Article of the guest columnist, María Teresa Constantín for surdelsur.com Historiography of Argentine art coincides in naming Argentine Painting since 1920, as the period when the modernization of the Argentine pictorial language took place. Several events support this view: Emilio Pettoruti, the Paris Group and Alfredo Guttero returned from Paris. Xul Solar, the Artists of the People, the Boca Group and other individualities were active in this period. From different formal and ideological angles -the artists returning to the country knew the language of European avant-garde-, the dominant taste and its arbiters, the official...

Article of the guest columnist, María Teresa Constantín for surdelsur.com Argentine Painting by foreign Painters The Argentine Painting from Independence to the 1920 is the period that initiates with the May Revolution. As from May Revolution -and under the influence of lines of thinking derived from French Revolution-, religious subjects, as mentioned for the colonial period, were less present; this time, pictorial activity mainly developed around portraits and scenes of customs. A numerous group of foreign artists visited Argentina, living here for some time or settling down on a permanent basis; they could capture...

Article of the guest columnist, María Teresa Constantín for surdelsur.com The feature characterizing works from Colonial Period Argentine Fine Arts’ History is, as Héctor Schenone states, “The predominance of religion… and the functionality attributed to art as a tool for persuading and conveying ideas” . Artists and craftsmen worked for the benefit of a community whose life was centered on the temple. Church itself was a manifestation of these values: facades-altarpieces were the link between men and the sacred space; within the building, altarpieces repeated this function and through them, colonial artists achieved remarkable...

Article of the guest columnist, María Teresa Constantín for surdelsur.com In the Pre-Hispanic Period Argentine Fine Arts’ History, the most outstanding are the North-west cultures regarded as the ones which reached the highest degree of development before the Spaniards’ arrival. They engaged in agriculture and pottery, basing their economy on agriculture and knowing the techniques for the working of metals, ceramics and textiles. Settled mainly in the valleys of Catamarca and Salta, they had a sedentary life and gathered in groups keeping a considerable amount of population and a more complex organization than the peoples...