the studio of Andre Lhote. 14 While snobbery had the beneficial effect ofkeeping the Buenos Aires elite up to date, this did not prevent the public that acclaimed the exhibit of the Japanese artist Foujita at the Miiller Gallery in 1932 from repudiating and mocking Pettoruti and Xul Solar. It is easy to imagine the artistic stagnation of the first two decades of the century in what we might call "closeddoor" countries in view of their unreceptiveness to immigration—those of the Andean area, Central America, and certain parts of the Caribbean. Genre painting reigned supreme; the public refused to accept anything other than literal reproduction of visible reality. Sometimes the merest of accidents had a profound effect on an artist's career. Jaime Sabartes, a friend of Picasso, set up a tailor shop in Guatemala City in 1907, and it was there that the young Carlos Merida saw for the first time a few examples of modern painting. This chance encounter proved decisive for the development of one of the most original of the pioneers of modern Latin American art. Wifredo Lam's visit to Picasso's Paris studio in 1930 was to bear fruit 12 years later in an impressive series of Picasso-like pictures of women of the tropics. Individual talent and chance were two factors of significance in the implantation of modern art in Latin America. The slow, laborious process of gaining access to modern art meant that until 1925 artists did not feel free to depart from representation of reality. It also meant, however, that Latin America skipped over the period of "isms" in European art. Fauvism, German and Scandinavian Expressionism, Russian Constructivism, De Stijl, Dada, and Pointillism all were without direct or indirect effect on Latin American artists. The innovations that became known and were timidly accepted fell in the areas of Impressionism—already in a second phase— and Cubism. With respect to the latter, reservations must be made similar to those expressed in the case of the former. The analytic and synthetic aspects of French Cubism, the use of planes, and the decorative manifestations found no reflection in Latin America. Instead we find a process of "Cubification" of stillrecognizable forms, combined in rather elementary fashion. It was not a matter of chance that the European artist most closely followed in Latin America was Andre Lhote, a now-forgotten painter of second rank, who engaged in the same sort of second-hand modernism. The break with Postimpressionist landscape painting came about through "Cubification" more in the manner of Cezanne than in that of Picasso. During the '30s it found its best expression in a dry, literal realism, deriving from enthusiasm for the Mexican muralists, the most important influence being that of Diego Rivera. Portraits painted in Argentina by Raquel Forner, Demetrio Urruchua, and Lino Eneas Spilimbergo; in Colombia by Ignacio Gomez Jaramillo; and in Cuba by Jorge Arche, and working-class scenes painted by the Argentine Antonio Berni or the Mexican Antonio Ruiz are all characterized by the same directness of expression and synthesis of elements in a well-combined whole. One might call it Diego Rivera seen in the light of Cubism. There were variations of course. An artist like the Argentine Luis Centurion took a more aesthetic approach to "Cubification," and the Brazilian Emiliano di Cavalcanti practiced it with exuberant exaggeration.
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8 • INTRODUCTION