The Pan American Union Visual Arts Section and the Campaign against Social Realism

My paper deals with the Pan American Union Visual Arts programs’ efforts to defame Mexican muralism and other forms of committed art in during the early Cold War period. The is the general secretariat of the Organization of American States, located in Washington, D.C.  In 1946, José Gómez Sicre (Cuba, 1916-1991) assumed directorship of the arts programs and became a major player in the postwar art scenes of many Latin American countries, where he promoted the work of young artists working in a range of modernist idioms.  His curatorial project also entailed displacing the venerable legacy of Mexican muralism, which had achieved a hemispheric reach during the two prewar decades. To this end, Gómez Sicre launched campaigns against social realism in Mexico and Peru, both indigenous majority nations, and both bastions of social realism, thanks to the protection of state-supported arts institutions. In these sensitive arenas, where painting and nationalism were deeply imbricated, Gómez Sicre intervened more discreetly than he did in other Latin American cities.  He exerted influence through a personal network of sympathetic critics, gallerists, and curators, but his primary allies in the struggle were two young artists, José Luis Cuevas (Mexico, b. 1934), and Fernando de Szyszlo (Peru, b. 1925), who rapidly attained the status of public intellectuals.  Gómez Sicre’s animus toward muralism stemmed from his early career experience in during the war, and it gathered momentum in the anti-Communist climate of the during the early 1950s.  This paper draws on recent scholarship by Latin Americanist historians of the Cold War, which stresses the participation of local social actors in shaping transnational anti-Communist movements. It incorporates research conducted at archives in Mexico, Peru, and the U.S., including recent work with the papers of Mexican muralist, David Alfaro Siqueiros.