and also a coatimundi, a raccoon-like creature. My uncle brought it in his
pocket, Horatio Sicre explains, Customs werent so strict as they are today. Horatio Sicre, interview
with the author, 3 March 2010.
208 Felix Angel, interview with the author, 23 February 2010
209 Fernando de Szyzlo, interview with the author, 26 April 2009.
210 See Jos Luis Cuevas, The Worlds of Kafka & Cuevas; an Unsettling Flight to the Fantasy World of
Franz Kafka (Philadelphia: Falcon Press; distributed by G. Wittenborn, New York, 1959). For more on
works by Cuevas dealing with Kafka, see my MA thesis, Renewed Legacy.
211 See Jos Luis Cuevas, Mis Encuentros con Jorge Luis Borges, in Gato Macho, 527-528, and Carlos
Poveda, Jorge Luis Borges En La Calle Maipu 900. Variedades (Costa Rica) no. 4 (Abril 1966), 34,
103
he, Gmez Sicre, and Borges spoke about possible collaborations, in particular, making a
short film either on Borges El Aleph or Herman Melvilles Bartleby the Scribner,
which Borges had translated into Spanisha translation that Gmez Sicre highly
praised.212
Another shared point of reference for Gmez Sicre and his circle was movies
particularly silent films. He had as many friends [that were] actors as [were] artists,
says his nephew Horacio Sicre, who mentions that Gmez Sicre was delighted when, in
the 1960s and 70s, he was able to convince seasoned film stars, such as Joan Crawford,
Douglas Fairbanks, and Jos Ferrer to narrate the documentaries he produced for the
OAS.213 According to Horacio Sicre, he and his uncle went to the movies at least three
times per week when they lived together in Washington. Gmez Sicre was also
something of an autograph hound. When he was a kid, hed write the stars and ask for
signed photos, says Horacio Sicre.214 As an adult, he continued to write fan letters to
celebritiesnot only film stars and theater actors, but directors and prominent novelists.
available in the artist files for Carlos Poveda, Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at
Austin. These encounters with Borges reveal something about Gmez Sicre modus operandi: he
continuously attempted to open a path toward an international celebrity. In the case of Borges, we see a
very concrete interest in making some cross-cultural, specifically Pan American products by encouraging a
Costa Rican artist and Argentine writer to collaborate on interpreting the work of a classic U.S. author,
whether through film or illustration. Not only did Gmez Sicre and his circle meet celebrities, butand
perhaps this is most significantthey regularly documented, discussed, and/or wrote about these
interactions. It may be that they focused on these interactions because of the sheer pleasure it brought them;
in many cases, they were meeting artists, writers, actors, and directors, whose work they had long admired.
But, these meetings also came with a certain boost to Gmez Sicres reputation, significantly adding to his
cultural cache as international art critic.
212 In his article for Vanidades, Poveda mentions a proposed movie script for El Aleph (see previous
note). However, in a later email correspondence, he recalled the meeting differently, saying the
conversation focused on producing a film based on Bartleby the Scribner. Carlos Poveda, correspondence
with the author, 16 April 2010
213 Horacio Sicre, interview with the author, 3 March 2010.
214 Ibid.
104
His archives contain a few of these letters from the 1970sincluding one in which he
asked for autographs from author Mario Vargas Llosa. In another, he pitched a movie
idea to Italian film director Luchino Visconti, urging him to create an adaptation of
novelist Margueritte Yourcenars Memoirs dHadrien (1951).215 He also bonded with his
artist-friends on the subject; Colombian artist David Mansur recalls that while living in
New York on a Guggenheim fellowship in 1963 and 1964, he, Cuevas, and Gmez Sicre
would customarily go on stake-outs to find Greta Garbo, dedicating their entire evenings
to waiting in strategic places where she might pass, only to see her.216 Tracking down
the notoriously reclusive film star became something of a fad in the 1960s; tabloids and
entertainment magazines of the time featured stories with maps showing her favorite
groceries and shops and the paths she usually took through the city.217
These are some of the cultural activities that characterized Gmez Sicres life and
helped him form bonds with various cultural producers of Latin America. Many who
gravitated to Gmez Sicre were first compelled by his charm and confidence. But that
wasnt the only reason many young artists lived and traveled with Gmez Sicre: many
promoted by Gmez Sicre were confined by their financial state and the low-income of
their families before receiving his benefaction. Not only were they dumbstruck that a
215 Gmez Sicre to Luchino Visconti, 6 May 1973, folder 2, box 5, JGS Papers.
216 Octavio Pelez Mendoza, Esta es hoy Greta Garbo (Bogota 1975), artist file for David Manzur, AMA
Archives. According to Manzur, he alone met the actress a year later. After seeing her in Central Park,
Manzur followed her for several blocks. At the corner of Madison and 57 th St, she turned around, put her
hand on his shoulder, and told him, Isnt that enough!? I couldnt speakand when I told Pepe, who was
in his office in Washington, he told me, I envy you and hate you because you managed to do what I never
could. I hate you for robbing me of my Greta Garbo! David Manzur, correspondence with the author, 20
April 2010.
217 See Alan Levy, Garbo Walks! Through midtown Manhattan with a Garbo-watcher Show: The
Magazine of the Arts (New York), vol. 3, no. 6 (June 1963), 60-61, 93-94.
105
recognized authority on art was taking interest in their work, but also that he offered them
the chance to travel widely and study in the U.S. The benefits of his support and the
activities he hosted also came at a significant cost. In many cases, Gmez Sicre could be
overbearing and unreasonable. Carlos Poveda recalls that when he believed in
someone.there was no curtailing his efforts to feel as if he was that persons
protector.218 Gmez Sicres personal attachments were difficult enough to navigate
around, but the lines between work and pleasure, office and home, were nearly non-
existent. Even those who did not live with Gmez Sicre recall how exhausting working
for him was. Szyszlo, who worked at the Visual Arts Division from 1958 to 1960,
remarks, I left because, in reality, I had sacrificed my art to work every day, without
missing a day, and could only paint at night.219 In these instances, we can see Gmez
Sicre converting his home into a kind of workshop. He kept the boundaries between
work and home extremely permeable, a strategy through which he could develop an
artistic community around the Visual Arts Division and modern art, literature, and film
while still sheltering his activities from criticism by politicians or the wider DC public.
218 Poveda continues, Such was my case. He tried to oblige himself to me in every way, and because of
him, I have been placed in good status within Latin American art, because the majority of exhibitions in
which I participated in the 60s and 70s were organized by him. But there came a moment when Pepe
wanted to decide which people I could meet.. In those days, I was twenty-seven years old, and to give
you an idea of Gmez Sicres possessiveness, only he would answer the phone in the house, and when
someone called me (especially if it was a woman!) only he decided with whom I could speak. Carlos
Poveda, correspondence with the author, 27 September 2007.
219 Fernando de Szyszlo, interview with the author, 26 April 2009.
106
A WORKSHOP ABROAD
At the same time that he was carving out a cultural space at home, Gmez Sicre
tried to foster similar spaces in Latin America, best exemplified by what he and his
colleagues named the Taller Libre de Arte (Free Art Workshop). In 1948the year that
the Pan American Union transformed into the Organization of American StatesGmez
Sicre was given a task: to create an exhibition to celebrate the inauguration of Romulo
Gallegos as Venezuelas first democratically-elected President.220 He worked quickly to
create the show; according to Venezuelan poet and writer Ida Gramcko, the task of
selection was arduous and intense.The exhibition was organized in ten days, not one
more and not one less.221 Gmez Sicre borrowed most works from the private
collections of his friends and colleagues in Washington (such as diplomats Juan Liscano
and Raul Nass), he pulled five works from his own personal collection, and nineteen were
loaned by the MoMA. The resulting show, entitled Exposicion Panamericana de
Pintura Moderna [Pan-American Exhibition of Modern Painting] included works by 43
different artists from the North and South America. The exhibition opened in February
during a week of public celebrations, parades, concerts, and cultural events marking the
inaugurationTIME magazine described the festivities as the biggest week in Caracas
since [Simon] Bolivar threw out the Spaniards.222
220 Jos Gmez Sicre, Preliminar, Exposicin panamericana de pintura moderna (Washington, DC: H.K.
Press, 1948), folder 1948, box Venezuela-Art, AMA Archives.
221 Ida Gramcko, La Exposicin Panamericana de Pintura Moderna que maana se abre en el Museo de
Bellas Artes, El Nacional [Caracas], 15 February1948, 8, cited in Milagros Gonzlez, Pintura
contemporneo para celebrar la democracia: Una ventana al mundo unpublished paper, July 2008,
Microsoft Word file in the possession of the author.
222 Venezuela: Dress: Formal, Time, 23 February 1948, available at www.time.com/time/archive.
107
While in Caracas to set up the exhibition, Gmez Sicre met regularly with artists
to talk about their work and the citys art scene. He found that many of the artists who
graduated from the Escuela de Artes Plsticas [School of Visual Arts] were struggling to
find places to produce and exhibit their work. Gmez Sicre listened, and then called for a
meeting open to all the artists in the city. Together they hatched an ambitious project: to
create a multipurpose space for the arts, that could serve as a studio, a meeting place, and
a site for exhibitions.223 Gmez Sicre took the proposition directly to the National
Ministry of Education, which agreed to support the creation of the Taller Libre de Arte.
The workshop, which lasted from 1948-1952, consisted of two adjoining rooms on the
third floor of the Miranda Building on Mercaderes St, used alternatively for life drawing
classes and exhibitions. All of us upon completing our studies felt disoriented,
uncontrolled, explains artist Alirio Oramas, and here we have found an environment to
continue painting, to resolve our artistic differences. Here we have models. Not only
painters meet, but also writers, journalists, musicians, to discuss art. Here we read. We
share our knowledge.224
Oramas served as Director of the Taller Libre. He managed its day-to-day
activities from 1948 to 1951. During his tenure, over thirty artists attended the Taller
Libre. They were all relatively young, generally between the ages of 16 and 25 years old.
223 Alirio Oramas is quoted discussing the origins of the Taller Libre in an untitled article, La Esfera, no.
7.855 (13 February 1949), folder 1949, box Venezuela-Art, AMA Archives.
224 Ibid.
108
Many of them went on to become well-recognized artists, notably: Jacobo Borges, Carlos
Cruz-Diez, Mateo Manaure, Pascual Navarro, and Alejandro Otero.225
The Taller Libre was not an artistic workshop in the Renaissance sense: that is, it
was not a place where a group of artists worked collectively under the name of a master.
It was not a school with designated teachers, or a place of stylistic unityin fact, Gmez
Sicre and the artists who founded the workshop took pleasure in the belief that it was a
space outside the academy.226 Many from the Taller complained that the curriculum at the
Academy of Fine Arts, Caracas ended with studies of Cezanne. They wanted to become
conversant with modern techniques and they wanted to engage with contemporary artists,
especially with those working outside of Venezuela.227
Gmez Sicres contribution in Caracas was primarily on the practical side: he
helped Venezuelan artists procure funds and get government approval for their workshop.
He also connected the young artists of the Taller with his Cuban friendsthe art patron
Mara Luisa Gmez Mena, who donated a space to the group, and writer Alejo
225 In the early 1950s, these last three moved to Paris and along with several others formed Los
Disidentes, a pivot group in the history of Venezuelan art. For more on the group, see Ariel Jimnez, ed.
Alfredo Boulton and His Contemporaries (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2008).
226 The format of the Taller Libre was loosely modeled on Cubas Escuela Libre de Artes Plsticas (Free
School of Visual Arts), a studio founded by artist Eduardo Abela in 1938 as an alternative to the San
Alejandro Academy. To his friend Dewitt Peters, Gmez Sicre extolled the virtues of Abelas short-lived
enterprise (the studio lasted only one year). And he encouraged Peters to adapt a similar model when, in
1944, Peters created the Centre dArte, a gallery and artist workshop in Port-au-Prince designed to exhibit
and promote contemporary Haitian art. Central to this project was Gmez Sicres belief in the connection
between modernism and primitive painting: he believed that they shared an anti-academicism. The
primitive, by Gmez Sicres definition, worked with an intuitive approach and was unschooled,
inherently untainted by formal art academies. In contrast, the modern artist had undergone academic
training, but rejected the lessons that he or she viewed as dogmatic. My thanks go to art historian Gerard
Alexis, whose research on the Centre dArte reveals the influence of Gmez Sicre and the Escuela Libre de
Artes Plasticas. Alexis spoke about the Centre dArte in a lecture Voodoo and Haitian Contemporary Art,
10 March 2010, the University of Texas at Austin.
227 La Caraballo, Taller Libre de Arte, 1948/1952 (Caracas: Museo Jacobo Borges, 1997), 5.
109
Carpentier, who lived close to the workshop and would drop in when he was not working
on his novel, The Kingdom of This World. Gmez Sicre also wrote some letters of advice
to the young artists, which were published in his art column in El Nacional. In these
letters, he urged the students to remain committedly avant-garde.228 You form part of
culture that opens new paths with your non-conformity, he wrote. The worst that can
happen to a generation that begins a fight, is to perceive that they have adapted to and are
satisfied with their predecessors.Because of this, it appears to me socially noble that
you feel unsatisfied with the previous state of visual art in your country. Non-
conformity implies revision, evaluation and even when values begin to root themselves in
the historic future, it is necessary that, in the moment, you question them.229
Gmez Sicres success creating the Taller Libre was partly a result of timing:
there was an immense optimism in Venezuela surrounding Gallegos election. According
to art critic Marta Traba, the artists of the Taller, like most Venezuelans, wanted to forget
the pastespecially the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gmez, which lasted from 1908 to
1935and instead wished to concentrate on the future. With Gallegos at the helm, it
seemed like there was a cultural opening; the artists felt they could break free from
academic traditions and create a new Venezuelan art. However, Traba argues that despite
their own wishes, the artists of the Taller Libre were more linked with the past than with
228 Drafts of Gmez Sicres two open letters to the Taller Libre appear in folder 23, box 1, JGS Papers. For
a published version of the second letter, see Jos Gmez Sicre, Notas de arte: carta abierta a los jvenes
del Taller Libre [de Arte] (II) in Fuentes documentales y crticas de las artes plsticas venezolanas: siglos
XIX y XX, ed. Roldn Esteva-Grillet (Caracas:Universidad Central de Venezuela, Concejo de Desarrollo
Cientfico y Humanstico, 2001), 1059-1066.
229 Ibid.
110
the future.230 She explains that they remained formally conservative; they painted
landscapes, portraits, and still-life, all of which Traba calls, modest genre scenes that
referred, without the least bit of subversive spirit, to the expectations of the petit
bourgeoisie.231 She points out that for artists Mateo Manaure, Pascual Navarro, and
Alejandro Oterowho together formed the art group Los Disidentestheir radical
aesthetic came later, during their time in Europe.
Alirio Oramas denied this kind of criticism as late as 1985, when he claimed that
We the artists of the Taller Libre combated decorative taste.232 This statement comes
from an essay where the artist foregrounds the role of workshop in artistic practice:
For the artist the workshop is a defined and sacred space.All the things
that surround the contour of the site influence the artist.
The workshop is the hidden side of the artist. His or her playground. The
spectator, when he or she sees the work, sees it finished, completed, but has no
idea of the intimacy that existed between the work and the artist, and even less of
the factors that could have influenced, determined, the creation of the work.
The workshop is something very important for discovering the unknown
facets of an artist. In the history of Venezuelan painting there is a tremendous
flaw, a terrible gap, and it is that no importance has been given to anything but the
product made by its creator, to something called the picture.233
From these statements we see that Oramas and Traba present radically different points of
view. Trabas criticisms about the Taller are persuasive when considering the formal
qualities of the work, which consisted largely of still-life and genre scenes. But to be fair
230 Marta Traba, Venezuela, como se forma una plstica hegemnica, Re-Vista: Del arte y la
arquitectura en Colombia. [Bogota] vol. 1, no. 1, April-June, 1978: 5.
231 Ibid.
232 Alirio Oramas, Del Taller de Alirio Oramas Hoy (Caracas: Galeria de Arte Nacional, 1985),
republished as Yo he sido toda mi vida un investigador. No me considero un pintor convencional de
cabellete, in Alirio Oramas: Del misterio a las revelaciones. Exposicin antolgica, 1946-2005. (Caracas:
Galeria de Arte Nacional, 2005), 16.
233 Ibid., 15.
111
to Oramas, Trabas criticism is entirely based on judging the Tallers outputthe
paintings themselves. Taking Oramas statements seriously, a key aspect to consider
about the Taller Libre was the experience of the workshop.234 Ultimately, it was in the
Taller Libre where Venezuelas young artists began to think of themselves differently.
Gmez Sicres Pan-American Exhibition of Modern Painting was a chance for many of
them to see an earlier generation of modernists from across the Americas. There were
works from the 1930s and early 1940s by pioneers like Joaqun Torres-Garca, Emilio
Pettoruti, Cndido Portinari, Amelia Pelez, Jos Clemente Orozco, and Diego Rivera,
alongside more contemporary works by their Venezuelan colleagues, Alejandro Otero,
Hctor Poleo, and Armando Revern. The exhibition confirmed to them that they were
not alone. That, in fact, there was a history of modern art within Latin America.
Long after Gmez Sicre had left, the Taller Libre continued to create exhibitions
in homage to Latin American modern artists, including a homage to Orozco, exhibitions
of Armando Reverns work, and the first exhibition of Argentine concrete art in
Venezuela. Alirio Oramas said he organized the show of Jos Mim Mena and Concrete
artists in 1948, in reaction to what was coming to Venezuela from Paris at that moment,
specifically Alejandro Oteros Cafeteras [series].
234 Many of the articles published about the Taller during its heyday focus on the social atmosphere of the
place. For instance, when a journalist from El Nacional asked some members of the group, Why is the
Taller important? The artists stared him down: Are you joking? they said. Finally one artist answered,
Above all else, it serves as a place to get togetherfor young people with artistic vocations to exchange
ideas, to discuss, to study.It meansand this is the most importantthe first step towards creating a
coordinated art movement. See Un Taller Libre Para los Pintores y Artistas Independientes Acord Crear
el Ministerio de Educacin Puede ser el Comienzo de un Movimiento Plstico Coordinado, folder,
1948, box Venezuelan Art, AMA Archives.
112
Its worth mentioning that what figures like Gmez Sicre and Oramas saw as Pan
American potential, Otero and Los Disidentes took in a different direction: for them, the
Taller provided an intellectual pathway to Europe, specifically Paris. According to
Mateo Manaure, the Taller Libre raised the visibility of the arts in Caracas, and enabled
artists to get scholarships to travel abroad. He says The workshop reinforced Los
Disidentes. It pioneered something that was brewing but could not be done in Venezuela,
the more appropriate place was Paris.235 Because of the tremendous influence of the
Los Disidentes, the Taller Libre has long since been understood as a stepping stone to
Europe. But we can read it as much more than that: the exhibition of Jos Mimo Mena,
like Gmez Sicres Pan American exhibition, offer another indication of the Taller
Libres value; it was not simply a point of departure, but a chance for Venezuelan artists
to see themselves as part of a Latin American modernist tradition. Oramas recalls that
before he organized the concrete art exhibition, he and Mimo Mena both agreed that Paris
was not the only origin point for abstraction. They spoke of Oteros Cafetera series and
Mimo Mena said, These people come from Paris and bring that? No buddy, Ive got
this. He then showed books and photographs of Madi works to Oramas, who became
excited about putting together an exhibition at the Taller. It was the first time in my life
that I saw a manifesto, recalled Oramas.236 Perhaps Oramas meant this literally: that this
was the first time he saw a written manifesto. Or, perhaps, he meant it metaphorically:
235Caraballo, Taller Libre de Arte, 1948/1952, 6.

236Alirio Oramas and Ernesto J. Guevara, Entrevista, in Alirio Oramas: Del misterio a las relevaciones;
Galeria de Arte Nacional; Exposicin antolgica, 1946-2005 (Caracas, Venezuela: Galeria de Arte
Nacional, 2005), 55.
113
that concrete art aesthetically constituted its own manifesto, for it attested that abstract art
was not merely a European import, but a phenomenon rooted in South America.
FROM NETWORK TO CENTER
Gmez Sicre had hopes of creating other artist workshops across Latin
America.237 However, the Taller Libre in Caracas was the only one he was able to
successfully launch. With the rise of democracy in Venezuela, Gmez Sicre could
effectively draw a parallel between the political liberty promised by Gallegoss
administration and the promise of creative liberty for Venezuelan artists. In effect, this
was a reversal of the intellectual operation as outlined by Bourdieu: Gmez Sicre was
channeling events taking place on the political field to generate a cultural outcome. The
Taller Libre played to the creative interests of the artists and the democratic beliefs of
both the newly formed OAS and the Gallegos administration. But democracy in
Venezuela did not last: after nine months in office, the Gallegos administration was
overtaken by a military coup. Another democratic election would not take place in the
country until 1958. The Taller Libre persisted until 1952, but it no longer seemed a site of
innovation, instead, it became a place of refuge.
The overthrow of the Gallegos government was the forerunner to a series of
events in the 1950s and 1960s across Latin America that called into question the Pan
American ideals promoted by Gmez Sicre and the institution for which he worked. The
237 Ramon Osuna, interview with the author, 20 February 2009.

114
most notable of these include the OAS tacit approval of the U.S.-led overthrow of the
Guatemalan government in 1954, the adoption of the trade embargo against Cuba in
1962, and the OASs involvement in the U.S. occupation of Santo Domingo in 1965.
Adding to the general distrust of cultural activities of the OAS, a flurry of news reports
appeared in the mid-1960s revealing that the U.S. government was engaging in cultural
espionage, bankrolling organizations like the Congress for Cultural Freedom and funding
literary magazines such as Encounter, Cuadernos, and Mundo Nuevo to promote right-
wing interests.238
Throughout these events, Gmez Sicres rhetoric of a Pan-American network
remained resolute, but his ideals seemed increasingly detached from reality. Andrea
Giunta notes that the emphatic and insistent discourse that called for the definitive
abolition of centers, which Gmez Sicre reiterated in the pages of the OASs Bulletin of
Visual Arts, revealed, little by little, its fictional structure.239 She outlines a set of
paradigmatic shifts in the mid- to late 1960s that had serious repercussions for those
working in the cultural field, two of which deserve special mention: changes in artistic
practice and changes in the concept of the intellectual. The rise in pop art, happenings,
installation, performance and conceptual art presented modernist art critics like Gmez
Sicre with a challenge. Giunta explains:
238The New York Times broke the story on April 26, 1966 in the article Electronic Prying Grows: CIA Is
Spying From 100 Miles Up; Satellites Probe Secrets of the Soviet Union ELECTRONIC AIDS TO
PRYING GROW Two Nations Vie in Cosmic Survelillance Earthbound Gadgetry Developed Too The
New York Times, 26 April 1966, 1. Available through ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York
Times (1851-2008), [ProQuest document ID: 03624331] . For an overview on the scholarly literature on
this topic, refer to note 177.
239 Giunta, Avant-Garde, Internationalism, and Politics, 224.
115
It was not possible to consider pop art, the happenings, or mass-media art in terms
of the modernist canon. It was not a question of evolution or of rupture in order to
expand the base. Rather, it was a new situation in which art could no longer be
thought of in terms of language or composition. From that movement forward, art
would also be viewed as a system whose communicative matrixes did not depend
upon surfaces, but rather on other materials that had invaded its territory: popular
culture, new technologies, language sciences, and the means of communication.240
While critics like Jorge Romero Brest and Marta Traba actively took the steps to
understand pop art, happenings, and mass-media art, Gmez Sicre never developed the
critical framework necessary to appreciate these modes of art making. He remained
committed to traditional forms of painting, sculpture, drawing, and printmaking. This was
in large part a personal choice, but also one reinforced by the conservatism of the
institution where he worked; for instance, as late as 1968 higher-ups at the OAS were
fearful about nudity in art, canceling an exhibition of Puerto Rican artist Rafael
Villamils work because his collages, made from magazine clippings, included images of
nude men and women.241
These changes in artistic practice in the 1960s coincided with major changes in
the concept of the intellectual. Citing the influence of writers like Jean-Paul Sartre,
Raymond Williams, and Pierre Bourdieu, Giunta tracks a conceptual shift where artists
were increasingly identified as (and understood themselves to be) intellectuals, politically
engaged in shaping the social sphere. This transformation culminated in the global
student movements of 1968a period when artists and protestors became conceptually
240Ibid., 256.
241See Exhibit With Nudes Canceled, The Washington Post 5 July 1968, B3. Available online through
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Washington Post (1877-1995).
116
aligned in their critique of government authority, the news media, and art institutions.242
Under these circumstances, Gmez Sicres insistent claims of autonomy or
objectivity no longer held the traction they once did. They only contributed to the
growing distrust of institutions such as the OAS. In the 1950s and early 1960s, Gmez
Sicre worked to establish Washington as a key destination in his imagined art circuit.
Eventually, by the 1970s he had to reformulate his goals: he turned his attention to
building a center for art instead of a network for artists, which culminated in his creation
of the Museum of Modern Art of Latin America in 1976.
242For further discussion of these transformations, see Giunta, Avant-Garde, Internationalism, and
Politics, 244-290.
117
Conclusion: A Museum Personified
It seems ironic that Jos Gmez Sicre, despite his many statements about the
universality of art and its ability to cross geographic and cultural boundaries, can be
credited as the creator of one of the first regionally-specific art museums in the United
States. For years, the Museum of Modern Art of Latin America has stood as a sort of
orphan art museum along the national mall, overshadowed by national monuments, the
Smithsonian Institution, and the nearby Corcoran Gallery of Art. But the museum
represents the first step in a legacy that continues to shape the physical and intellectual
landscape of Washington, DC: in 2004 the Smithsonian Institution completed the
National Museum of the American Indian, and plans are underway to create separate
museums dedicated to African American, Latino, and Latin American culture and art.
The founding of the Museum of Modern Art of Latin America was defined by ideological
contradictions and compromises. Even in its title, the museums Pan American
underpinnings were downplayed: the Museum of Modern Art of Latin America separates
out Latin America from the rest of the hemisphere.243
Certainly, by creating a museum dedicated to the exhibition of modern art, Gmez
Sicre had accomplished a long sought-after goal. After joining the Pan American Union
in 1946, he had spent a decade making do with the space afforded to him. And between
1957 and 1976, he had successfully used the gallery in the basement of the OAS main
buildingin 1963, art critic Frank Getlein had even referred to the place as an oasis in
243Only within the last decade has the museum been renamed Art Museum of the Americas to appear
more inclusive.
118
the desert of the Washington, DC arts scene.244 For years, these exhibitions flourished
and brought international attention to the OAS, despite the fact that the gallery and
offices of the Visual Arts Division were literally subterranean.
In 1976, Gmez Sicre founded the Museum of Modern Art of Latin America.
However, despite a new museum building, his shows lacked the visibility once held in
earlier times. This museum is just like the Freer used to be: Nobodys in it, writes Jo
Ann Lewis in a 1980 article for The Washington Post. 245 As recently as June 2012 The
Washingon Post called the museum the Miss Havisham of the Washington art scene
saying Its rich with assets but concealed from public view.246 What accounts for this
persistent invisibility? According to curator Flix ngel, who worked at the Art Museum
of the Americas from 1978 to 1989, the trouble stemmed from Gmez Sicres narrow
vision: he only petitioned for the funds to renovate the OAS Casa de las Americas
building into a museum building, but made no attempt to enlarge the staff under him and
expand the museum into specialized departments (curatorial, educational, development,
archival). In ngels opinion, Gmez Sicre become complaisant in his position at the
OAS by the mid-1970s, using his intimate knowledge of OAS bureaucracy towards
achieving more selfish endsnamely, avoiding retirement and maintaining his power as
director of the museum, until he was forced to retire in the early 1980s.247
244 This statement by Frank Getlein, art critic of the Evening Star, was cited by Luis Lastra in Summer
without Smoke, Art of the Americas Bulletin 1 (1966), 27-28.
245 Jo Ann Lewis, Washingtons Lost Latin American Art The Washington Post, 8 July 1980, B9.
246 Stephanie Merry, Art Museum of the Americas opens Constellations, The Washington Post, Friday
22 June 2012. Available online: http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/art-museum-of-
the-americas-opens-constellations/2012/06/21/gJQACMxBvV_story.html
247 Flix ngel, interview with the author, 23 February 2010.
119
Even Gmez Sicre seemed to recognize that the resulting museum was a far cry
from early dreams. Years after the museum was built, he lamented:
In retrospect, as I reflect on my own contribution, I realize that more could have

been done. It is like wanting to develop an airplane factory and ending up with a
bicycle shop. One always wants to have what one loves the most to be appreciated
and unconditionally supported by everyone, in this particular case, especially by
the political institutions that purport to serve that cause. Reality is at times
disheartening.248
His wistful statements express both his desires for acceptance of Latin American culture
and for its potential to circulate. It also suggests his disillusionment about his own ability
to transport art; according to his metaphor, he had failed at creating cultural vehicles that,
like airplanes, were self-propelled, could travel long distances, or fly in coordinated,
military-like formations. Instead he had unexpectedly created a modest place for repairs
and temporary upkeep, a bicycle shop, a place where the vehicle in question could travel
only in small circuits, through immense physical and individual effort.
For artists, curators, and critics interested in Latin American art, the museum
became completely synonymous with Gmez Sicrea personification of his tastes, his
politics, and his flaws. By the time the Museum of Modern Art of Latin America was
founded, Gmez Sicre and the Visual Arts Division had lost their symbolic power, and
had been discredited as pawns in an imperialist project. As ngel points out, Gmez
Sicre made no effort to grow or reform the institution. It seems the critic was torn
between his global ambitions and his desire to maintain all aspects of the museum within
arms reach. He liked the idea of a museum personified by its director. Writing a
248 Jos Gmez Sicre, Foreword, Contemporary Latin American Artists; Exhibitions of the Organization
of American States 1941-1964, ed., Annick Sanjurjo (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1997), v.
120
homage about Alfred Barr, Gmez Sicre expresses of the nostalgia for the museums
early dayswhen it was defined entirely by Barr. Gmez Sicre expresses his relief that,
although the museum grew to unfathomable stature, it did not become the monster
created by Dr. Frankenstein, but remained true to the vision of its founder; he reminds
his readers that The Museum was the idea of a man, a man of singular modesty despite
his exceptional intelligence and sensitivity, whose name is Alfred H. Barr.249
There is no doubt that the Museum of Modern Art of Latin America was
inextricably tied to its founder. But, his cultural work was not single-handed. Rather, it
developed within a specific artistic community around the Visual Arts Division and
through relationships (some collaborative, some divisive) with fellow critics in the U.S.
and Latin America. Part II of this dissertation continues my endeavor to widen the view
of the OASs involvement in exhibiting and promoting Latin American art, by focusing
on the work of Rafael Squirru, poet and art critic who worked as Gmez Sicres
supervisor at the OAS in the 1960s and presented a different Pan-American framework
for the arts.
249 Jos Gmez Sicre, Al lector, Boletn de Artes Visuales 16: 10. It is worth noting that Gmez Sicres
characterization of the OAS museum as airplane factory recalls the famous analogy made by Alfred Barr
between the collection of the Museum of Modern Art and a torpedo moving through timeboth analogies
draw on industrial and militaristic metaphors to describe the museums role. See Kirk Varnadoe, The
Evolving Torpedo: Changing Ideas of the Collection of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern
Art, in The Museum of Modern Art at Mid-Century: Continuity and Change, ed. John Elderfield, Studies
in Modern Art 5 (New York: Museum of Modern, 1995).
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PART II: RAFAEL SQUIRRU AND THE DEPARTMENT OF
CULTURAL AFFAIRS
Introduction: Phantom Museums and New Men

In 1956, the Argentine poet and art critic Rafael Squirru founded the Museum of
Modern Art of Buenos Aires (MAMBA).250 The institution, for its first four years, existed
in name only, with no galleries or collection. It was a one-man operation, shaped entirely
by Squirru. One never knew where a MAMBA exhibition would turn up or what artists it
might include; Squirru organized some shows in galleries around town or improvised
others in friends homes. Local news reports from the period suggest that some porteos
took notice of Squirrus exhibitions and applauded him for bringing attention to the citys
contemporary art.251 Still, Squirru wished that his institutionso impressively named a
Museum of Modern Arthad its own brick-and-mortar museum, one that would help
legitimize his activities. Even his friends teased him about it: they referred to Squirru as
the Director of the Phantom Museum, a title he was eager to refute.
By 1960, he had arranged a permanent gallery for the museum in the Teatro
General San Martn, the citys newest theater for the performing arts. That same year
Squirru was named Argentinas Director of Cultural Relationsa position he held for
two years under the administration of President Arturo Frondizi while also continuing his
250 From 1956 to 1989, the Museo de Arte Moderna de Buenos Aires was abbreviated MAM. When the
museum relocated to its present location in San Telmo in 1989, the institution began referring to itself as
MAMBA. For consistency, I use the contemporary abbreviation, MAMBA, throughout this chapter.
251 Porteo is a Spanish term to refer to residents of Buenos Aires, meaning living in or from the port
city. The MAMBA archives contains clippings from newspapers including the Buenos Aires Herald,
Clarn, Los Diarios, Primera Plana,and La Razn, which highlight Squirrus activities and travels on
behalf of the museum dating in the late 1950s and 1960s. See the actividades folders (arranged by year),
Biblioteca y Centro de Documentacin, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Argentina (Hereafter
MAMBA Archives).
122
work as head of MAMBA. The government position was an honorary one and came with
no salary. But Squirru used it as a stepping stone, an opportunity to travel and to arrange
more exhibitions of Argentine art abroad. In 1962, he was asked to serve as Director of
Cultural Affairs at the OAS, a position he held from 1963 to 1970.
Shortly after joining the OAS, Squirru published The Challenge of the New Man:
A Cultural Approach to the Latin American Scene (1964), a booklet that reproduces four
speeches he delivered in his first year in Washington, DC. In these speeches, Squirru lays
out his philosophy about art and its relationship to politics. At the time, the OAS was
responsible for administering the Alliance for Progress, a program launched in 1961 by
President John F. Kennedy, who pledged that the U.S. would invest approximately
twenty billion dollars of economic aid in Latin America within the decade. In The
Challenge of the New Man, Squirru insists that for policies like the Alliance to work, they
must have a cultural component. He highlights the role Latin American intellectuals,
artists, and poets must play in creating free and democratic societies in the midst of the
Cold War. Latin America is underdeveloped economically and socially, writes Squirru,
but Latin America is not underdeveloped culturally. In fact, Latin American countries
have a lot to offer in the realm of creative achievement. Some of the best artists,
composers, writers, and intellectuals can be found in Latin America.These men are the
new men.252
This term new man repeatedly appears in Squirrus writing and in his
statements to the press from the 1950s and 1960s. In isolation, its meaning may seem
252 Squirru, The Challenge of the New Man, 15-16.

123
obscure; Squirru offered few specific explanations for it, instead employing poetic and
tautological explanations, such as in his statement above that the best artists, composers,
writers, and intellectualsare new men. To understand his thoughts on the new man
requires us to look at his statements in relation to their historical and geographic contexts.
(Hereafter I dispense with the quotation marks around new man, though I still consider it
a historical phrase, and a problematic one at that.) Squirru used the phrase regularly, but
at no point was the rhetoric of the new man exclusively his own. Rather it formed part of
much broader discourse, attached to international debates about modernism at mid-
century.253
In the next two chapters, I contextualize Squirrus statements about the new man,
highlighting how his use of the phrase differed between Argentina and the United States.
In Chapter Three, I examine the terms relevance in Buenos Aires in the 1950s for
Squirru and for his colleagues. I argue that the new man played a key role in Squirrus
253 We might consider the new man an offshoot of what art historian Michael Leja, in his study of Abstract
Expressionism in New York in the 1940s and 1950s, calls Modern Man discourse. According to Leja, the
violence of the twentieth century, especially World War I and II, raised fundamental questions across the
Western Hemisphere about the nature of mankind; he coins the phrase Modern Man discourse to refer to
the preponderance of material in the U.S. concerned with what it meant to be a modern man, material
especially from popular culture that he argues exhibit a cohesive set of anxieties about the inner-self,
particularly the minds primitive and unconscious components, and the human predilection for destruction.
Leja notes that discussions of the modern man took a variety of forms and usages, but professionals from
across various disciplines, whether they were art critics, anthropologists, journalists, philosophers,
psychologists, sociologists, or theologists, all tended to speak of the modern man as an ideal and in
heroic terms. They consistently cast the modern man as white, heterosexual, and male; and they
described modern men as individuals aware of their own subjectivity, who kept the dark sides of their
unconscious at bay, and in doing so, were defined by their enlarged capacity for containing evil,
destructive, and inexplicable behavior (Leja 16). Essentially, Leja uses Modern Man discourse to
ground the work of Abstract Expressionists in a particular time and placepositing their paintings as
artifacts produced not in isolation from mass culture, but in dialogue with it. Not only did Abstract
Expressionist painters, like Gottlieb, Pollock, Newman, Rothko, and Still, speak about subjectivity in
relation to their work, they themselves were continually cast as modern men, able to vent their primal,
violent, and masculine urges through the creative outlet of painting. See Michael Leja, Reframing Abstract
Expressionism: Subjectivity and Painting in the 1940s (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).
124
curatorial strategy as he founded the MAMBA; he used the phrase to describe
contemporary Argentine artists, who he believed could restore Argentinas international
reputation after World War II and the overthrow of Juan Domingo Pern.
Next, in Chapter Four, I discuss Squirrus arrival in Washington, DC and explain
how his concept of the new man increasingly became tied to the politics of the Cold War
and his conception of John F. Kennedy. Through his continued use of new man rhetoric,
he sought to build publicity and what he called mystique around the Alliance for
Progress, and at the same time, he hoped to counter Ch Guevaras socialist interpretation
of the phrase. While Squirru spoke of the new man to address issues of art and
democracy, Guevara was using the phrase to describe a generation of socialist
revolutionaries inspired by the Cuban Revolution. I argue that Squirru and Guevara
promoted competing embodiments of the new man: Squirru generated an image of
Kennedy as the embodiment of the new man, while Guevara framed Fidel Castro as one.
I focus on how Squirru and Guevara separately applied the concept to visual art, arguing
that their philosophies relied on different imaginings of Pan Americanism and the
potential for Latin American culture to create transnational alliances.
Throughout these two chapters I also underscore how Squirrus concept of the
new man dovetailed with his desire to create museums to showcase Latin American art. I
see museum-making as a key thread running through Squirrus work in Argentina and
Washington. Long after he was nicknamed Director of the Phantom Museum, Squirru
found his ideals and objectives still haunted by museums; and through his efforts to build
125
museum institutionswhat he called the new house for the new manwe see how he
set his idea of culture against the models proposed by Pern and by Guevara.
126
Chapter Three: The New Man Movement in Buenos Aires
Four years before Rafael Squirru established the MAMBA in the Teatro San
Martin, his Phantom Museum took the form of a giant steam ship named the Yapey
(Figure 16). The ship, which carried in its cabins the first exhibition organized under the
auspices of the MAMBA, left the port of Buenos Aires in late September 1956 for a six-
month voyage around the world; it stopped at twenty three different cities including
Capetown, Durban, Havana, Honolulu, Jakarta, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Montevideo,
New Orleans, Osaka, Rio de Janeiro, Shanghai, and San Francisco, among others. Squirru
did not accompany the exhibition. Instead he asked his friend, the artist and set designer
Cecilio Madanes, to oversee it on its journey; at each port of call, Madanes was supposed
to have a banner unfurled along the side of the boat proclaiming it the first Floating
Exhibition of Modern Art; he also was supposed to invite locals to come aboard and see
the show, which included works by fifty different Argentine painters.254 This exhibition
has since become a symbolic origin point for the MAMBA, one that highlights the
innovative methods Squirru employed to gain international recognition for contemporary
Argentine art.255 Launched exactly one year after the overthrow of Juan Domingo Pern,
the floating exhibition was also emblematic of the intense optimism among porteos
254 Cecilio Madanes (1921-2000) is best known for founding the Teatro Caminito, where he staged street
performances in the La Boca neighborhood of Buenos Aires.
255 The exhibition onboard the Yapey has been highlighted by Andrea Giunta, Avant-Garde,
Internationalism, and Politics, 68-69. In an interview between Squirru and Giunta, Squirru mentions
Cecilio Madanes role as co-organizer of the exhibition, and the sign that ran the length of the boat, see
Avant-Garde, Internationalism, and Politics, 311, 34n. Curator and art historian Beverly Adams also
discusses the exhibition in her dissertation, Locating the International: Art of Brazil and Argentina in the
1950s and 1960s (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, December 2000), 102-113.
127
involved with the arts, many of whom had been frustrated by eight years of Peronism; the
boats launch, seen in the context of the post-Pern years, situates Squirrus curatorial
projects within a specific historical and political milieuone which would affect his later
work for the OAS.
Under Pern, the Argentine government generally maintained a conservative
attitude towards literature and art. During his first two presidential terms (1946-1952,
1952-1955), Pern garnered wide support from the countrys urban and rural working
class, while he maintained a tense, even adversarial relationship with the Argentine upper
class and its intellectuals.256 Perns extensive propaganda campaigns infused official
formulations of culture with imagery of the president and first lady, Eva Pern, and
slogans glorifying Perns Justicialist party. Art historian Ana Pozzi Harris indicates that,
in the early 1950s, there was an overbearing presence of Peronist images in Buenos
Aires which made it impossible to avoid pro-Pern propaganda in the course of ones
everyday life.257 Images of the Perns appeared on posters, billboards, pamphlets,
newspapers, magazines, as well as in school books. Likewise, Peronist mottos were
anonymously spray-painted throughout the city. Pozzi Harris notes that porteos were
256 The literature on Pern is vast. For a primer on Perns political and social policies, see Luis Alberto
Romeros acclaimed book, A History of Argentina in the Twentieth Century, trans. James P. Brennan
(University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University, 2003). For a cultural perspectives on Peronism, see
The New Cultural History of Peronism: Power and Identity in Mid-Twentieth-Century Argentina, ed.
Matthew B. Karush and Oscar Chamosa (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010) and Marano Ben
Plotkin, Maana es San Pern: A Cultural History of Perns Argentina (New York: Rowman and
Littlefield, 2002). Contemporary artist Daniel Santoro has created a large body of work in response to the
Peronist propaganda that shaped his adolescence. See Daniel Santoro, Manual del nio peronista/ Textbook
of the Peronist Child (Buenos Aires: La Marca, 2002) and Horacio Gonzlez, Eduardo Lopez, Daniel
Santoro, and Guido Indij, Pern Willing!: Classic Peronist Graphics (Buenos Aires: La Marca, 2006)
257Ana Pozzi Harris, Marginal Disruptions: Concrete and Mad Art in Argentina, 1940-1955 (Ph.D. diss.,
University of Texas, 2007), 152.
128
also bombarded by Perns frequent radio speeches, and by agit-prop cars that drove
around the city playing slogans and speech excerpts.258
In this context, the intellectual elite struggled to carve out their own cultural niche
distinct from the mass Peronist culture that surrounded them. Several scholars refer to the
situation as interior exile to describe how artists and intellectuals created networks
within the city where they could live and work in an insulated environment, hiding away
from the dominant culture.259 The Pern regime repeatedly attempted to humiliate its
opponents: for instance in 1946 the writer Jorge Luis Borges was fired from his post as
cataloguer at the Miguel Can municipal library for openly criticizing the government
and he was promoted to Inspector of Poultry at a public marketplacehe declined the
position.260
The coup dtat that ended the Pern presidency in September 1955 signaled
positive changes for artists and intellectuals. Under the new provisional government set
up by General Eduardo Lonardi, leader of the Revolucin Libertatora that toppled the
Pern government, Borgess reputation was restored as he was appointed the director of
258 For more on the propaganda and mass culture associated with Peronism, see Ana Pozzi Harris, 149-154.
259 Literary historian John King was the first to describe a internal exile that affected Victoria Ocampo
and many of the Argentine writers contributing to Sur magazine in the 1950s who lived in fear of
censorship and/or incarceration if they openly criticized the regime. See John King, Sur: A Study of the
Argentine Literary Journal and Its Role in the Development of Culture, 1931-1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1986), 131. Art historian Andrea Giunta expands on Kings concept of internal exile,
(which is translated as interior exile in the English version of her book) noting its impact on those
involved with the visual arts, such as art critic Jorge Romero Brest, founder of the magazine Ver y Estimar.
According to Giunta, the magazine become something close to a laboratory for Romero Brest and his
circle, a place where they promoted those aesthetic and cultural values that they believed were being
marginalized under Pern. Giunta, Avant-Garde, Internationalism, and Politics, 170.
260 Francisca Folch, Jorge Luis Borges muses on his desert island book selections Cultural Compass
Blog, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Tuesday, February 8, 2011.
http://www.utexas.edu/opa/blogs/culturalcompass/2011/02/08/jorge-luis-borges-muses-on-his-desert-
island-book-selections/ [Accessed 4 March 2011]
129
the Biblioteca Nacional. Likewise, art critic Jorge Romero Brest, another who had
remained in interior exile under Pern, became director of the Museo Nacional de
Bellas Artes, perhaps the most prominent position for officially redefining the aesthetics
associated with his country. According to Andrea Giunta, the post-Pern period
represented a time, for some sectors, of historical revenge, as artists and critics like
Romero Brest attempted to instill cultural values they believed would delegitimize
Peronism and its legacy.261 She notes that it was a period also characterized by a sense of
euphoria shared between intellectuals and government officials; for instance, Carlos
Adrogu, the new Minister of Education, gave an impression of this optimism when he
proclaimed at the opening of the 1955 National Salon that the Revolucin Libertadora
has brought us before a new Renaissance.262
Squirru, like the majority of those involved in the citys art scene, was critical of
Pern.263 Yet, whereas his contemporaries lived in interior exile, Squirru first
developed his impressions of the leader while living abroad from 1946 to 1949, attending
the University of Edinburgh in Scotland to earn a law degree. In post-war Britain, he
likely encountered a general dislike for Peronism and sensed that Argentinas
261 Giunta, Avant-Garde, Internationalism, and Politics, 26. She explains that artists and critics in the post-
Peronist period tended to characterize cultural life under Pern by dictatorship, tyranny, attacks against
freedom, international isolation, demagogy, populism, the lack of aesthetic values. What characterized
the various discourses on the visual arts in the post-Peronist period was the degree of agreement prevailing
over what the next program should be. The agenda was primarily focused on reestablishing conditions
considered necessary for artistic production: absolute freedom for creators, openness to the international
scene, modernization of languages.Novelty, youth, and internationalism would be the key words upon
which institutional projects would be organized with increasing frequency. Ibid., 58-59.
262 Inaugurse ayer el saln de Bellas Artes con la asistencia de Aramburu y Rojas, El Mundo,
December 6, 1956, 8; cited in Giunta, Avant-Garde, Internationalism, and Politics, 57.
263 In a letter to Argentine poet and journalist Miguel Grinberg, Squirru mentions his participation in an
early student protest opposing Perns run for presidency. The letter is republished in its entirety in Eloisa
Squirru, Tan Rafael Squirru!, 158-162.
130
international reputation had become tarnished for providing a safe-haven for Nazi war
criminalsa topic likely touched upon during his discussions with his fellow law
students and professors about the Nuremburg trials.264 After he graduated from
Edinburgh in 1949, Squirru returned to Buenos Aires, but refused to practice law because
he felt that under Pern the legal system was broken.265 Instead, he earned a living
teaching English, and immersed himself in the arts.
Squirru and his friends believed that Perns exile in 1955 signaled, like Carlos
Adrogu stated, the start of a new Renaissance. They latched onto the term new
man, which, like the word Renaissance, relates to rebirth. The new man is an
evangelical notion, Squirru told me in July 2010, adding that he considers the term tied
to the concept of rebirth: When Nicodemus asks Christ how to save himself, he states
that you must be reborn. The second birth, says Squirru, is a spiritual rebirth.266 A
theological thread runs through much of Squirrus art criticism. In Buenos Aires, he and
264 Among the important figures that Rafael Squirru met at Edinburgh, Eloisa Squirru mentions her fathers
contact with Judge Cooper, called The hanging judge because of his determining role in the then recent
Nuremburg trials. Tan Rafael Squirru!, 39. I have been unable to find any judge by that name in the
scholarly literature on the Nuremburg trials. However, the anecdote does suggest that the trials were a
central topic of discussion at the University of Edinburgh. For a discussion of British critical attitudes
toward Pern, see Roger Grevil, The Denigration of Peronism, in The Land that England Lost: Argentina
and Britain, a Special Relationship (ed. Alistair Hennessy and John King) (London and New York: I.B.
Taurus, 1993), 93-106. There were also strong anti-Peronist currents in the U.S.; see Victoria Allison,
White Evil: Peronist Argentina in the United States Imagination Since 1955, American Studies
International 42, no. 1 (February 2004): 4-48.
265 According to Eloisa Squirru, he ultimately abandoned his law career in response to a comment by one
of his professors at Edinburg: Squirru related to his daughter that, after proposing to write a comparative
study of the Argentine and British constitutions for a class, the professor looked at me very seriously and
asked: In your country, do they respect the constitution? I was a bit disconcerted. I responded, not always.
Then pick another topic.in this period, I took myself very seriously...[and when] I returned to
Argentina, I felt that I could not practice a profession whose highest law was not respected. Eloisa
Squirru, Tan Rafael Squirru!, 43.
266 Rafael Squirru, interview with the author, 1 July 2010. During our interview, he spoke about his
Catholic upbringing, especially his education by Jesuits at the Saint Andrews Scot School in Buenos Aires,
and acknowledged the influence of Christianity on his intellectual thought.
131
his colleagues took the new man concept from its theological origins, incorporating it into
more secular discussions about the human spirit. He recalls that, in the late 1950s, he and
his friends met regularly to theorize and exchange ideas about the Hombre Nuevo, a
Pauline conception taken up successively throughout history, which, for us, went way
beyond the political connotations that others later attributed to that dynamic vision and
essentially humanist approach to the human condition.267 The group functioned like a
European salon; its participants included the poet and philosopher Fernando Demara,
with whom Squirru founded las Ediciones del Hombre Nuevo, a press through which they
published poetry; writers Federico Gonzlez Fras and Manolo Belloni, whose treatise on
the Hombre Nuevo was published by the MAMBA in 1959;268 artists Prez Calis,
Federico Martino, Leopoldo Presas, and Kenneth Kemble, and the art dealer Natalio
Jorge Povarch.269
The Hombre Nuevo (which they abbreviated H.N.) seemed a flexible term for
the group, taken up and used to different degrees by each member. Overall, the new man
related to their shared ideals about remaking Argentine society: it was a way for the
group to speak of a new consciousness they envisioned for their countrymen. All of them,
in one way or another, wished to transform the art of Argentina, wiping the slate clean of
267 Rafael Squirru, Kenneth Kemble: Ensayo crtico biogrfico. (Buenos Aires: Arte Gaglianone, 1987), 6.
Available online at: http://www.paseosimaginarios.com/artistadelmes/Kemble/notas1.html [Accessed 28
July 2011]
268 Bellonis book takes the form of a prose poem, divided into thirty-three cantos written in stream-of-
consciousness around the metaphor of the New Man. Belloni, himself introduces it as un poema, un
ensayo, un monogdilogo, un plan, un caos? (a poem, an essay, a monologue, a plan, a chaos? Manolo
Belloni. El Hombre Nuevo (Buenos Aires: Municipalidad de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Museo de Arte
Moderno, 1959). A copy of this book is located in folder Actividades 1959, MAMBA Archives.
269 Squirru, Kenneth Kemble: Ensayo crtico biogrfico, 32.
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Peronist culture. They saw the new man as the figure leading the transformation; Belloni,
for instance, writes that The H.N. affirms and shapes: he looks at the countrylike the
sculptor looks at raw stone.270 That Belloni compares the new man to a sculptor is
telling: he, like his colleagues, equated the new man with the artist. In his description,
the new man focuses his vision on his own country, on the national.
Squirru likewise wrote about the new man in terms of the nation. However, he
believed the new man should revamp not only the nation, but also international
perceptions of Argentina after Pern. In 1955, shortly after Perns departure from office,
Squirru published El hombre nuevo Solucin poltica argentina, in Demos
magazine.271 It is the first work where Squirru employed the phrase. In it, he describes the
new man as having both political independence and creative freedom. In terms of
politics, Squirru sees the new man as someone who remains above local party politics
and is aware of dangers of demagoguery (Squirru points to Pern as one such
demagogue). He also describes the new man as profoundly connected to the people; he
writes that the new man feels all mankind is linked in a common destiny and looks to
make a contribution, however modest it may be.272 Both of these aspectsa resistance
to party politics and a connection to the peoples common destinywere vital to
Squirrus use of the idea in the United States and also made the new man easily adaptable
with Pan-Americanism.
270 Belloni. El Hombre Nuevo, 6.

271Demos was published by the Ateneo de la Juventud Democrtica Argentina in the 1950s. The title is an
abbreviation for Democrats, but it also can be translated as an imperative Lets Do It!
272 Rafael Squirru, El hombre nuevo- Solucin poltica argentina, Demos 1955, 10-23, cited in Eloisa
Squirru, Tan Rafael Squirru!, 263.
133
In Squirrus formulation of the new man, the artist and intellectualfigures that
were relegated to the margins under Pernare presented as integral to society. Squirru
believed his country should be taken seriously as an innovator, producing original art,
and leading the latest international art movements.273 In Squirrus early writing it is clear
that he felt Argentinas artists were not only alienated by their own national politics, but
that they had few, if any, opportunities outside of Argentina. He often wrote that
Argentine artand Latin American art in generalseemed unjustly surrounded by
international derision and accusations of derivativeness.
His exhibition on the Yapey was laced with such concerns. Below I excerpt at
length Squirrus A Word of Introduction, from the pamphlet accompanying that
exhibition, because it speaks to the artistic and international character Squirru attributed
to Argentine painting and to the new man:
It is not easy to penetrate the soul of our everyday neighbor. Leaving aside the
question of our power of penetration, the fact is that reality lies always hidden
beneath forms deceitful in the measure of their obliviousness.
Many will consider the clothing of the better part of Argentine painters as derived
from one European school or another: some will sneer at the obvious fact that the
paternity of Picasso, or that of Klee or Mondrian may be detected, they will
eagerly look for the folkloric touch, and feel disappointed at the almost total
absence of gauchos in broad hats or beautiful seoritas or colourful indians.
273 Squirru did not explicitly tie his beliefs about Argentine modern art to a particular artistic style, but he
did champion the work of his colleagues in the New Man group; he repeatedly wrote about artists, such as
Kenneth Kemble, Antonio Berni, Alberto Greco, and Marta Minujn, who incorporated found objects and
detritus in their paintings, assemblages, and sculpturesworks he later referred to as the art of things.
Rather than rally behind certain formal tendencies, Squirru tended to focus his discussions of art and the
new man to emphasize Argentine originality and newness. See Rafael Squirru, Pop Art or the Art of
Things, Amricas, vol. 15, no. 7 (July 1963), 15-21.
134
Many travelers have reached our shores, only a few have glimpsed beyond our
fancy dress, which we carry like all men, only perhaps a bit more self-
consciously.
Friends have praised and enemies derided. We are touchy, we feel our nakedness,
we are not innocent, we have tasted the apple.
Although recently born we are not terribly young and often we find our latin
ancestors wonderfully nave and we feel nostalgic for our youth that took place
somewhere else, before we were born.
Wisdom is not precisely the treasure of the young, the new man is not the
adolescent: it is he born to new life [italics mine].We Argentines feel a special
vocation for that existence beyond forms; therefore observer look twice into our
eyes before judging our elusive spirit, mysterious even to ourselves. 274
In these statements, Squirru weaves his concerns about the judgments cast on Argentine
art with proclamations of its contemporariness, its modernity. He describes the artist/ new
man as new but not younga figure spiritually reborn, and wiser for it. He strikes
religious-inspired tones, claiming Argentines have tasted the applea metaphor to
suggest the artists of his country are both self-conscious and knowledgeable about the
world. And, here, as with his later writings, Squirru uses the Catholic-inspired metaphor
of the new man to speak of the spiritual power of modern art.
Beverly Adams and Andrea Giunta have read the Yapey exhibitionand the
activities of the MAMBA in generalas strategies designed to place Argentina into the
dominant discourse of modernism. Adams writes, Underlying the Exposicin flotante
and the Museo de Arte Modernos later traveling exhibitions was the notion that the mere
circulation of Argentinean art would transform it into international art.The export of
274 Rafael Squirru, Primera Exposicin Flotante de Cincuenta Pintores Argentinos (Buenos Aires: Museo
del Arte Moderno, 1956). A copy is located in AR-Fundacin Espigas. Exp. Colectiva
1956.09.28/1957.02.21, Fundacin Espigas, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
135
art and artists would, in turn, put Argentina on the art world map.275 Giunta, likewise,
describes the Yapey exhibition as a byproduct of Squirrus international ambitions; she
notes that for Squirru, the internationalization of Argentine art was a mission in which
he saw himself as a crusader committed to the conquest of a sacred territory.276 I fully
agree with these assessments. It is clear from Squirrus own words that he believed in
using art to penetrate the soul of those in Buenos Aires and other cultural metropolises.
And, that this transformation of the soul meant a transformation in perceptions of
Argentina from abroad.
While neither Adams nor Giunta address the new man concept, we can see that
the term fits well within Squirrus internationalist project. At bare minimum, it was a
rhetorical tool in his intellectual crusade. But I believe the new man was much more than
that: it was a central component to his curatorial strategy, the theoretical armature that
gave rise to the floating exhibition and to many of the MAMBA projects that followed. In
1960, when the museum finally acquired its own permanent gallery, he wrote that to
speak of the Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires is not to speak of one more
institution.It is a palace to lodge the new muse; it is the new house for the new
man.277 The statement is significant, for it reveals that in addition to Squirrus ambition
275Beverly Adams, Locating the International, 104.

276Andrea Giunta, Argentina in the World: Internationalist Nationalism in the Art of the 1960s in
Images of Power: Iconography, Culture, and State in Latin America, ed., Jens Andermann and William
Rowe (New York: Berghahn Books, 2005), 151.
277Squirrus statements appear in Primera Exposicin Internacional de Arte Moderna Argentina (Buenos
Aires: Direccin General de Cultura; Museo del Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 1961). A copy is located
under Ar-Fundacion Espigas-Kardex:Atlantida/1127, Fundacin Espigas, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
136
to internationalize art, there was the related, but distinct desire to create institutions, not
merely to circulate art.
In light of the new man, we can see Squirrus efforts to create the MAMBA as a
phenomenon very specific to Buenos Aires and to the philosophy of his circle of friends
in the post-Peronist era. By building a Museum of Modern Art, Squirru was encouraging
a drastically different way of experiencing art than under Pern. Rather than support a
mass culture that flooded the streets, he worked to centralize and institutionalize art into a
specific sitewhether it be a ship or a museum gallery. In characterizing the MAMBA as
a palace for the new man, he suggests that the museum could be home to artists and to
the public, a space that served a pedagogical function, intended to attract and shape the
new man from within the confines of an institution.
I expect it was not only Squirrus commitment to internationalism, but this desire
to build and work with institutions that made him a good fit for the OAS. Squirrus
concept of the new man evolved in Washington, DC in relation to the Alliance for
Progress. However, his faith in museums and their transformative power continued. So
too did his resistance to mass culture, which became his major point of contention with
Che Guevara and the Cuban states push for a peoples artan art of the street
especially posters and film which could be circulated easily and viewed by mass
audiences.
137
Chapter Four: Refiguring the New Man in Washington, DC
Tuesday evening. November 20, 1962. The staff at the OAS waited anxiously for
the guest of honor to arrive. Inside the main building, crowds were gathering in the
tropical patiothe news had leaked that Jacqueline Kennedy, was coming to preview the
current exhibition, which showcased paintings from the first Bienial Americana de Arte
(commonly referred to as the Kaiser Biennial because it was sponsored by Kaiser
Industries of Argentina).278 Around seven oclock, Secretary General Jos Mora, with his
wife and the ambassadors of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay formed a receiving
line near the buildings front entrance. Twenty-four hours earlier, during a brief meeting
at the White House between President Kennedy and a group of Latin American writers
and intellectuals, Rafael Squirru had encouraged the President and his family to visit the
exhibition.279 Squirru had served on a panel of judges for the Kaiser Biennial and was
eager for the Kennedys to see the latest art emerging from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and
Uruguay. The following night, at ten minutes after seven, Squirru found himself in the
company of Mrs. Kennedy, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Marion Cannon Schlesinger, and
he began guiding them through the exhibition.
278 For a history the Kaiser Biennials, see Cristina Rossi, Las biennales de Crdoba en los 60: arte,
modernizacin y guerra fra (Crdoba, Argentina: Universidad Nacional de Crdoba, 2005).
279 Squirrus visit with President was arranged as the culminating part of a symposium on Inter-American
Affairs held on Paradise Island in the Caribbean and sponsored by Huntington Hartford, who developed the
island and created Show: Magazine of the Arts. The exhibition at the OAS, co-sponsored by Kaiser
Industries and Show, was entitled New Directions of Modern Art from South America.
138
On November 22, The Washington Post reported on Mrs. Kennedys visit to the
OAS with a headline proclaiming, The First Lady Turns Art Critic.280 A photograph
accompanying the article shows Squirru and the First Lady speaking in front of Raquel
Forners Those Who Saw the Moon (Figure 17). Douglas Chevalier, staff photographer
for the newspaper, centered his camera on Kennedy, who appears enthusiastically
engaged in conversation with Squirru. Squirru, partially cropped out of the picture,
stands to her left. He casually leans back, his mouth is open and he seems to be
responding to Kennedys comments. Kennedy and Squirru seem at ease.281 They direct
their interest towards one anothers words, more than towards the artwork.
It seems more than coincidental that the group stands before a painting by Raquel
Forner, the grand prize winner of the Kaiser Biennial and an artist whose work Squirru
heavily promoted during his tenure as MAMBA director. Three paintings by Forner were
included in the OAS exhibition, all of which touch on themes of outer space. She entitled
two of them Those Who Saw the Moon, and the other, Astronauts.282 In each, the artist
used gestural brushwork and impasto to create varying shapes and textures, some of
which loosely resemble lunar surfaces. Forner also depicted strange, spindly figures like
the ones that appear in Those Who Saw the Moon; she occasionally called such figures
astronauts. With their large featureless heads, elongated necks, and slender shoulders,
280 Dorothy McCardle, First Lady Turns Art Critic, The Washington Post, Times Herald, Nov 22, 1964,
D3. Available through ProQuest Historical Newspapers, The Washington Post.
281 Also visible in the photograph is Harold Lauth, a Washington representative of Kaiser Industries.
282 Forner began painting space-themed works in 1957, with a painting entitled Moon. She regularly reused
titles, such as Moon, Those Who Saw the Moon, and Astronauts, and although her paintings could be
grouped by their titles into separate series, to classify them seems unnecessary. Despite their subtle
differences in style, they have much in common.
139
they look more like extraterrestrials than human explorers. In Chevaliers photograph, we
see almost the entire canvas, even though the painting is not oriented directly towards us.
The photographers focus seems not to be on the painting, but on certain correlations
between the painting, Kennedy, and Squirru. The composition balances two of Forners
painted figures with Kennedy and Squirru standing side by side viewing them. Even the
photographs caption in The Washington Post notes that Mrs. Kennedys silver and
black cocktail suit matched the colors of the painting.283
Chevaliers photograph circulated widely via the Associated Press, appearing in
newspapers across the country, included the New York Times, and it was later reprinted in
Amricas magazine and the Boletn de Artes Visuales. Perhaps the image carried currency
because of the particular way it drew together the celebrity of Mrs. Kennedy with Latin
America, modern art, and the space age. The paintings reference to the moon seems
particularly important in this case, and can be read as an oblique reference to the space
race. In 1961, in response to the Soviets first successfully manned space flight, President
Kennedy announced that the U.S. would land on the moon before the end of the
decade.284 Kennedys words transformed the moon from an intriguing celestial body into
a Cold War objective, a benchmark for modern technology. The paintings title suggests
283 Dorothy McCardle, First Lady Turns Art Critic, The Washington Post, Times Herald, 22 Nov 1964,
D3, ProQuest Historical Newspapers, The Washington Post.
284 The space race is most commonly considered to have started in 1957 with the Russians launching of
Sputnik I. By 1962, the Soviets had confirmed their lead over U.S. with first manned space flight. The U.S.,
under President Kennedy, promptly began investing in its space program. See John M. Logsden, John F.
Kennedy and the Race to the Moon (New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010).
140
that Forners work was inspired by these current events.285 Forner had based earlier series
on contemporary events; for instance, in the late 1930s, she created paintings inspired by
the Spanish Civil War. Given Forners long interest in surrealism, we also could read
Those Who Saw the Moon and its theme of space travel more broadly as a metaphor for
the act of painting, in which the artist works to explore her own psychological space
(rather than outer space).286 Confronted with the painting, we see gestural brushwork and
abstracted, perhaps ominous looking figures, but there is no straightforward political
message of any kind. Nor is there any clear visual indication of outer space, it is
referenced only in the works title.
However, in the context of this photograph, outer space and space travel seem
more literal, more propagandistic. With the appearance of Mrs. Kennedya stand-in for
the President and his policiesthe painting seems to indicate that travel to the moon, a
U.S. goal, has fired the imagination of Latin Americas artists and critics. Through the
photograph, viewers could share their excitement about art and the space age.
285 Andrea Giunta has come to a similar conclusion about this work. She writes, In the works Los que
vieron la luna (Those Who Saw the Moon) and El astronaut (The Astronaut), the artist utilized a repertoire
of shapes and forms that were appropriate to themes of the moment, feeding into the imaginary of the
future and also part of the Cold War struggle, such as the space race. Giunta, Avant-Garde,
Internationalism, and Politics, 201.
286 Forners work concerning the Spanish Civil War was done in a surrealist style; she painted series of
distorted figures and disconnected body parts, usually hands, feet, and heads, situated around classical
columns and desert landscapesabsurd images that seemed to express desolation and the threat of violence
under Franco. In the late 1950s, she became part of an international artistic movement commonly called
Nuevo Figuracin (Neo-figuration) in Argentina, a movement that focused on portraying the human
figure. Artists like the Buenos Aires collective Otra Figuracin usually spoke about their work in terms of
artistic process; they twisted, distorted, and abstracted the human figure in the hopes of uncovering
innovative visual forms. However, these were not just formal experiments, but a means for personal
introspection; critics often read them as artistic expressions of angst about contemporary society. On the
whole, the rise of neo-figurative movements in Europe, the United States, and Latin America ran parallel
with existentialist writing, with artists using techniques adapted from abstract expressionism to express
something about human condition.
141
The photograph also marks the launching point for Squirrus career at the OAS.
To the Argentine government, the image documented Squirrus ability to enter the
Kennedys circle. Soon after the photograph began to circulate, the Frondizi
administration nominated Squirru for the position of the OAS Director of Cultural
Affairs.287
I also see this photograph as marking an early moment in Squirrus intellectual
transition from Argentina to the United States. In Buenos Aires, Squirru had used the new
man as a symbol of an Argentine cultural renaissance after Pern; he related the new man
with his efforts to build an institution for Argentine modern arta site where he hoped to
simultaneously alter national culture and raise the international visibility of Argentine art.
In Washington, he increasingly tied his new man concept to the Kennedys and the
Alliance for Progress, and in doing so, he reconfigured his new man into a Pan American
figure, defined in opposition to communism. In this press photograph, Mrs. Kennedy
becomes representative of Squirrus new man philosophy just as it was beginning to
transform; the photograph presents her as a cultured, democratic leader sensitive to the
cultural happenings of the world. Images such as these, which drew connections between
the Kennedys and Latin American art, played a major role in Squirrus reformulated
definition of the new man.288 In Chevaliers photograph we can read Jacqueline Kennedy
287 Eloisa Squirru has read the image in a similar way, noting that the illustration carried unexpected
importance. And since the position of Director of Cultural Affairs remained openthe new [Minister of
Foreign Affairs] Carlos [Manuel] Muiz proposed my fathers name. Eloisa Squirru, Tan Rafael
Squirru!, 126.
288 In September 1965, another press photo of a Kennedy appeared in Amricas magazine: this one shows
Robert Kennedy visiting an OAS exhibition of selected works from the second Kaiser Biennial. Kennedy
stands alone before a geometric painting by Argentine painter Eduardo Mac Entyre. This painting is in a
142
as a new woman, the female counterpart to President Kennedy, who Squirru began
referring to as a new man.
The phrase the new man also appears in the essay Man and Socialism in Cuba
(1965) by Che Guevara and represents a meeting point in a broader ideological conflict
waged between Havana and Washington concerning the Alliance for Progress. Guevara
was the first to publicly denounce the program, even before it was signed into action at an
economic conference held in Punta del Este, Uruguay, in August 1961. At the
conference, Guevara spoke of the Alliance of Progress charter as an attempt to seek a
solution within the framework of economic imperialism.289 He claimed that the charter
exhibited a colonial mentality, full of grandiloquent language but, ultimately, vague
and misleading promises.290 Guevara explained that the Cuban delegation refused to sign
the charter because they viewed the Alliance for Progress as a means for the U.S.
monopolies to exploit Latin America.
Guevara represented a formidable opponent for Squirru not only because of his
critiques of the Alliance for Progress and the OAS, but also because he offered an
alternative to Pan Americanism. Guevara supported the 1966 Tricontinental Conference
style MacEntyre called arte generativo, in which he used a curved line as a module, systematically
reproducing it into an intricate and hard-edged pattern.
289Ernesto Guevara, Our America and Theirs: Kennedy and the Alliance for ProgressThe Debate at
Punta del Este (New York: Ocean Press, 2005), 77.
290 Guevara presented statistics at the Conference that showed the difficulty for Latin American economic
growth under the Alliance. He later restated these findings on Cuban television as follows: We had done
some calculationsand they showed that, if all the countries of Latin America had a growth rate of 2.5
percent and bad, based on it, tried to reach the standard of living the United States has now, it would take
us 100 years to do so. And, if we tried to reach the standard of living the United States would have by
thenbecause it would be growing, too, even though slowlyit would take us 500 years to do so. So, the
tremendous Alliance for Progress means that only several generations later will our descendents be able
to consider themselves to be on a par with the United States. Guevara, Our America and Theirs, 95.
143
and helped launch a solidarity movement to unite what was then commonly referred to as
the third world. The Tricontinental movement relied on what Guevara perceived as a
shared anti-imperialist stance and disadvantaged socio-economic status of Africa, Asia,
and Latin America, as opposed to a Pan American movement that called for partnerships
based on the geographic proximity of North and South America.
THE ALLIANCE FOR PROGRESS: ORIGINS, DEVELOPMENT, AND MYSTIQUE
Among the many factors that contributed to the creation of the Alliance for
Progress, the Cuban Revolution was perhaps the most pressing and culturally
significant.291 Even before the 1959 Revolution, Fidel Castro had become a recognizable
and galvanizing figure in the U.S.someone who stimulated the public imagination in
polarized ways. Historian Van Gosse has traced the rise of Fidelismo within 1950s
youth culture in the U.S., indicating how many college students admired Castro as a
revolutionary and intellectual, working to combat the tyrannical rule of Fulgencio
Batista.292 Writers and poets of the Beat generation celebrated Castro as a political hero
with the power to create a new form of government, one that would be both anti-capitalist
and democratic. And with news programs, such as the CBS News Special Event Rebels
291 Historian Jeffery F. Taffet outlines the circumstances that led to the Alliance for Progress in Foreign
Aid as Foreign Policy: The Alliance for Progress in Latin America. (New York, NY: Routledge, 2007). In
addition to discussing the role of the Cuban Revolution, he cites as influence: (1) U.S.-Latin American aid
policies initiated by the Eisenhower administration, (2) the importance of modernization theory for
Kennedy and his cabinet, and (3) Kennedys perception that Asia, Africa, and Latin America were an
important battleground in the Cold War.
292 For historian Van Gosse, Fidel Castro is a figure through which we can trace a major intellectual
change in U.S. political thought: a redefining of liberalism and the emergence of the New Left (See note
122).
144
in the Sierra Maestra (1957), U.S. journalists latched onto the romanticized image of
Castro, presenting him and his followers as vibrant and principled revolutionaries.293
In January 1959, LIFE magazine reported on Castros assumption of power with a
cover-story filled with photos celebrating his arrival in Havana. One of those images, by
photo-journalist Grey Villet captures Castro surrounded by a crowd reaching out to him
(Figure 18). He stands next to a car: his left hand rests on its white metal roof, and his
right arm reaches across the roof towards his admirers. Dressed in army fatigues, he
smiles with a characteristic cigar at the corner of his mouth. The photographer captured
his shot from an intimate and unusual angle, as if seated on the shoulders of someone in
the crowd. Castro seems close, almost within arms reach. We can see six outstretched
arms that reach upward from the base of the photographthree come together in the
center, loosely forming a triangle, and two appear to converge on the left. All point to
Castro as the focal point, the new leader, presented here as the hub of Cuban society. I
see this image as emblematic of the kind of new man that Guevara (and Castro himself)
promotedthat is, the new man imagined as the revolutionary in touch with his people.
Similar kinds of representations of Castro and Guevara appeared in posters, photographs,
and speeches that circulated throughout Cuba and internationally in the 1960s
representations that Squirru and the creators of the Alliance for Progress sought to
contend against.
293See Van Gosse, Where the Boys Are and Todd Teitchen, The Cubalogues: Beat Writers in
Revolutionary Havana (University Press of Florida, 2010).
145
Despite the optimism about Castro in the U.S. among many young people and,
initially, among many journalists, the prevalent attitude among policy-makers in
Washington was one of skepticism. After the Revolution, their doubts only increased: the
Eisenhower administration recognized the Castro government as an official governing
body and offered aid to Cuba, but were surprised to find Castro a fierce critic of U.S.
assistance. Daniel Braddock, the U.S. Charg dAffaires, reported from Havana in
February 1959 that there has not been a single public speech by Castro since the triumph
of the revolution in which he has not shown some feeling against the United States, the
American press or big business concerns in Cuba.294 The Eisenhower administration was
already sensitive to the growing anti-U.S. sentiment in Latin Americaan issue that
came to the fore when Vice President Richard Nixons 1958 goodwill trip to Latin
America was cut short by violent anti-U.S. demonstrations in Caracas and Lima.
Washington bristled at Castros speeches accusing the U.S. of imperialism. In a private
memo, Eisenhower questioned whether Castro was a madman. And, Nixon, after
meeting with Castro in Washington in April 1959, speculated that he was susceptible to
Soviet influence; he perceived Castro as having a nave understanding of politics, but he
was concerned that Castro might also have ulterior motives of becoming a dictator.
Increasingly, the administration worried that Castro and his government represented the
wrong sort of role model for the rest of Latin America. They feared that the success of the
294 Daniel M. Braddock to Department of State, 18 Feb. 1959, Department of State, Foreign Relations of
the United States: Cuba, 1958-60 (Washington, DC, 1991), 402; cited in Louis A. Prez, Jr, Fear and
Loathing of Fidel Castro: Sources of U.S. Policy towards Cuba, Journal of Latin American Studies 34, no.
2 (May 2002): 230. Available through JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3875788
146
Cuban Revolution would incite further violent revolutions and anti-Americanism across
the region.
The Kennedy administration took a similar attitude towards Castro and believed
that under Eisenhower the U.S. had not paid sufficient attention to Latin America and to
the problems caused by widespread poverty and government corruption in the region.
Kennedy proposed the Alliance for Progress as the solution to these problems of social
and political unrest. He first announced the program in March 1961 in a White House
address to the Diplomatic Corps of Latin America. His speech carried powerful Pan
American rhetoric, presenting North and South America as firm and ancient friends,
who share a common heritage, the quest for dignity and the freedom of man.295 He
pledged $500 million of U.S. aid to Latin America in the Alliances first year and vowed
to provide the region up to twenty billion more over the next decade, provided that Latin
American nations enacted certain social and economic reforms. He described his Alliance
for Progress as a plan to transform the 1960s into a historic decade of democratic
progress, one inspired by Latin American-led initiatives, such as Operation Pan
America proposed by Brazilian President Kubitschek in 1958. The Kennedy
administration and supporters of the Alliance latched onto the idea that the program could
bring peaceful revolution to Latin America, as opposed to violent revolution, for which
they pointed to Cuba as example.
295 John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Address to the Diplomatic Corps of Latin American March 13, 1961,
available online through the University of Virginias Miller Center of Public Affairs.
http://millercenter.org/scripps/archive/speeches/detail/5732
147
Kennedys proposal combined sweeping humanitarian efforts with defense goals:
by strengthening Latin American economies and improving the living conditions for the
regions citizens, the U.S. hoped it also could secure the region from potential communist
takeover. We confront the same forces which have imperiled America throughout its
historythe alien forces which once again seek to impose the despotisms of the Old
World on the people of the New, stated Kennedy. He spoke of the Alliance as an
alliance of free governments and he singled out Cubas revolutionary government as
tyrannical, expressing his hope that the people of Cubawill soon rejoin the society of
free men, uniting with us in common effort.296 In retrospect, Kennedys statements
concerning the Cuban people appear disconcerting; while publicly he spoke of
diplomacy, friendship, and peace-making, privately he consented to the CIAs plans for
the clandestine overthrow of Cuba (plans initiated under the Eisenhower administration).
The Bay of Pigs invasion took place only a few weeks after Kennedys address.297
While covert operations against Castro failed, more overt diplomatic attempts to
curtail Cubas influence, by way of the Alliance for Progress, gathered steam. Over the
next few months, the U.S. State Department outlined the procedures for creating the
Alliance, and the OAS took a strong role in the efforts; first, by organizing a meeting of
its Inter-American Economic and Social Council (IA-ECOSOC) in Punta del Este,
296Ibid.
297Che Guevara called attention to these correspondences at the Punta del Este Conference: In that
speech, which I have no doubt will be remembered, Kennedy also said that he hoped the peoples of Cuba
and the Dominican Republic, for whom he felt great sympathy, could join the community of free nations.
Within a month there was the Playa Girn [Bay of Pigs invasion], and a few days later President Trujillo
was mysteriously assassinated.We merely take note of the bare fact, which has not been clarified in any
way up to the present time. Ernesto Guevara, Our America and Theirs, 29.
148
Uruguay in August 1961, where all of the member nations except Cuba signed the
Alliance for Progress charter. Through the IA-ECOSOC, the OAS also formed a Panel of
Experts of the Alliance for Progress, nicknamed the Nine Wise Men, to advise the
implementation of Alliance-related projects.
The rifts between Cuba, the United States, and the OAS solidified in 1962. The
U.S., which had imposed partial embargos on trade with Cuba since 1960, dramatically
expanded its embargo after the Cuban government nationalized U.S. corporate holdings
on the island without compensation. The Cuban Missile Crisis of that same year only
reinforced OAS and U.S. political collaboration. The OAS suspended Cubas
membership from the organization and in 1964 the OAS began imposing its own punitive
trade embargo against the country.
By 1963, most of the OAS branches dealing with political, legal, health and
educational services had an influx of Alliance-related work. In addition to various
advisory and administrative roles, the institution also was responsible for generating
status reports and publishing press materials about the program, including the Alliance
for Progress Weekly Newsletter.298 However, I suspect that with its emphasis on
economic reform, health, science, and technology, the Alliance left undefined the space
for cultural activities. Under the Alliance, the staff and the responsibilities of the OAS
grew. But, the OAS Department of Cultural Affairswhich included the Music and
Visual Arts Divisions, Philosophy and Letters, and the Columbus Memorial Library
298See Nathan Haverstock, Remembering the Alliance for Progress, Amricas, vol. 61, no. 5 (September
2009), 50.
149
likely remained largely unchanged, operating in a holding pattern since their work
seemed peripheral to the Alliances goals.
Squirrus leadership became crucial in this context, namely because he framed
cultural issues as wholly relevant to the Alliances aims. Contained within Squirrus The
Challenge of the New Man is a strong argument for fitting cultural activities firmly in the
sphere of development, a watchword for many U.S. economists and social scientists
behind the Alliance for Progress, who subscribed to what has come to be known as
modernization theory. Historian Nils Gilman, in his comprehensive study of the rise
and fall of modernization theory during the Cold War, describes the term development,
especially economic development, as a deliciously ambiguous concept that world
leaders and policy makers latched onto as the answer to the problem of decolonization.
He writes that
for American social scientists, underdevelopment invoked poverty, agriculture,

morbidity, illiteracyin short, backwardness, a term it was meant to replace.
Policy makers identified development with economic growthanother
ambiguous expressionwith the additional implication that this economic growth
would be distributed so that the masses as a whole would benefit. Depending on
who was speaking (and who was listening), development could mean either
increased income or increased welfare, or put another way, increased production
or increased consumption. However it was defined, economic growth was
something tangible and measurable, unlike democracy or sovereignty or
international respect.299
299 Gilman, Mandarins of the Future, 36. Gilman notes that the terms modernization and development
both have long and complex semantic histories associated with European imperialism, but were taken up
anew and uncritically by social scientists and political leaders in the United States. He writes, Although
development was something that some colonial authorities had been advocating since the beginning of the
century, American social scientists generally ignored these discourses, if their footnotes and
acknowledgments are to be believed. Because postwar Americans saw themselves as radically different
from the colonialists they were replacing, they saw little need to understand the colonial policies or theories
of the British, French, or Dutch. Mandarins of the Future, 34.
150
According to Gilman, modernization theorists evoked development as the process that
would transform so-called traditional societies into modern ones; the phrase carried
currency because of its open-ended meaning and because it seemed to promise
quantifiable results.300
While development was generally associated with economic production and
industrialization, Squirru applied the concept to culture. The time has come when it
must be acknowledged that art and thought are more than just a luxury, he proclaims in
The Challenge of the New Man, They are the abstract symbol of a communitys deepest
longings, and those who ignore these voices are, by the same token, ignoring the vocation
ofeach and every one of our peoples.301 The idea that culture was not just a luxury,
but a basic human necessity was something Squirru reiterated throughout his tenure at the
OAS.
By casting culture as a basic human need, Squirru was making a well-calculated
argument designed to overcome institutional pressures and generate support for his
cultural policies. He alluded to the resistance that cultural projects met in the Frondizi
government and within the OAS in an interview in 1981:
Each time that someone went to give an estimate of the budget, they would
answer him or her, No, we cant give money for culture when the hospitals lack
bed sheets. Faced with this statement, which in principle seems very practical, I
would answer that without culture, there would be no hospitals nor bed sheets
because each and every one are the results of culture. Culture is nothing more and
300 Two of the most prominent subscribers to modernization theory in the Kennedy administration were
Walt Whitman Rostow and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. For information, on Rostrow see Gilman, Mandarins of
the Future. For more on the role of modernization theory within the Kennedy Administration, see Michael
Latham, Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and Nation Building in the Kennedy Era
(Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2000).
301 Squirru, The Challenge of the New Man, 61.
151
nothing less than the point of view of men and women, and through them,
communities, regarding reality. If one does not understand that all types of
development, economic, political, and social, are intimately connected to cultural
developmentthat it is nothing more than the same development from a different
angle, that is, a spiritual anglethen he or she makes the mistake of believing that
culture must be postponed until more basic and urgent needs are met. But man is a
totality; he is not a being that eats first, thinks later, and only then concerns
himself with his fellow man. For humans the problem is simultaneous. For that
reason, it cannot be said, sheets and hospitals first, then philosophy and the arts.302
Here Squirru presents cultural and economic development as related components that
both contribute to the development he sees as most important: spiritual development.303
By framing his cultural programs in this way, he presented the institution with a flattering
image of itself, an international organization with the power to saves lives and enrich the
spirit of others.
Certainly, there were also external pressures for Squirru to define development in
a way that incorporated cultural affairs. Critics of the Alliance for Progress, including
Guevara, lambasted the program for its vague allusions to development. At the Punta del
Este Conference in 1961, Guevara urged Latin American delegates to veto the Alliances
charter, criticizing it as a poorly-conceived U.S. policy. He pointed out its paternalist and
imperialist framework, stating,
I get the impression they are thinking of making the latrine the fundamental thing.
That would improve the social conditions of the poor Indian, of the poor black, of
the poor person who lives in subhuman conditions, Lets make latrines for them
and after we have made latrines for them, and after their education has taught
them how to keep themselves clean, then they can enjoy the benefits of
302 Squirru: Nada ms lamentable que equivocarse de pas Correo de la Tarde, 30 Junio 1981, Ao 24,
No 2253. Envelop no. 300 (Squirru), MAMBA Archives.
303 In Squirrus writing of the period, spiritual development and the mystical power of modern art appear as
recurring themes. Partially, this stems from a Catholic perspective that runs through much of Squirrus
writing. But it also may be an attempt to curtail popular stereotypes characterizing the United States as
grossly materialistic and accusations that such materialism shaped its policies towards Latin America.
152
production.Planning for the gentlemen experts is the planning of latrines. As
for the rest, who knows how it will be done!304
In light of Guevaras comments about the Alliance as the planning of latrines, we can
see Squirrus discussion of developmentspecifically, its importance culturally and
spirituallyas a means of refutation. Both inside and outside of the OAS, he saw a need
to promote a flexible understanding of development. In a sense, he was working to make
the Alliance appear as a sincere, charitable, and spiritually-nourishing program, one that
could capture the hearts and minds of world.
While framing culture as a basic need, Squirru also described it as one of Latin
Americas most plentiful resources. In The Challenge of the New Man, he writes that
Latin America is underdeveloped economically and socially, but Latin America is not
underdeveloped culturally. In fact, Latin American countries have a lot to offer in the
realm of creative achievement. Some of the best artists, composers, writers, and
intellectuals can be found in Latin America.305 For Squirru, the success of the Alliance
for Progress depended entirely on harnessing the support of intellectuals and cultural
leaders across the Americas, those he refers to as new men. According to Squirru, these
new menare not difficult to recognize. They do not speak in terms of right and left.
They speak in terms of the oldwhich must go and the new, which has to be brought
forth.306 On one level, Squirrus statements seem a straightforward continuation of the
new man philosophy he espoused in Argentina; the new man continues to be an
304 Guevara, Our America and Theirs, 38-39

306 Ibid., 17-18.
153
intellectual who rises above party politics, who is committed to the new and the
disposal of the old, a friend of freedom and enemy of tyranny. However, in The
Challenge of the New Man Squirru also defines his new man as staunchly anti-
communist. He emphatically states that these new men do not equate the United States
and the totalitarian states in their concept of friendship. They realize that the United
States is a free community and that communist countries are not. And they see this
distinction as a very important one. He goes on to say that
the new men put their trust in democratic rule as the expression of the will of the
majority of the people but they respect the rights of those who happen to think
differently (and they accept the idea that democracy can be other than
parliamentary in its form). The new man subscribes to the Christian idea of
charity as the highest human attitude in our dealings with fellow men.307
For Squirru, the anti-communist stance of the new man was also bound up in Christian
theology. By the time Squirru published The Challenge of the New Man in 1964, the
phrase had come back into popular use by Catholic theologians, notably the Trappist
monk Thomas Merton, who published his own book titled The New Man in 1962.308
Mertons text describes Christ as the redeemed new man in contrast to Adam, a symbol
of the original man, plagued by original sin.
307 Ibid., 18.

308 Thomas Merton, The New Man. (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1962). Squirru sent Merton
a copy of The Challenge of the New Man and the two began an epistolary friendship. One of Mertons
letters to Squirru is published in Thomas Merton: A Life in Letters: The Essential Collection (New York,
NY: HarperCollins, 2008), 314-315. Excerpts from this same letter were published in Amricas magazine
in the 1960s. For more on Mertons cultural relevance in the Kennedy Era and in Latin America, see the
following two texts: James W. Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008); Malgorzata Poks, Thomas Merton and Latin America: Consonance
of Voices (Saarbrcken,Germany: Lambert Academic Publishing, 2011).
154
In The Challenge of the New Man, Squirru critiques communism using a
theologically-inspired framework. Namely, he draws a distinction between free
societies (the United States) and totalitarian societies (Soviet Russia and Cuba), based
on their capacities for spiritual redemption.309 Squirru argues that free societies are by
no means perfect, but that their strength rests precisely in recognizing human
imperfection and striving for moral progress, whereas totalitarian regimes demand
perfection. He writes, totalitarian societies shut all doors to the freedom of the
spirit.Allowing for imperfection allows for betterment. Perfect conceptions do not
allow for imperfection, and therefore produce moral stagnation.310 For Squirru, the new
mans purpose is redemptive: he seeks redemption for the self and for society.
Squirru also writes that a major danger of communism is that it functions as a
false religion: It is important to realize that the appeal of communism as an
ideologylies in the fact that it does purport to be a philosophy that will redeem
mankind as a whole. The idea of redemption has a religious appeal. Many of these so-
called atheists are in fact very mystical characters, who are trying to fill the vacuum in
their souls.311 He knew that for Latin America, the appeal of the Cuban Revolution
would be especially difficult to combat as its leaders Fidel Castro and Che Guevara were
309 For Squirru, intellectual responsibility entails recognizing that human beings are flawed and selfish by
nature. He insists that totalitarian societies believe only in the good nature of man: Many are the happy
ideologists who cannot be intellectually responsible in facing the truth about man, he writes, These
ideologists are responsible for all the beautiful Utopias that inevitably lead mankind to a disastrous end.
This is true whether they be Utopias springing from an extreme right-wing position like Nazism, or whether
they be Utopias springing from an extreme left-wing position like communism.Squirru, The Challenge of
the New Man, 4-5.
310 Ibid, 7.
311 Ibid.
155
increasingly romanticized. In The Challenge of the New Man, Squirru tries to cut down
Castros charismatic reputation. Communism, he writes, overruns any country that
does not have its own mystique. Maybe Castro did not start as a communist, but having
no mystique of his own to offer it was inevitable that he adopt the communist faith.312
According to Squirru, democratic nations needed to develop their own mystique
to counter that of communism. Without a mystique of its own, the Alliance [for
Progress] is too remote, too cut and dried to spark the Latin imagination.313 He was not
alone in this belief about mystiquewhat we might define as an aura of mystery and
reverence surrounding a person or object. The word was in wide usage at the time; most
famously in Betty Friedans The Feminine Mystique, which was published in 1963, the
same year that Squirru delivered the speeches included in The Challenge of the New
Man.314 Friedan approach towards mystique was entirely the opposite of Squirrus:
instead of building it up, she aimed to identify what she called the problem that has no
name in order to tear it down. Both Friedan and Squirru saw mystique as a powerful
vehicle for covering over the material conditions that frame ones existence. Friedan
showed the feminine mystique to be a myth manufactured by a powerful confluence of
forces, agents, and disciplines; her book examines how male-dominated fields
psychology, advertising, and religious leadership constructed narrow and largely false
images of femininity that society reinforced as true. By extension, Squirru and other
politicians in support of the Alliance for Progress were hoping to channel a similar

313 Ibid., 11.
314 For a recent study of the Feminine Mystique, see Stephanie Coontz, A Strange Stirring: The Feminine
Mystique and the American Woman at the Dawn of the 1960s (New York: Basic Books, 2011).
156
confluence of forces to build support for their policy. The Brazilian economist Roberto
Campos, then Minister of Planning and Economic Coordination at the Brazilian Embassy
in Washington, was perhaps the first to speak of the need for a political mystique
surrounding the Alliance for Progress. The idea was also cited by Camposs colleague,
Lincoln Gordon, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, who
had served as U.S. ambassador in Brazil.315 Squirru believed mystique had to be anchored
in the cultural realm, its creation and development the responsibility of Latin Americas
artists, writers, and poets.
In Buenos Aires, Squirrus friends depicted him as an intellectual knight with a
crusaders zeal for internationalizing Argentine art; in 1954, Leopoldo Presas painted a
portrait entitled el Hombre Nuevo, which shows Squirru in a silvery suit of armor (Figure
19). On his chest appears a blue shield (or, perhaps, a book) with the initials H.N.for
Hombre Nuevothe cause under which he leads his intellectual crusade. In Washington,
he identified with another world of knighthood, in which Kennedys Alliance for
Progress represented a combined political, cultural, and spiritual crusade. Squirrus
arrival at the OAS coincided with a time when many fondly referred to Kennedys White
House as Camelot. 316 In criticizing communism as a false religion that offered no
315 Historian Jeffrey Taffet mentions the term mystique appearing in State Department documents
associated with the Alliance for Progress. Taffet, Foreign Aid as Foreign Policy, 52. For an early analysis
of Roberto Campos and Lincoln Gordons use of the term mystique, see Herbert K. May, Problems and
Prospects of the Alliance for Progress: A Critical Examination. (New York, NY: Frederick A. Praeger,
1968), 71-79.
316 Comparisons between Washington and Camelot solidified after Kennedys assassination as a result of
Jackie Onassis Kennedys statements in the December 6, 1963 issue of LIFE magazine. In the Epilogue
of this memorial issue, she mentions that one of her husbands favorite lyrics came from the Alan Jay
Lerners 1960 musical Camelot. According to LIFE, she repeatedly used the comparison, stating Therell
157
means of redemption, Squirru was essentially casting the ideological battle between
democracy and communism as a modern-day crusade in which the new man played the
part of the good Christian soldier and communists represented infidels. In this scenario,
mystique represents a sort of secularized version of religious faith; one of the goals of the
new man was to build mystique to gain adherents to the Alliance, to persuade people that
it was more than a U.S. government aid program, but rather that it was something
deserving of their reverence, something they could believe in.
CASTRO AND KENNEDY AS NEW MEN
While traveling through Africa in 1965, Che Guevara wrote a letter to his friend
Carlos Quijano, the editor of the Uruguayan weekly publication Marcha. Quijano
published the letterwhich was later titled Man and Socialism in Cubaimmediately
after receiving it in March 1965, and again in November that same year. This letter, in
which Guevara describes the goals of the Cuban Revolution and the progress the country
is making to meet them, became his best-known piece of writing; it is where he outlined
several of his key beliefs about building a revolutionary society. He discusses the value
of work, especially voluntary manual labor, as well as the roles of education and the
culture in a socialist society. The essay is also where he first explained his notion of the
new man. It is worth noting that similar ideas had floated around since the beginning of
the Cuban Revolution; Castro and his supporters often spoke in terms of renovation, the
need to form a new Cuba, new social institutions, and, ultimately, a new classless society.
be great Presidents againbut therell never be another Camelot. Theodore H. White, An Epilogue,
LIFE, vol. 55, no. 23 (6 December 1963), 160. Available through Google books. [Accessed March 2011]
158
We can find such rhetoric sprinkled throughout Cuban periodicals and bulletins, evident
even in the title of propaganda magazines, such as Cuba Nueva, published by the
Comisin de Doctrina y Propaganda, part of the Consejo Revolucionario de Cuba.
Guevaras 1965 writing on the new man is not, then, the origin point of the idea, but a
place where an ongoing concept became codified.
Guevara begins his essay by recounting the history of the Cuban Revolution, in
which he identifies the guerilla rebels of the Sierra Maestra as the quintessential new
men. He calls them the countrys vanguard and the motor force that mobilized Cuban
society. 317 And he claims that in the attitude of our fighters could be glimpsed the man
and woman of the future.318 He makes special mention of Fidel Castro as a guerrilla
fighter and a political leader deeply in touch with the people of the country and their
needs. According to Guevara, Castro has a
special way of fusing himself with the people [that] can be appreciated only by
seeing him in action. At the great public mass meetings one can observe
something like the dialogue of two tuning forks whose vibrations interact,
producing new sounds. Fidel and the mass begin to vibrate together in a dialogue
of growing intensity until they reach the climax in an abrupt conclusion crowned
by our cry of struggle and victory.319
As in the LIFE magazine photograph, here Castro is framed as a man of his people.
Guevara speaks of a union between leader and crowd, using a metaphor of tuning forks
that together reach a musical crescendoin Guevaras turn of phrase there is also a not-
so-subtle allusion to sexual climax. He writes this, perhaps, not only to celebrate Castros
317 Ernesto Guevara, Man and Socialism in Cuba The Che Reader (New York: Ocean Press, 2005), 212-
230. All citations refer to the version available online at:
http://www.marxists.org/achrive/guevara/1965/03/man-socialism.htm. [Accessed September 2010]
318 Ibid.
319 Ibid.
159
leadership, but to verify Castros legitimacy, by showing him as a person who knows the
aspirations of the country and who brings his people immense gratification. But it is also
clear that he sees Castro as a model new man for future generations. He spends a great
part of his essay discussing the importance that youth play in building a socialist society.
Guevara says that in socialist Cuba we can see the new man and the new woman being
bornthe image is not yet completely finishedit never will be, since the process goes
forward hand in hand with the development of new economic forms.320
For Guevara, the new man had a connection to Christian rhetoric, but unlike
Squirru, who was a devout Catholic, Guevaras statements represent a secularand
possibly tongue-in-cheekreworking of the Christian new man.321 This tone is most
evident when he writes that The fault of many of our artists and intellectuals lies in their
original sin: they are not true revolutionaries. We can try to graft the elm tree so that it
will bear pears, but at the same time we must plant pear trees. New generations will come
that will be free of original sin.322 For Guevara, the new men and new women are
revolutionaries, especially those of future generations, who will completely cast off the
sins of capitalism to create a communist society. He writes, To build communism it
is necessary, simultaneous with the new material foundations, to build the new man and
woman. Here, the new man serves as a key element in Guevaras larger argument about
the role of the individual in a socialist or a communist society. He explains early in
Socialism and Man in Cuba, that the purpose of his writing is to refute a common
320 Ibid.
321 Guevara was raised Catholic in the city of Rosario and in Alta Gracia, a colonial town founded by the
Jesuits. However, by the time he joined the Cuban Revolution, he was no longer a practicing Catholic.
322 Guevara, Socialism and Man in Cuba, n.p. (See note 319).
160
argument from the mouths of capitalist spokespeople[that socialism] is characterized
by the abolition of the individual for the sake of the state.323 In evoking the new man,
Guevara calls for a new conception of the individual, one who understands his or her role
in society quite differently from the capitalist viewpoint. Guevara notes that individual is
defined by quality of incompleteness, of being an unfinished product, and that self-
improvement and a sense of completeness comes only through socialist society, where
the individual recognized his or her obligation to help fellow members of society and
works collectively to improve ones self and society. He describes the education of the
new man as a central pillar in the construction of socialisman education forged not
only through formal schooling, but also by culture and art.
Socialism and Man in Cuba is one of the only places where Guevara writes
about art and the role it should play in a revolutionary society. He claims there is a need
for a new art within Cuban society, one that is politically committed. However, he makes
no speculations about what forms that art should take, nor does he identify contemporary
examples of this new art. Instead, he critiques past art movements. He disapproves of
Soviet-style socialist realism that attempts to depict utopian society. His tone is
apologetic, regretting the narrow-mindedness and exaggerated dogmatism the Soviet
Union took towards artSocialism is young and has its mistakes, he writes, and in his
opinion, the governments insistence on socialist realist art was one of those mistakes.324
He is equally critical of contemporary art movements in democratic countries, criticizing
323 Ibid.
324 Guevara, Socialism and Man in Cuba, n.p.
161
the tendency for artists to speak in terms of artistic freedom. He argues that we cannot
counterpose freedom to socialist realism, because the former does not yet exist and will
not exist until the complete development of the new society.325 For Guevara the
revolutionary art, like the new men and new women, was a prediction for the future; an
art not fully formed, but in the process of emerging.
Political posters represent the earliest and best-known form of revolutionary art to
emerge in Cuba.326 The medium itself seemed to embody socialist ideals: posters were
affordable and accessible to the masses; they also were anonymously designed and
circulated, the seeming result of collective effort, rather than of an individual artist.327
Cuban writer and critic Edmundo Desnoes noted in 1969 that we rarely feel the presence
of such-and-such artist in our graphic work for it is always done to illustrate an idea,
and goes on to say that
in the houses, on the walls and windows, the new posters and billboards have
replaced the painting of a flamingo, the North American calendar, magazines and
advertisements for consumer goods, and have introduced a new vision, a new
preoccupation, without appealing to or exploiting sensationalism, sex or the
illusion of aristocratic life.328
325 Ibid.
326 Guevara even took political posters with him to Africa to distribute in Algeria and later in the Congo.
Richard Frick, ed. The Tricontinental Solidarity Poster (Bern, Switzerland: Comedia-Verlag, 2003), 72.
327 In The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin argued for the
revolutionary potential of mass mediaespecially filmas art forms that are egalitarian, available and
affordable to the masses. He also warned that emancipatory aspects of media could easily be shut down by
fascist leaders who used mass reproduction to forward propaganda. Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in
the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, in Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt (New
York: Schocken, 1968), 217-252.
328 Desnoes statements come from an informal seminar about art that first appeared in the July 1969 issue
of Cuba Internacional. Excerpts of this article appear in Dugald Stermers essay, Bread and the Rose, in
Dugard Stermer, The Art of Revolution. Castros Cuba: 1959-1970, with an introductory essay by Susan
Sontag (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1970), xxxii-xxxiv.
162
Cuban graphic artists were commissioned to produce posters by several different
government-sponsored agencies, including the Organization of Solidarity with Asia,
Africa, and Latin America (OSPAAL), the Commission for Revolutionary Action (COR),
the Cuban Communist Party, the Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC), Casa de las Americas,
and the Institute of Books (ICL). Each produced posters highlighting the institutions
programming and publicizing new books, film screenings, and other cultural events. As
Desnoes indicates these posters were conceived of not only as functional, but instructive.
They transformed the look of homes, streets, and towns.
Poster art in Cuba also represented a definitive break with academic and vanguard
traditions of painting and sculpting. Cuban poster artist Ral Martnez commented that in
the 1960s he and many of his colleagues gave up painting entirely: It happens that no
one has taken an interest in seeing what they can learn from Amelia Pelez, Portocarro,
Marano, or some of the other Cuban artists. No graphic artist has thought of extracting
something original and positive by looking around and seeing what is being and has been
painted.329 According to Martnez, poster artists refused to draw any influence from
Cuban art movements before 1959 (many of whom Gmez Sicre had favored in the
1940s).
Posters worked in conjunction with other mass-produced media, notably
photography, cinema, magazines, and literature, to broadcast propagandistic images of
revolutionary triumph. On a 1969 trip to Cuba, John Corry, a correspondent for Harpers
noted that photographs of Fidel and Guevara were visible across the country; he reported
329 Ibid.
163
that along with posters, the Cuban graphic arts being more or less spectacular,
photographs of revolutionary leaders make up most of the interior and exterior
decorations, and it is far easier to get a Communist to pose than to make a statement.330
According to Corry, many images presented early scenes from the revolution, especially
those depicting Castro as a guerilla fighter: Indeed, when Fidel and his little band were
trudging through the mountains and harassing Batista there must have been a great many
photographers around because there are now a great many photographs of Fidel trudging
through the mountains.331 After Guevaras Socialism and Man in Cuba was published,
images of guerilla fighter were frequently conflated with label of new man: in Cuba the
new man was not simply spoken about, but visualized.
In the United States, artists for pulp magazines created visual counterpoints to the
Cuban new man as heroic guerilla fighter. Two examples can be found on the covers of a
pulp magazine entitled New Man, published from 1963 to 1971 by Reese and Emtee
Companies (Figure 20).332 In each of these, artist Norman Saunders depicts communist
guerillas as villainous sexual predators. A cover from November 1964 shows a tropical
jungle scene where three bearded men in green army fatigues torture their female
captives. In the center is a caricature of Castro; he is identifiable not only for his long
beard and his smoldering cigar, with which he threatens to burn his victims flesh, but
330 John Corry, Castros Cuba: Drums, Guns, and the New Man Harpers (April 1969), 39.
331 Ibid.
332 More information about these magazines and their creators is available on the Mens Adventures
Magazine Blog http://www.menspulpmags.com/2010/05/mens-pulp-magazines-take-on-
fidel.html?zx=78a8a4fb40b9f175 [Accessed 24 October 2012]
164
also for the two wristwatches on his left armCastro has appeared in several press
photos wearing multiple watches on one arm.
In the 1960s, Castro was cast as enemy and depicted on the cover of many
different mens magazines, including Mans Story, Men Today, True Adventures, and
Whisper. However, in Saunders images there is a dialectic connection between the new
man and Castro that goes beyond their arbitrary juxtaposition. We may take the
magazines title of New Man as an appeal to the aspirations of the male reader who wants
to be identified as a modern, well-informed man. But the potential reader can also
imagine himself in relation to the figure of Castro, who serves as foil. The enemy
guerillas are sexually out of control, in contrast to the honorable and morally upright
heronot depicted on cover perhaps so the reader more easily can project himself as
protagonist in the story. Castro and the communists here are set up as the counterpoint to
the new manin a sense, they are the evil new men. They are presented as dehumanized
and unfathomably cruel; they are one among a set of historical super-villains, including
Nazis, Fascists, and Soviets (Notice that the November 1964 cover also advertises a
testimony about Hitlers underground bunker of lust). 333 In their construction of the
enemy, these magazines play on Cold War fears about violent enemies in hiding. In
retrospect, these magazines are campy, at once humorous and crude; they also were
savvy in perpetuating negative characterizations about Castro and the communist threat
to Latin America and the United Statesand they show one use of new man, as it
333 Adam Parfrey notes that in mens magazines, the Cuban issue always seemed a hot topic. Fidel Castro
replaced Nazi and Jap with his own variety of sadistic torture of very white women, peppered with
suggestive Spanish commentary.Adam Parfrey, ed. Its A Mans World: Mens Adventure Magazines. The
Postwar Pulps. (Los Angeles, CA: Feral House, 2003), 215.
165
appeared in American popular culture. Squirrus conception of the new man has no direct
connection to these pulp magazinesif anything, his work stands in complete contrast to
them. Still, they set an important backdrop, because they indicate that definitions of the
new man were circulating in the U.S. on varying levels in the early 1960s.
In contrast to these images of Castro, Squirru associated President John F.
Kennedy with embodying the new man. In particular, the assassination of the president in
November 1963 served as the catalyst that fundamentally realigned Squirrus new man
philosophy. He immediately began to frame Kennedy as a martyr. A special memorial
issue of Amricas magazine begins with a poem by Squirru dedicated to the late
president. One stanza reads,
A friend, more golden than his life,

was killed by the hand of darkness.
In his crucifixion
more naked
more man
more friend
more one of us.334
In naming Kennedys death a crucifixion, Squirru identifies the late president as the
Christ-like epitome of the new mana connection bolstered by Kennedys Catholic
affiliation.335 The following month, Squirru wrote a front page essay for Amricas,
highlighting the Presidents mythical status. For Squirru, the myth of Kennedy remained
inseparable from the actual man. He writes that although I met President Kennedy only
334 Squirru, Death Has Taken Away A Friend Amricas, vol. 15, no.12 (December 1963), inside cover.
335 Kennedys Roman Catholicism became a polemical issue during his bid for the presidency. However,
his Catholicism potentially boosted his popularity in Latin America. See Thomas Carty, A Catholic in the
White House? Religion, Politics, and John F. Kennedys Presidential Campaign (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2006).
166
twice, I was very much impressed by the mythical quality that surrounded his person like
an aura not easily grasped by the physiological eye. Mr. Kennedy moved in a world of
dream because he himself was partly dream.336 According to Squirru, the mythic status
of Kennedy was not simply manufactured by others, but emanated from the president
himselfit was a vital component of his identity. Squirru describes the myth of Kennedy
as [a] man who would bring peace to the world, who would launch a program of help to
foreign countries that would give them the opportunity to achieve their destiny in dignity
and freedom. He goes on to say, Perhaps, it is true, as many critics say, that none of
these high goals was actually accomplished, but it would be more true to say that a much
higher accomplishment was reached: these goals fired the imagination of those to whom
he promised this redemption.337
In addition to presenting Kennedy as redeemer, Squirru also describes the myth
surrounding Kennedy as offering intellectual sustenancean argument that echoes his
earlier statements about importance of cultural development. He writes,
After alland at the risk of being considered a cynic or a skepticthe truth is

that what can be done for man to better his lot is always rather little. What really
counts is not so much, therefore, what can be achieved in a material sense as what
can be reached in terms of hope and imagination. The human being is frail and
needs this daily bread even more than that of flour and crumb.338
336 Squirru, A Deeper Reality, Amricas, vol. 16, no. 1 (January 1964), 1.
337 Ibid.
338 Ibid.
167
Certainly Squirru took the Kennedy myth as a source of poetic inspiration. So did his
friends from the New Man group in Argentina, such as Fernando Demara, who wrote in
Amricas that Kennedy belonged to poetry and to poetry he shall return.339
We can read much of Squirrus poetry, art writing, and curatorial work in the mid-
60s as attempts to build mystique around John F. Kennedy in the wake of the presidents
death. There are a few cases, in which Squirru rallied behind Latin American artists
whose work seemed to bolster Kennedys mythic status, that deserve special mention.
One concerns the Esso Salon of Young Latin American Artists (1964-1965). In that
competition, the grand prize in sculpture was awarded to the Paraguayan artist Hermann
Guggiari (b. 1924) for his abstract sculpture, Kennedy. The work consists of a smooth
iron beam arching upward and across the length of a rectangular base (Figure 11). On the
top of the base, a pattern of painted dots appears to increase in density where base and
beam meet. The sculpture and base together are approximately seven feet high. At the top
of the beam, a split runs down the center, forming a serrated gap several inches long.
Both of the two top points are jagged; one is longer than the other, which appears as if it
was torn off.
The judges of the Esso Salon touted it as evidence of the diversity and maturity of
Latin American artistic production. One of the recurring tropes within the art historical
literature on Latin Americaespecially in this early periodis an argument that the art
of the region not be labeled derivative of U.S. and European art trends, that it be judged
on its own merits and understood for having its own unique geographic and historical
339 Fernando Demara, Letters, Amricas, vol. 16, no. 1 (January 1964).
168
contexts.340 Many supporting the Esso Salon felt the need to proffer this argument.
Gmez Sicre, in his Introduction to the catalogue asserts that Latin America possesses
a vigorous art of its own, he describes the plight of artists in Latin America as one
similar to that of a prophet without honor in his own time.341 For an article in Art in
America, Thomas Messer describes the Esso Salon as a remarkable breakthrough and
one of several venues where artists from Latin America have proved themselves on the
international plane.342 Messer believed that the strength of the works meant that artists
no longer need to be circumscribed by the imaginary Latin American banner, that they
would be appreciated as individually as artists international in their scope. He concludes
his article by saying that with the Latin American label dissolved, the critics
emphasis will return to a point whereit has always belongedon the individual artist
and particular works. This statement seems rather ironic given that Messer does not
name a single artist or work in the Salon exhibition.
Guggiaris sculpture, in its material form and its title, played to the Pan American
dreams of the critics, to their optimism about U.S.-Latin American cultural relations. The
austere sculpture was fabricated from sheet metal and positioned on a concrete base
industrial materials that seem a testament that artists even in small countries like
Paraguay had access to the latest industrial techniques and were contributing to
340 Squirru argued against reading Latin American art as derivative in The Challenge of the New Man
and in his article Spectrum of Styles in Latin America, Art in America, vol. 52, no. 1 (February 1964),
81-86.
341 Gmez Sicres Introduction is reproduced in Annick Sanjurjo, Contemporary Latin American Artists:
Exhibitions at the Organization of American States, 1965-1985, 10-11.
342 Thomas M. Messer, Latin America: Esso Salon of Young Artists, Art in America, vol. 53, no. 5
(October-November 1965), 121.
169
international style. Its hard, abstract design lent itself to readings of Latin American
modernization and development. The title potentially anthropomorphizes the work.
Can we read this as a highly-abstracted portrait of the late President Kennedy? The
sculptures metal arch, which was once perfectly smooth, now appears split. The jagged
tear at the top of the sculpture seems to allude to Kennedys violent death. At the very
least, the title bestows a geometric shape with a narrative. This work also seems to
indicate that Kennedys reach into Latin America was profound, that through the Alliance
for Progress, artists in Paraguay were fascinated by the U.S. Presidentthat he was a Pan
American figureand suggests that Latin Americans mourned his death.343
Guggiaris sculpture formed part of a set of tributes to Kennedy that the OAS
hosted. In early May 1965, while the exhibition of the Esso Salon finalists was still up,
there was a performance of the Duo Tragico, an orchestral piece written by Puerto
Rican composer Hector Campos Parsi in memory of John F. Kennedy.344 Squirrus
involvement with the Esso Salon and the musical tribute to Kennedy remains
undocumented, but as Director of Cultural Affairs he surely had a hand in arranging
them. At the very least, they suggest that Squirrus thinking was not set in isolation, but
that his attitude towards Kennedy and the new man was shared by others at the OAS and
in Latin America.
343 In the late 1960s, Guggiari turned his attention to creating metal sculptures in which Christ appears as a
figure emerging from a metal sheetthe figure seems to float, leaving behind a trail of sharp metal fringes.
In the sculpture for the Esso Salon, we see the artist casting Kennedy as a martyr of a different sortone
that resonates with Squirrus particular version of the new man.
344 The performance was conducted by Guillermo Espinosa, Chief of the OAS Music Division, as part of
the Third Inter-American Music Festival, organized as an extended celebration for Pan American Day.
Press releases announcing the performance are available in The Alfred Barr, Jr. Papers, [AAA: 2193;804],
The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York.
170
In 1967, the connection between Kennedy and the new man reemerged in the
form of a public monument to Kennedy entitled Homenaje del Hombre Nuevo a Kennedy
by Argentine artist Lincoln Presno. Squirru served as keynote speaker at an unveiling
ceremony for the monument in May of that year; he had been in dialogue with his friend
Presno (a participant in the Buenos Aires-based new man group) about the monument
since 1964, when the artist began sending him sketches for it. In one of them, the simple
geometric forms of Presnos monument appear both futuristic and monumental,
especially given the detail of two cars whizzing along the curved road (Figure 21). We
see a tall, rectangular structure with a triangular wedge running horizontally through the
center. Beneath the shade created by wedge, stand five figurestheir tiny, schematic
appearance indicating the proposed monumental scale of the structure. An unreadable
scrawl appears above their heads, presumably it is an inscription for future visitors to
read. Like Guggiaris Kennedy sculpture, Presnos monument commemorates the
President using the formal language of geometric abstraction. If a solid, smooth,
impenetrable block represents the ideals of freedom and democracy, then there is a
missing piece here that has been laid down, representing the president. That vital missing
piece makes the block open and vulnerable.
Contemporary photographs of Presnos monument, which stands a few miles
outside the rural town of Quem Quem, show the austere sculpture isolated in the
Argentine pampas (Figure 22). The finished work stands approximately 40 meters tall. Its
design varied only slightly from the earlier sketch: no longer does the horizontal element
rest on a base, instead it appears to float in a spiritual manner between the legs of the
171
vertical structure. Without the base, the sculpture seems more delicate and less stable.
The inscription has been moved to the inside of one of the sculptures legs; it reads The
righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength, a quotation that comes
from a speech that Kennedy was scheduled to deliver the day he was assassinated.
I see the Monument to Kennedy in Quem Quem as the site of a forgotten Cold
War ideological battle between Squirru and Guevara: a conflict about the meaning of the
new man, and the role of culture in building transnational alliancesPan American or
Tricontinental. The monument itself is the most concrete result of Squirrus brand of new
man philosophya philosophy shared (at least partially) by Latin American artists like
Presno and poets like Fernando Demara (whose grandparents had helped found the town
of Quem Quem), but whose adherents were diminishing as Guevaras new man gained
momentum.
Squirrus speech at the unveiling ceremony further confirms the monument as a
site where many of his ideas about development, the new man, and Kennedy converged.
There, in front of his friends, officials from the Argentine government, and several
townspeople of Quem Quem, he spoke about the monument in terms of spiritual
development; he expected that some who saw Presnos monument might think, Its not a
bad monument; on the contrary, its beautiful, but at the same time, this money could
have been spent on hospitals, or on schools, or on more urgent needs. His answer to
172
these concerns is: Yes, we need hospitals for bodies that decay, but these monuments
and [artistic] gestures are hospitals for our souls.345
Perhaps, more explicitly there than any of his published writings, Squirru
describes the Americas as a war zone:
The American reality is a revolutionary reality. And Kennedy understood this and
that is why we identify ourselves with his message. We are not people that have
been born into peace, we were born into war. For this reason, the message at the
foot of the monument is a warriors message.346
Squirru repeatedly speaks of revolution and describes Kennedy as a revolutionary
torch who has lit the way for people across the world. He concludes by saying that
We are at a crossroads and you would have to be blind not to see it. Other
revolutions export their flags and many try to import them. They constitute a
challenge that we cannot underestimate, because it is a challenge that is
incendiary and real. We are the ones that have to know whether we could respond
to this challenge to end these importations, or if we have the ability to launch our
own revolution, that is the challenge that Kennedy presented to us. Nothing
more.347
The other revolutions of which Squirru speaks pertains partly to Cuba (whose
communist government he identifies as an enemy earlier in the speech) and its support
of national liberation struggles in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Since 1959 critics of
the Castro government had written about the danger of Cuba exporting its revolution to
other countries.348 In January 1966, the issue reached a new pitch after the first
345 Rafael Squirru, untitled speech at Quem Quem. Reprinted in Appendix B.

346 Ibid.
347 Ibid.
348 The phrase mingles Cold War fears about the spread of Communismespecially George Kennans
domino theorywith journalistic wisecrack. For instance, Time magazine began one report in 1960 with
the statement, Revolution is fast becoming Cubas principal export August 22, 1960. Available online:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,869815,00.html [accessed August 2011]. Fidel Castro
personally disliked the notion, stating, To the accusation that Cuba wants to export its revolution, we
173
Tricontinental Conference was organized in Havana; the conference brought together
delegates from 82 countries from across Latin America, Africa and Asia to discuss how
to join forces in the struggles against colonialism, apartheid, racism and imperialism.
Guevara, in his Message to the Tricontinental spoke of the need to create two, three,
many Vietnams, because Vietnam symbolized the militant guerilla who could bog down
U.S. imperialism.349 He urges his listeners to embrace war and envisions an armed
socialist revolt taking place across Asia, Africa, and Latin Americaunderdeveloped
continents that have been fundamental field of imperialist exploitation.
Squirrus comment that other revolutions export their flags seems a direct
reference to Guevaras Tricontinental speecha speech that was published in the
inaugural issue of Tricontinental magazine in April 1967, and circulated widely in the
month before the unveiling of Presnos Monument to Kennedy. Guevara speaks of the
interchangeablity of national flags in the socialist revolution: To die under the flag of
Vietnam, of Venezuela, of Guatemala, of Laos, of Guinea, of Colombia, of Bolivia, of
Brazilto name only a few scenes of todays armed strugglewould be equally glorious
and desirable for an American, an Asian, an African, even a European.350 His hope is for
a transnational alliance, one in which the revolutionary causes of each country and
continent are connected. This was a radically different imagining of geo-politics from
reply: Revolutions are not exported, they are made by the people. See Fidel Castro, On the Export of
Revolution, undated. Available online: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/castro-revolution.asp
[accessed August 2011]
349 Ernesto Guevara, Message to the Tricontinental, first published in English by the Executive
Secretariat of the Organization of the Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America
(OSPAAAL), Havana, April 16, 1967, available online at
http://www.marxists.org/archive/guevara/1967/04/16.htm [Accessed 24 October 2012]
350 Ibid.
174
that of Pan-Americanism: whereas Pan-Americanism basically presumed that the
geographic proximity of North and South America meant the continent was destined for
harmonious collaboration, Guevara saw North-South power relations as exploitative, and
misleading. Essentially, the Tricontinental was an East-West alliance rather than a North-
South one; it was an association that thought of itself as international, but it was not
strongly tied to geography; instead the supporters of Tricontinental saw affinities based
on social and economic status, on shared histories of colonial oppression and violence.
At the foot of the Monument to Kennedy, Squirru urged his countrymen to follow
in the footsteps of President Kennedy, to accept democratic revolutions as the only viable
type worthy for export. As Director of the MAMBA in the 1950s, he spoke of the
export quality of Argentinas art.351 And, more often than not Squirrus work in
Washington was concerned with the export of culture, which he saw as the antidote to
the spread of communism. In Quem Quem, he said that the Americas were engaged in
a war against ignorance, against misery, and above all against stupidity.352 He saw
modern art as the tool to cultivate the Americas, to eliminate ignorance and bring
spiritual strength to the people.
351 Squirru and Gmez Sicre both spoke of Argentine art as exportable. Claire Fox mentions Gmez
Sicres use of the term in 1958; see Fox, The Pan American Union Visual Arts Section and the
Hemispheric Circulation of Latin American Art during the Cold War, 97. Beverly Adams also discusses
Squirrus idea of export quality in her dissertation; Adams, Locating the International, 102-112. The
Grupo del Sur exhibition, held in the MAMBA in September 1960, is one place where both Squirru and
Gmez Sicres belief in exportability of art are layered together; Gmez Sicre in the exhibition catalogue
writes that the artists in the group show technical discipline and that strictness of opinion that I, when I
glance at a work of art, I name it exportable. Grupo del Sur (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Peuser Galeria de
Arte, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 1960), 2. Copy located in Actividades, 1960-B folder,
MAMBA Archives.
352 Squirru, untitled speech at Quem Quem. Reprinted in Appendix B.
175
We can see the Monument to Kennedy as prime illustration of how Squirrus
cultural projects at the OAS became infused with an evolving concept of the new man.
No matter how remote Quem Quem might seem, the monumentits size, its geometric
design, and sturdy constructionsuggests that for Squirru, Kennedys ideals and the
mythic figure of the new man would continue to be contemporary, durable and
everlasting.
176
Conclusion: The Phantom Museum and the Street
The phantom museum is an idea that by its very nature never dies. It is an
impulse, a political stance, never easily visible. Throughout his career, Squirru constantly
struggled with the street. He engaged in public art projects, and yet always with the idea
of making a centralized art museum, a place separated from the street and its politics, a
refuge or alternately a turret from which to wage his own ideological battles. One of his
plans as Director of Cultural Affairs was to create a museum in New York City. He was
in touch with the multimillionaire Huntington Hartford, who had founded the Gallery of
Modern Art in Columbus Circle; after Hartfords museum folded in the mid-1960s,
Squirru and Hartford worked up plans to convert the building into a museum dedicated to
Latin American art. They petitioned the OAS to acquire the building. Ultimately,
however, their proposal was rejecteda situation that Squirru cites as one of primary
reasons he left the OAS in 1970.353 With these plans unrealized, we could say that
Squirru again became director of a phantom museum. Inside the phantom museum also
roams the forgotten ghost of Squirrus new man.
Today the lasting image of the new man, the one inscribed in the heart of Buenos
Aires, is largely based on Guevaras concept. Gone are Squirrus associations with
Kennedy and modern art. But, so too are most of the associations with Fidel Castro.
Instead, Guevara himself has become the visual embodiment of the new man. Since
Guevaras assassination in 1967, his image has become an icon representing the guerilla
revolutionary and a Christ-like martyr. Shortly after Guevaras death, art critic John
353 Eloisa Squirru, Tan Rafael Squirru!, 209-211.

177
Berger compared the documentary images of Ches body that circulated in the press with
Andrea Mantegnas The Lamentation over the Dead Christ.354 Interestingly, present day
invocations of the new man almost always tie together Guevara and Christ.355
The idea of the new man continues to haunt the streets of Buenos Aires. In July
2010, I noticed stenciled graffiti with the words Agrupacin Hombre Nuevo along the
Avenida de Mayo, the citys main axis (Figure 23), where a litany of political graffiti and
flyers can be found along on the street. Unauthorized and ephemeral political statements
compete and change week-to-week as the older messages fade, get washed away, or
covered over by new posts. Agrupacin Hombre Nuevoa Christian-based human rights
organization in Latin Americadefines itself by connecting the new man to Guevara and
Christ. Its graffiti is meant to appeal to general passerby, but especially to young people
interested in tagging. The organizations homepage includes two images (Figure 24).
One is a watercolor showing Christ with his arm around Guevaras shouldertheir bond
is depicted as one between brothers; their beards and mustaches give them an almost
family resemblance. There is an amateurish and child-like optimism to the painting,
perhaps a suggestion that the two men are enjoying each others company in heaven. The
second image on the homepage alters an iconic black and red stencil image of Guevara
354 See John Berger, The legendary Che Guevara is Dead, New Society [London], vol. 10 (26 October
1967), 596-597. Also see Berger, Che Guevara: The Moral Factor, in The Moment of Cubism and Other
Essays (New York: Pantheon, 1969).
355 For a further discussion of the interrelations between Catholicism and images of Guevara, see David
Kunzle, Chesucristo: Fusions, Myths, and Realities Latin American Perspectives 35, no. 2, Reassessing
the History of Latin American Communism (March 2008): 97-115. Available through JSTOR,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/27648090 [Accessed 16 October 2012]
178
(based on a famous photograph by Alberto Korda) into a visual composite of Christ and
Guevara.
The Agrupacin Hombre Nuevo graffiti and Lincoln Presnos Monument to
Kennedy are perhaps the most tangible artifacts tied to ideological battles concerning the
new man that took place in the 1950s and 1960s. I see them as meaningful stand-ins for
Squirrus and Guevaras different visions. The graffiti is a mass produced and populist art
form; it appears without permission and runs throughout heart of a Latin American
capitol. Meanwhile the Monument to Kennedy, which embodies Squirrus dreams for the
new man and which once resonated with U.S. rhetoric for a Pan American alliance,
remains forgotten in the pampas, a gateway to nowhere.
179
AMRICAS AND LINGERING DREAMS: CONCLUSIONS
For over fifty years, the OAS spread its philosophy of Pan Americanism through
its magazine Amricas. Initiated in 1948 by the Secretary General Alberto Lleras
Camargo, Amricas was ostensibly created to replace the Pan American Unions monthly
bulletin; its immediate goal was to highlight and explain the OASs activities to the
general public in a well-illustrated and easily readable format. Each issue contained short
articles about Latin American current events, history, music, and visual art, as well as
book reviews, events listings, essay contests, and Know Your Neighbor quizzesthe
entire issue kept to a concise forty-eight pages, compared to the hundred or so pages of
the text-heavy Bulletin of the Pan American Union. The renovated magazine also carried
with it loftier intentions: namely, to promote international good will by increasing
understanding between North and South Americans. This commitment to Pan American
dialogue is made clear through the fact that the magazine, unlike the earlier bulletin, was
printed in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and also for a short time, French, the four most
prevalent languages in the Western Hemisphere. Today the magazine is still printed six
times a year in English and Spanish editions.
Jos Gmez Sicre and Rafael Squirrutwo key figures in DC shaping the
relationships between Pan-Americanism and the artsworked independently from one
another, leaving almost no record of their interactions despite the fact that they both
worked at the OAS from 1963 to 1970. But Amricas was one of the vehicles they had in
common: in the 1950s and early 1960s the magazine was a crucial agent for translating
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and transmitting their writings to U.S. audiences at a time before U.S. museums and
collectors had other resources for learning about Latin American art.
Their inclusion in Amricas magazine was not without its challenges. On the
pages of the magazine, their views of Latin American culture had to compete with
diametrically different representations of the regions culture. Their visions of Latin
America as the site for modern art were constantly interrupted by images of the regions
poverty, and its rural and indigenous lifeways.
The history of the magazines art coverage could be grouped into two periods: the
first decade (March 1949December 1959), in which Kathleen Walker served as Editor-
in-Chief. Gmez Sicre contributions came mainly during this first period. With Rafael
Squirrus arrival to the OAS in 1963, the magazine entered a cultural phase, which lasted
until about 1968. During this second period, the magazine was headed by Dr. Guillermo
de Zndegui and formed part of the Department of Cultural Affairs. Zndegui and several
other editors highlighted a new commitment to discussing the arts.356 After 1968 the
magazine did not cover art on a regular basis, focusing instead on social and
environmental issues.357
During the first decade, Walker put into place the discursive framework that
would stay the magazine throughout the Cold War period. Under her editorship, the
356 During a period of editorial transitions from January 1960 to August 1962, the magazine had no head
editor but was jointly edited by George C. Compton, George Meek, and Flora Phelps. De Zndegui
originally oversaw Amricas as Editorial Division Chief for the Department of Public Information. He
became Editor-in-Chief in 1962.
357 In 1982 the magazine was officially reintegrated back into the Department of Public Information,
severing its link to the Department of Cultural Affairs. See General Secretariat, Executive Order no. 98-
2, available online: http://www.oas.org/legal/english/gensec/EX-OR-98-2.htm
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magazine tried to promote positive images of Latin America by focusing on culture,
education, and work- and family-life. In the first years especially, Walker brought a light
and good-humored tone to the magazine, which presented Pan-Americanism as part and
parcel of a healthy curiosity about the world. Many articles in the magazine are filled
with humorous wordplay; the title of one article, MontevideoMinnesota That Is (Sept
1949), suggests some of the magazines warmth and use of surprise; the article describes
how a small town in the U.S. renamed itself after the capital of Uruguay, and the article
details the public sculptures and yearly celebrations of Uruguayan history in that town. A
reoccurring theme in many articles was that, despite geographic distance, North and
South America shared cultural and commercial interests.
Even as U.S.-Latin American relations tensed in the 1950s, the magazine
maintained its good-humored tone. Maybe the editors believed that the first step in
improving U.S.-Latin American relations was to stay upbeat in its coverage. There is
indication that some readers found the magazine an effective palliative. For instance, one
letter to the editor from Elizabeth Pinkerton of Allison Park, Pennsylvania states that
After hearing and reading about the shabby treatment accorded to Vice-President Nixon
[in South America] I had resolved to give up your magazine. But your cover was so
striking, and as I held the magazine, it opened to the article on Braslia and my resolution
was forgotten.358 This letter hints at a central objective of the magazine: rather than try
358 Elizabeth Pinkerton, Letters, Amricas, vol. 10, no. 10 (November 1958), 43. The letter is in regard to
the article by Assistant Editor of the magazine Betty Wilson, Brazlia, BrazilCarving a Capital Out of
the Wilderness, Amricas, vol. 10, no. 8 (August 1958), 2-8.
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to solve global conflicts, it encouraged one to forget about them, and instead stimulated
day-dreaming and fantasies of travel.
Walker and her fellow editors avoided directly addressing topics of international
conflict, violence, and social unrest. The polarizing issues of the early Cold War are
conspicuously absent, especially those topics that generated immense fears in the U.S.,
such as the threat of international communism and of nuclear holocaust. In fact, the word
communism barely appears within the magazines pagesand when it does, it is
buried within dense texts reviewing OAS policies. Likewise, any mention of atomic
power is always kept in positive terms as a renewable source of energy, a medium for
progress, and even the inspiration for artistic ideas.359 Even the political conflicts in
which the OAS was heavily invested make only an indirect appearance in the magazine.
The controversy surrounding Guatemala in 1954, for example, which came to a head at
the OASs Tenth Inter-American Conference in Caracas, receives only a single oblique
mention.360 Likewise, Cuba received no coverage in 1959 and very little thereaftereven
when the OAS was debating whether to suspend the countrys membership to the
organization in 1962.
359 The August 1957 issue of Amricas is dedicated to discussions of the atom. The cover shows a
photograph of radioactive phosphorous and announces two articles within: Putting the Atom to Work,
and Edgar Negrets Magic Machines, in which the sculptures of the Colombian artist are described as
creative atomic machines. See Ral Nass, Edgar Negrets Magic Machines, Amricas, vol. 9, no. 8
(August 1957), 14-19.
360 A review of the Conference by Secretary General Alberto Lleras in Amricas makes no mention of the
debates between U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Guatemalan Foreign Minister Guillermo
Toriello, which were the focus of most news coverage. Alberto Lleras, Tenth Conference Report,
Amricas, Vol 6. No. 5 (May 1954), 3-5, 41-43. These debates take a prominent place in histories of the
Guatemalan coup, most notably Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Story of the
American Coup in Guatemala. (New York: Doubleday, 1982. Reprint, Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 2005) and Piero Gliejeses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944-
1954 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).
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Eventually some readers complained. In 1960, a reader from Worcester,
Massachusetts wrote a letter to the editors stating,
I am very much disappointed in your magazine. You have constantly ducked all
controversial matters.You have forgotten about Cuba, the Dominican
Dictatorship, Venezuela, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, and other trouble spots
that might be of interest. You delight in light stuff, simple stories and the like.I
wont buy your magazine until you face facts, tell the truth and tell the story
behind the story.361
The editors responded, writing that since Amricas served as the official publication of
the OAS, which included Cuba, the Dominican Republic and the U.S. as members, the
magazine could not editorialize on political questions between members.362
Consistently, across all editorial periods, one of the primary goals of the
magazines staff was to make North American readers care about Latin America,
especially by fantasizing about traveling there. As one U.S. reader put it in 1954, Your
magazine is a regular magic carpet taking many on their first trip to a wonderful
continent and I hope fills them with the ambition to see it in person.363 Letters by other
U.S. readers resonate with the same romance of the magic carpet metaphor. For
instance, one reader from California submitted a Letter to the Editor praising Scott
Seegers article, The Other Side of the Mountain (Sept 1949) six years after it was
published in Amricas, explaining that he began planning a trip to Villavicencio,
Colombia, because of it; he writes that
the articleso fired my imagination that I determined I would one day see those
vast plains that Mr. Seegers so aptly described.I have read Mr.Seegers stories
361 Philip D. Sullivan, Some Like it Hot, Amricas, vol. 12, no. 9 (September 1960), 44.
362 Ibid.
363 E.P. McKean-Smith, Letters to the Editor, Amricas, vol. 6, no. 3 (March 1954), 48.
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many times in Amricas and Id like to tell you how much I enjoy them. From my
armchair in San Francisco I have made quite a few journeys through Latin
America with him.364
There are similar letters indicating that the magazine inspired readers to make actual
visits abroad. In 1960, an Episcopal minister, Rev. W. Shelby Walthall and his family
decided to motor down the Pan American highway from their home in Oakland,
Maryland to Santiago, Chile. He writes, that It is through Amricas magazine that we
have come to know our Latin American neighbors and have come to the point where we
would really like to see how they live and work. We feel such a trip as we are planning
will be of great help to our sons not only in their school work now but in the days when
they become older and can understand more of the adult world.365 These few excerpts
suggest that the editors were successful at interesting readers in Latin America
especially through travel stories; they also indicate that Pan Americanism was not
something simply imposed by editors onto their readers, but that Pan American desires
also germinated from the readers themselves. The metaphor of the magazine as a real
magic carpet also captures something deeper about Amricas editorial-readership
relation: both sides were spellbound by Latin America, they saw it as a fantastic
destination, almost out of a storybook or fable, where important life lessons could be
learnedlessons that are helpful in, as Reverend Walthall it, the adult world. The
readers were drawn to the magazine because of its ability to reflect what they themselves
felt were the most alluring aspects of the region, its customs, and its culture. They also
364 John G. Kosack, Letters to the Editors, Amricas, vol. 6, No 1 (January 1955), 43.
365 W. Shelby Walthall, Letters, Amricas, vol. 12, no. 12, (December 1960), 43.
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counted on the magazine as medium for exchangeusing the letters section on the last
page of the magazine as a place to trade news, information, and stories.366 In the 1950s
and 1960s it was an unlikely place for U.S. audiences to learn about Latin American art
and to exchange ideas and hopes about Pan American unity.
Amricas is still produced and circulated by the OAS. On October 12, 2009, in
conjunction with Columbus Day, the OAS celebrated the 60th anniversary of Amricas
with a display of twenty-eight of the magazines covers, arranged in cascading tiles, in
the atrium of the Pan American Building (Figure 25). On the table were complimentary
copies of the latest issue for visitors to take. This display represents one of the few
instances when the magazine and its history has been celebrated within the OASs
massive bureaucracy. The present-day editorsa staff of about fiveremain modest
about their work; according to managing editor Christopher Shell, they were not the ones
who requested the small exhibition of magazine covers.367 All their energy is focused on
completing the next issue. The display suggests a continuity in focus and tone throughout
the magazines life. But the display is a selective construction: all of the covers on view
show portraits of Latin American people, except one at center presenting flags. Absent
are magazine covers that show modern and contemporary art, as well as many themes of
industrial development, nature, and travel. The focus is instead on presenting Amricas as
the vehicle for people-to-people contact and Pan-American friendship. The display is not
366 Nearly any of the Letters to the Editor pages provide substantial evidence that a strain of hobbyists
and collectors read the magazine. A single example, especially rich in such content, can be found in the
March 1961 issue; the Letters section includes various letters seeking to trade license plates, matchbooks,
flags, bells worn by animals, records of national marches, and information on UFOs. See Amricas, vol. 13,
no. 3(March 1961), 43-44.
367 Christopher Shell, interview with the author, 22 February 2010.
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historically-oriented. It gives no sense of the magazine as a publication that evolved over
time. Instead it serves as signpost for a recurring Pan-American dream of peace and
international good will guiding U.S.-Latin American relations.
* * *
Long before the monument was visible, you might hear it. It produced a
mysterious sound that would not fade on a windy day, not when the car windows were
rolled tightly shut, nor when the vehicle stopped alongside the highway. The sounds
source came from an unnamed town somewhere along the U.S.-Mexican border. There,
in the city center, stood a large bronze sculpture soaring out of a silvery reflecting pool.
The sculpture depicts two male figures, one kneeling while the second performs a ritual.
The kneeling figure wears a headdress in which gears and levers converge to form a face.
He is the personification of technology and engineering. He holds open a large sheet of
paper on his lap, possibly a map or an architectural blue-print. He is the embodiment of
modern America, and he is asking the standing figure, a Mayan priest, a symbol of
ancient America, for a blessing. The priest solemnly gestures with his hands; he is
wearing a feathered headdress and an elaborate skirt. A young boy, also wearing a
headdress, clings to the priests legs, peering out at the ceremony taking place. The
figures are enclosed within a nichealso part of the bronze sculpturethat is decorated
with patterns and symbols inspired by South American weaving and hieroglyphics. At the
center of the niche, directly behind the two figures, is a hole shaped like a human eye. It
is the source of the sound: the hole is designed to resonate intermittently in the desert
breeze.
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The monument I just described was never erected. It exists only in the form of
written proposals, preparatory drawings, and a maquette designed by the Polish-born
artist Stanislav Szukalski (1893-1987), who first conceived of the monument he called
Promerica in 1933, believing it would be the crowning jewel of the Pan American
Highway system (Figure 26).368 Szukalski, who fled Poland during World War II and
took up residence in Southern California, never gave up on the project. In 1956, he wrote
a letter about the monument to Nelson Rockefeller, who he believed was in charge of the
Organization of American States, the institution overseeing the Pan-American Highway
project. In his letter, he describes the monument as
. a side issue of a larger project with which I now turn to your organization.
There ought to be on the Highway, at the junction between the United States and
Mexico, a town founded, ostensibly a University town, whose primary aim would
be the facilitation and radiation of the Pan-American spirit of the cultural,
economic interdependence and politico-historic filiality. At the Pan-American
University all such specialists, whose acknowledged intellectual activity has been
known to be for the advancement of a mutual understanding through learning,
would teach and lecture. This would be the primary activity of the town throughout
the year.
Annually there would be Pan-American Fairs, to which craftsman, artists and

manufacturers would bring their folk Art [sic] and modern industry from the
centers, as well as from the remotest settlements of every Country [sic]. Each
Country [sic] of both of the Americas would have their visiting Public to the Fair
with an eagerness to be known, and depart home with a greater mutual
understanding. The annual Fairs would stimulate an All-American interest.
Somehow I feel that the town should be inter-American with its own jurisdiction,
dependent on no specific Country, so as not to be regarded as an
Americanization center (and by that term I mean United States), which should
368My initial discussion of the Promerica monument, its symbolism, and reference to modern American
and ancient America, are based on Szukalskis own explanations of it in his letter to Nelson Rockefeller.
See Stanislav Szukalski to Nelson Rockefeller, 13 March 1956, folder 3, box 4, RG 5, Series: Projects,
NAR, RAC.
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be avoided under all circumstances. The most civilized Nation automatically will
have the lead. It can afford impartiality and an altruistic generosity.369
Szukalskis description of a Pan-American city and its central monument continues for
several pages, each sentence running at the same fevered pitch. Perhaps Szukalskis plan
for a Pan-American city seems eccentric, maybe even preposterous.370 His letter likely
went no further then the desk of Francis Jamieson, Rockefellers chief public relations
aid, who declined interest in the Szukalskis project and explained that Rockefeller is in
no way connected with this organization and so cannot be of help to you.371
However, Szukalskis monument should not be dismissed as merely the musings
of a crank. His imagined monument was part of a Pan-American dream that was taking
shape at mid-century. But, if monuments are meant to memorialize the events and people
of historic note, what exactly was Szukalskis monument attempting to historicize? To be
sure, the sculptor wished to celebrate the creation of the Pan-American Highway. But his
monument also projects a future world where the United States and Latin America are
more closely aligned in their politics, their modernity, and spiritual values. It imagines a
369 Ibid.
370Szukalskis work was rediscovered in the 1980s by comic book artists and enthusiasts living in Southern
California. He was lionized as a genius in 1981 by artist Robert Crumb, who ran a feature on Szukalski in
the first issue of Weirdo: The Magazine for Modern Misfits, a magazine celebrating those who lived on
the frayed fringe of culture. In 2000, Szukalskis life and work received more thorough study in the
exhibition and catalogue, Eva Kirsch, Donat Kirsch, and George Di Carpio, Struggle: The Art of Szukalski
(San Francisco, CA: Last Gasp, 2000).
371 Francis Jamieson to Szukalski, April 19, 1956, folder 3, box 4, RG 5, series Projects, NAR, RAC.
Despite Jamiesons firmness on the matter, Rockefeller did have power with the Organization of American
States. When the organization was forming in 1948, he offered recommendations to the Secretary General
Alberto Lleras about who should head the institutions various departments. Later, working behind the
scenes in the late 1960s, he encouraged the Ecuadorian politician Galo Plaza Lasso to run for office of
Secretary General, campaigning and helping him secure the position.
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day when the citizens of North and South America need a monument to help recall their
past differences and the traditions they traded with one another.
That day has not come. There is no Pan-American city for Szukalskis monument
to stand in. The Pan-American Highway was never completed. Time has only made
Szukalskis monument seem more alien; its rather crude racial depiction of modern
America as Anglonearly Aryan in appearanceand ancient America as indigenous
hint at the kind of stereotypes that plague the history of U.S.-Latin American relations.
Consider a radically different view of Pan-Americanism offered by Peruvian artist
Fernando Bryce (b. 1965). Since 1997, Bryce has made free-hand drawings of historical
documents and images he finds in archivesa process the artist calls mimetic analysis
since drawing requires Bryce to painstakingly study each historical document he chooses
to reproduce. Styling himself as a kind Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), Bryce has
embarked on his own Arcades Project, creating a visual archive of obscure and
discarded historical materials.372 He has even applied his copying technique to
Benjamins personal archives, ID cards, and photographs. His early series, Atlas Per
(2000-2001), charted the historical representations of his home country throughout the
twentieth century, pulling together 494 drawn documents relating to Peruvian culture and
politics: truncated news articles, flow charts, portraits of diplomats, ethnographic studies,
photographs, and advertisements, all of which through Bryces painstaking process
transform mundane and mass-produced material into singular works of art.
372 The Arcades Project refers to German literary critic Walter Benjamins unfinished collection of
writings about Paris during the nineteenth century. The book, written between 1927 and 1940, is generally
considered Benjamins magnum opus; it was edited and published posthumously and provides a dense
archive of transcriptions and thoughts about daily life in the city.
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Over the past ten years, Bryce has performed his mimetic analysis on documents
covering representations of Latin America more broadly. A portion of these works
address representations of war and revolution in the Spanish-speaking world. These
include the following series: Guatemala 54 (2002), a series of 4 drawings; The Spanish
Revolution (2003), a series of 21 drawings; The Spanish War (2003), a series of 127
drawings; Revolucin (2004), a series of 219 drawings. He also has hunted down and
copied images of Latin America as a tourist paradise and exotic wonderlanda quest that
began around 2002 when Bryce found a small pamphlet, entitled South of the Border,
created by the U.S. Defense Department. In an interview with curator Helena Tatay, the
artist recalls that the pamphlet was the first in an ongoing exploration of imagery
produced by a wave of 1950s Pan-Americanism:
It [the pamphlet] spoke about Latin America using terms of fantasy and
unwittingly comic phrases, as if it were an exotic, idyllic, picturesque entity. All
this business of south of the border, the idea of a pan-American union that is a
kind of democratic idyll which contrasts with real politics, with real history
[emphasis mine] and also because there is a whole string of clichs about Latin
America: the proud, vigorous Mexican Indian, the brooding natives of Peru, the
fantastic, cosmopolitan Buenos Aires, and yet we are all Americans, or whatever.
I submitted the document to mimetic analysis and a fine series was the result and I
decided to continue in that vein: looking for documents from the fifties, the
golden era of North American hegemony on the continent of America.373
Along with his South of the Border series (2002), Bryce also created drawings based on
tourism pamphlets about Costa Rica, Cuba, and Mexico.
His Amricas series (2005) represents a continuation of his interest in the Pan
American fantasies that circulated at mid-century. The series includes 44 drawings, all
373Fernando Bryce and Helena Tatay, Conversation, Fernando Bryce. ed. Helena Tatay, trans. Peter
Bush and Elena Gonzlez (Barcelona: Fundaci Antoni Tapies, 2005), 377.
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based on English editions of the OAS magazine from 1949 to 1963. The drawings were
included in the exhibition Poetics of the Handmade at the Los Angeles County Museum
of Art in 2008, and at Cosmopolitan Routes: Houston Collects Latin American Art at the
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in 2010. Eighteen of them reproduce the magazines front
covers. The covers address several recurring themes. Industrial and economic
development are represented through images of oil rigs in Venezuela, an article about an
economic conference in Buenos Aires, and scenes of car manufacturing in Brazil. Health
and modern medicine are represented by covers depicting a hospital scene, as well as an
image of a white-coated doctor surrounded by children in rural Paraguay. Other drawings
present portraits of Peruvian and Amazonian Indians, representing contemporary
indigenous life. Bryce also draws from pages describing OAS literacy campaigns, good
will tours by politicians, and exhibitions of modern art from Latin America.
Through mimetic analysis, Bryce engages in an act of serious researchone that
can also be disarmingly droll. What I am interested in is reshaping all those
representations of real events understood as constructions, through the media, he tells
Helena Tatay. In the source, he continues, they are all condemned to be prisoners of
their time, of the circumstances in which they were constructed.374 By taking
representations out of their original context, Bryce creates a certain distance or
detachment between the image and its original usage. Bryces craftsmanship is alluring,
as is the graphic design of the original source material. But the information conveyed in
374 Ibid, 374.

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the drawings are discomforting, particularly in the stark contrasts between the historic
attitudes about Pan-Americanism and our contemporary sense of political correctness.
Consider the drawing based on the cover of the magazines January 1953 issue
(Figure 27). On the left half of the image, we read cover lines describing stories on
electric power (Kilowatts for Prosperity: New Power to Mexicos Homes and
Factories) and transportation (The South American Way: Motoring from Caracas to
Buenos Aires) indicating the OASs desires to modernize Latin America. Bryce uses
dark humor to underscore the colonial implications of such modernization. For example,
the unsettling caption accompanying the image of the bearded man on the right reads,
Indian from Pisac, Peru. You can now motor through his country on the Pan American
Highway. On the same highway that Szukalski imagined a monument honoring the
native history of the Americas, Bryces drawing highlights a world where the living
indigenous populations are passed by quickly, serving merely as one more element in a
picturesque drive through Latin America.
Bryces handmade reproductions play with the idea of generating aurawhat
Walter Benjamin famously described as the constant feeling of distance we sense in front
of an original work of art.375 For Benjamin, the aura refers to our tendency to fetishize
objects, remaining in a state of reverence about the objects authenticity and ritual use.
Mass reproduction, he argues, can free us from our worship of the original work of art,
375Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Illuminations: Essays
and Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken, 1968), 217-252.
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and by extension, we become cognizant of arts historical use as propaganda. In Bryces
work, however, there is an interesting reversal: by transforming the mass produced
document into a one-of-a-kind drawing, he builds a kind of auratic distance where there
previously hadnt been one. The distance Bryce intends to generate is a critical distance.
But Bryces own editorial powers are key to his drawing series, like Amricas. He
has the power to select one image over another, he changes the medium of a multi-page
publication into a singular drawing, and he occasionally makes subtle changes to the
images to bring out messages he sees embedded in them. Comparing Bryces work to the
source, we see that he rearranges the article The Spinning World for greater comic
effect by making a caption that reads, Although it may take centuries for statesmen to
achieve One World, globe makers do it in a minute, appear as though it was the opening
sentence (Figures 28 and 29). In another case, he crops an image of artist Constanca
Cauldern and Joan Crawford, pairing it with the articles title Art Safari (Figures 30
and 31). Another alteration by Bryce involves taking the titles of two separate articles,
The Role of Business and The Role of Unions, and placing them into one composite
image (Figures 32-34). The artists alterations, his cropping and condensing of details,
may all seem quite innocuous. There is at least one case, however, where Bryces change
seems loaded. In his drawing of a man and woman on horseback, an image based on the
back cover of the November 1949 issue, the artist captures the sitters with an economy of
lines, conveying their postures and their decorative clothing (Figures 35 & 36). But Bryce
adds his own label to this image: Gaucho and girl. The actual caption in the magazine
is more specific: Chilean hueso (cowboy) and friend. The difference may seem
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insignificant. But it is an unnecessary change, clueing us to the possibility that Bryce,
through his rearrangements and edits, is perhaps making Amricas appear more prone to
stereotyping than it actually was. Even when he shows absolute fidelity to his source
materials, Bryce irrevocably changes things as he traces out a history. He is doing the
work of the historian: bringing certain aspects into focus, while necessarily occluding
others, always using materials from the past to make meaning in the present.
Szukalski and Bryce present radically different standpoints on Pan Americanism.
While Szukalskis monument hums with utopian imaginings about Pan Americanism
working towards the good of the future, Bryce looks back at Pan Americanism with a
critical eye. Any sense of hope rests on the idea that, by critically examining the past, we
might learn from our mistakes.
As Bryces work continues to grow in popularity, drawing series like Amricas
take with them the threads of Pan Americanism into the twenty-first century, giving
viewers the opportunity to criticize as well as to relish in the myths that were so popular
in the 1950s. They reopen a spacealbeit a self-conscious onefor Pan American
dreaming.
In the last few years, I have seen a resurgence of Pan-American modes of thinking
in the contemporary art worldbut they do not seem as conscientious as Brycess. In the
introduction to this dissertation, I discussed the Blantons America/Amricas
exhibition, which integrates U.S. and Latin American art in the belief that a continental
view of the Americas can better illustrate each regions contributions to the history of art.
This is a permanent exhibition rooted in a Pan-American vision. Other museums have

195
adopted a similar position, most notably the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (MFA). In
2010 the MFA opened its Art of the Americas Wing, a four story wing designed by
Foster + Partners architects and dedicated to presenting pre-Columbian, colonial, and
contemporary art from North, Central, and South America. Videos of the opening
celebrations show an event that seems taken directly from a 1950s Pan American
guidebook, juxtaposing scenes of sincerity and kitsch: we see gospel singers performing
the U.S. National Anthem, and brass band street performers, their drums labeling them
Hot Tamales; speeches and news reports citing the integration as the makings of a new
era. Critic Holland Cotter praises the galleries for providing a new vision of the history of
art by placing U.S. and Latin American art as equals at a hemispheric table.376 He
acknowledges that the definitions of America have long been polarized, but concludes
with the hope that maybe this is where art itself comes to the rescue. So much about the
new Americas Wing is so startling, stimulating and beautiful that you just want to lay
down your arms.377 This hope that art can overcome all borders, as well as academic
misgivings, is eerily familiar Pan American rhetoric.378 At museums and in scholarship,
376 Holland Cotter, Seating All the Americas at the Same Table The New York Times, 19 November
2010, C23.
377 Ibid.
378 We can see indications of this Pan American trend at other museums and universities. The Newark
Museums Constructive Spirit: Abstract Art in South and North America, 1920s-50s, curated by Mary Kate
OHare in 2010, likewise presented works from across the Americas based on their formal similarities. That
same year, Adam Kleinman of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and founder of Lentspace curated
Avenue of the Americas, an open-air exhibition that brought four artists from Latin America Julieta
Aranda, Carlos Motta with David Sanin Paz, Judi Werthein, and Carla Zaccagnini to produce site-specific
works at the corner of Canal St. and Sixth Ave about Pan Americanism. Even the Museum of Fine Arts,
Houstons major new initiativeDocuments of 20th Century Latin American and Latino Art digital archive
and book projectcould be considered something of a Pan-American endeavor. While its goal is to make
key documents of 20th century art available for free globally through the internet, the scope of collecting (so
far) focuses on materials from repositories in the Latin America and the United States. At universities,
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the terminology has changedPan American has largely been replaced with seemingly
more neutral mentions of the Americas or the Hemisphericbut the impulse remains
in place to read the U.S. and Latin America as a unit, linked through geographic
proximity, history, and shared political and cultural ambitions.
In this dissertation, I have examined the activities and the arts writing of Jos
Gmez Sicre and Rafael Squirru, two historical figures who have received only limited
scholarly attention previously. I explored the different ways their curatorial strategies and
their desires to build museums of Latin American art connected their personal agendas
with corresponding national and international politics. Few scholars have wished to
engage in this topic, perhaps because the politics of their Pan-American dreaming seemed
too transparent. Some may prefer to forget these figures and their activities, filing them
away as closed chapters of the Cold War era. But to avoid or ignore their work and their
Pan-American dreaming is to potentially deny those aspects of the past that still shape the
field today. Pan-American dreams are not simply of a bygone era, but they are still
lingering with us today and they are constantly being remade.
programs of international affairs have long offered courses on Inter-American Affairs, now repackaged
as specializations in Latin American and Hemispheric Studies. George Washington Universitys School
of International Affairs offers graduate degrees in the subject, and University of California offers
undergraduates minors. The framework is migrating to other areas in the humanities, particularly the fields
of Comparative Literature, American Studies, and Art History. The University of New Mexico offers
graduate degrees in Art of the Americas; Stanford Universitys Division of Literature, Cultures, and
Languages offers courses in Hemispheric Studies. And scholarly books, such as Robert S. Levine and
Caroline F. Levander, eds. Hemispheric American Studies (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press,
2008) and Justin Read, Modern Poetics and Hemispheric American Cultural Studies (London: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2009).
197
Illustrations
Figure 1. Asilia Guilln, Hroes y artistas vienen a la Unin Panamericana para ser
consagrados [Heroes and Artists Come to the Pan American Union to be
Consecrated], 1962. Art Museum of the Americas, Washington, DC
198
Figure 2. Jos Balmes, No, 1965. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
199
Figure 3. Courtyard of the Pan American Building, Washington, DC, 1942. Photograph
by John Collier. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI
Collection (LC-DIG-fsac-1a34529)
200
Figure 4. Washington, DC Under the auspices of the Bureau of University Travel and
the National Capital School Visitors' Council, over 200 high school students chosen for
their intellectual alertness visited Washington for a week. Students and parrot in the patio
of the Pan-American Union. Photograph by Marjory Collins. Library of Congress, Prints
& Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection (LC-USW3-010019-E).
201
Figure 5. Partial View of the Gallery for the Permanent Collection of Contemporary Latin
American Art of the Pan American Union. Photographer unknown. Reprinted from the
Boletn de Artes Visuales 6. January-December 1960.Washington, DC: Pan American
Union, frontispiece.
202
American Art of the Pan American Union. Photographer unknown.
Reprinted from La Union Panamericana en el servicio del arte.
Washington, DC: Pan American Union, 1961.
American Art of the Pan American Union. Photographer unknown.
Reprinted from Permanent Collection of Contemporary Art of Latin
America. Washington, DC: Pan American Union, 1960.
203
Figure 8. Alfred Barr, Cubism and Abstract Art (book jacket). New York: Museum of
Modern Art, 1936.
204
Figure 9. Todays Art at So Paulo by Jos Gmez Sicre. Reprinted from Amricas,
vol. 10, no. 1 (January 1958), 32-33.
205
Figure 10. Rogelio Polesello, Faz A [Phase A], undated. Lowe Art Museum, University
of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida.
206
Figure 11. Hermann Guggiari, Kennedy, 1964. Image reprinted from the inside back
cover of Amricas, vol. 17, no. 6 (June 1965). Lowe Museum Art Gallery, University of
Miami, Coral Gables, Florida.
207
Figure 12. Fernando de Szyszlo, Cajamarca, 1959. Art Museum of the Americas,
Organization of American States, Washington, DC
208
Figure 13. Oswaldo Guayasamn, Madre y nio [Mother and Child], 1955. Art Museum
of the Americas, Organization of American States, Washington, DC
209
Figure 14. Art Critic on a Holiday by Jse Gmez Sicre. Reprinted from Amricas, vol.
2, no. 1. (January 1950), 11.
210
Figure 15. Detail of Art Critic on a Holiday, by Jos Gmez Sicre. Reprinted from
Amricas, vol. 2, no. 1 (January 1950), 14.
211
Figure 16. The Yapey ship, date unknown, photographer unknown. Courtesy of Kees
Heemskerk, www.shipspotting.com.
212
Figure 17. Jacqueline Kennedy and Rafael Squirru at the Pan American Union.
Photograph by David Chevalier. Reprinted from Amricas, vol. 15 no. 2 (February 1963),
16.
213
Figure 18. Fidel Castro in Matanzas, 1959. Photograph by Grey Villet. First printed in
Liberators Triumphal March Through an Ecstatic Island, LIFE
Magazine, vol. 46, no. 3(January 19, 1959), 29.
214
Figure 19. Leopoldo Presas, El Hombre Nuevo, 1954. Reprinted from Homenaje a Rafael
Squirru. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Galera Zurbaran, 2005.
215
Figure 20. Norman Saunders, New Man, November 1964 (left); Norman Saunders, New
Man, September 1965 (right). Original paintings in the Collection of Richard Oberg.
216
Figure 21. Lincoln Presno, Sketch of the Monument to John F. Kennedy, 1964.
217
Figure 22. Lincoln Presno, Monument to John F. Kennedy, c. 2010. Photographer
unknown. Photograph courtesy of http://QuemQuem.gob.ar
218
Figure 23. Stencilled Graffiti along Avenida de Mayo, Buenos Aires, July 2010.
Photograph by author.
219
Figure 24. Screenshot of Agrupacion Hombre Nuevo homepage:
http://www.elhombrenuevo.galeon.com/index.html [accessed August
2011].
220
Figure 25. Display for Amricas 60th Anniversary in OASs main building, October 12,
2008. Photograph by Juan Manuel Herrera.
221
Figure 26. Stanislav Szukalski, Maquette for Promerica, 1933.
222
Figure 27. Fernando Bryce, Amricas, 2005. Private Collection, Houston.
223
224
Figure 29. This Spinning World. Reprinted from Amricas, vol. 4, no. 1 (January
1952), 21.
225
226
Figure 31. Art Safari by Jos Gmez Sicre. Reprinted from Amricas, vol. 16, no.11
(November 1964), 16-17
227
228
Figure 33. The Role of Unions. Reprinted from Amricas, vol. 13, no. 10 (October
1961), 26-27.
229
Figure 34. The Role of Business. Reprinted from Amricas, vol. 13, no. 10 (October
1961), 36-37.
230
231
Figure 36. Chilean hueso (cowboy) and friend. Reprinted from Amricas, vol. 1, no. 3
(November 1949), back cover.
232
Appendix A. Documents concerning Jos Gmez Sicre recovered from a
Freedom of Information Act Request
Note: My FOIA request regarding Jos Gmez Sicre, filed on March 10, 2009
[NRC2009012339], returned 222 pages of documents from the U.S Citizen and
Immigration Services; pages 213-229 appear here and pertain to a 1952 interrogation of
Gmez Sicre by officials of the United States Immigration Service.
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
Appendix B. Rafael Squirrus Speech in Quem Quem, Argentina,
1966.
251
252
253
254
255
Appendix C. Alejandro Anreuss Last Interviews with Jos Gmez Sicre
Note: The following interviews by Alejandro Anreus provide valuable insights into Jos
Gmez Sicres life and work. Because the published article is difficult to find, I have
included a copy here to aid fellow researchers. Originally published as Alejandro Anreus,
Ultimas conversaciones con Jos Gmez Sicre, ArteFacto: Revista de arte y cultura en
blanco y negro [Nicaragua] no. 18 (Summer 2000), n.p. Reprinted with the permission of
the author.
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
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Michael Gordon Wellen

Andrea Giunta, Supervisor

Michael Gordon Wellen, B.A.; M.A.

The University of Texas at Austin

for the Degree of

The University of Texas at Austin

You have my admiration and my heart.

eternal gratitude. I am honored to call Jacqueline Barnitz a mentor as well as a cherished

encouragement and helped resolve the administrative challenges that occasionally

cropped up during my graduate education.

for which I am grateful.

Quite a few colleagues, librarians, and archivists helped me in my investigations

concerning the cultural operations of the OAS. My thanks go to Professor Alejandro

my attention to materials on Rafael Squirru in the National Archives; my thanks to them

books, they welcomed me warmly and kept my spirits high.

Seegers (who co-founded and frequently contributed to Amricas magazine), deserves

further information about the critics life and work.

I owe a great deal to my friendsmany of whom I met through the UT Art

History Department and through CLAVISfor encouraging me and consistently giving

Writersincluding Andy Campbell, Tara Kohn, Laura Lindenberger Wellen, and

great deal of laughter, sympathy, and relief.

embraced me with open arms. I love you all.

Writing a dissertation means livingat least for a short period of timeon a

endeavors resonate with that certain specialness captured by Braques statements. My

congratulations and love to you, Dr. Laura!

Michael Gordon Wellen, Ph.D.

The University of Texas at Austin, 2012

Supervisor: Andrea Giunta

PAN-AMERICAN DREAMS: AN INTRODUCTION 1

PART I: JOS GMEZ SICRE AND THE VISUAL ARTS DIVISION 19

Introduction: A Place for Latin American Art .......................................................19

Chapter One: An Eye in Context ...........................................................................28

Chapter Two: Intellectuals, Networks, and Centers ..............................................80

Conclusion: A Museum Personified ....................................................................118

Introduction: Phantom Museums and New Men .................................................122

Chapter Three: The New Man Movement in Buenos Aires ................................127

Chapter Four: Refiguring the New Man in Washington, DC ..............................138

AMRICAS AND LINGERING DREAMS: CONCLUSIONS 180

Appendix A. Documents concerning Jos Gmez Sicre recovered from a

Appendix B. Rafael Squirrus Speech in Quem Quem, Argentina, 1966. .......251

Consecrated] (1962) shows a row of twenty-one figures on horseback parading through a

In its cheerful depiction of the people of the Americas peacefully coming

together, Guillns painting resonates with a Pan-American brand of utopian thinking.

The terms Pan-American and Pan-Americanism originated in the late nineteenth

single and cohesive ideology, Pan-Americanism referred to an overlapping set of

and one of the earliest to historicize Pan-Americanism, described it as more of a

characterized by a shared optimism about U.S.-Latin American relations and a desire to

the twentieth century, Pan-American came to describe a variety of activities, programs,

and organizationssome private and others governmentalwith interests in improving

Americanism became virtually synonymous with the Organization of American States,

writes historian Stephen M. Streeter.6

Americanism served as a smokescreen for U.S. imperialism.7 Pan-Americanism has

such as its program of Latin American art exhibitions, were assumed to be a

supplementary component of an imperialist agenda.

These included an unquestioned endorsement of constitutional democracy as modeled by

diverse kinds of continental solidarity between the Americas. Throughout this

dissertation, I investigate concepts of Pan-Americanism that, while generated in

of Pan-Americanism precisely to demonstrate how they formed positions towards Latin

art, and the political efficacy of art.

As Guillns painting attests, Pan-Americanism could be artistically generative.

troops. Her representation of the OAS, then, might be read as ambivalent.

historically specific imaginings of U.S.-Latin American relationsacademic and