Muralism vs. Abstraction: Competing Ideas of Political Art in Latin America

In the early twentieth century, artists in Latin America broke free from the elite sanctuary of the academies and began to imagine new forms of art that would speak directly to the masses. Between the 1920s and the 1940s, two radically opposed solutions emerged: muralism and abstraction. This presentation will examine the very different ways in which each sought to define the masses of the Americas and will investigate their conflicting claims to be a truly revolutionary art for the region.