The Americas | Bello
The last modernist
Fernando de Szyszlo and the globalisation of Latin American art
UNTIL he moved to Paris in 1949 at the age of 24, Fernando de Szyszlo had never seen a Rembrandt or a Van Gogh. "It was a shock to discover the modern world," he says. But growing up in Lima, the son of a Polish geographer and nephew of a Peruvian writer, he marvelled at Peru's wealth of pre-Columbian pottery and textiles—"the only original art that was within our reach".
In Paris he discovered Cubism, surrealism ("I identified with surrealist texts, not the paintings") and abstraction. He forged friendships with other Latin American artists, including Mexico's Rufino Tamayo and Venezuela's Jesús Soto (who more or less invented kinetic art), and writers such as Octavio Paz. Some of his friends remained in the French capital. But Mr de Szyszlo returned to Lima.
Latin Americans "were the poor relatives [of art], accepted at the banquet but only at a side table. If I wanted to change that I had to be here." He is speaking in his modernist concrete house in a quiet district of Lima, which contains his studio and is built around a patio filled with palms and his sculptures.
Mr de Szyszlo, like Tamayo, rebelled both against the socialist realism of Mexican muralism and against the unthinking copying of European artistic fashions. Instead he has spent his life developing a unique pictorial language, a restrained abstract expressionism populated with symbols (sundials, altars, sacrificial knives) and colours (natural reds, blues and ochres) loosely inspired by the artefacts of ancient Peru (see picture).
In his paintings totemic figures battle with obscure forces, or are trapped in the labyrinths of the unconscious. They are an often-sombre reflection on the human condition. In this sense his work is universal. But it is also an attempt to express Latin America's battle for a modernity that reflects its past and its complex ethnic and social reality.
Next month Mr de Szyszlo will turn 90. He still paints every day. A cerebral, political liberal (in the British sense), he is one of Peru's most respected intellectuals. Perhaps because of his long and prolific career and because his work is difficult and anguished rather than decorative, he has enjoyed more critical than commercial success. Nevertheless, his work sells as fast as he produces it.
This commercial health applies, too, to Latin American art in general. It has enjoyed an unprecedented boom in critical interest and in market value in this century. Almost every Latin American capital now boasts an art fair. Of course this echoes the global boom in art (see page 68). It is also a side-effect of faster economic growth in Latin America. Most collectors of the region's art remain local. But that is starting to give way to a timid internationalisation.
This applies especially in Brazil, whose art was almost unknown outside the country until a decade ago. Take sp-arte, a São Paulo art fair that is the region's biggest. When it began in 2005 all but one of the 40 galleries exhibiting were Brazilian. This year's fair, held in April, was the biggest yet, with 84 Brazilian galleries and 53 international ones. "Ten years ago Brazilians only bought Brazilian artists," says Fernanda Feitosa, sp-arte's director. This year's show had work by Damien Hirst, Bill Viola and Richard Serra. Conversely, Brazilian galleries have started going to art fairs abroad.
That trend is likely to continue. The art market is not immune to the region's economic slowdown. Sales to local buyers at sp-arte this year were 11% down on last year, at 139m reais (around $45m). Takings at twice-yearly New York auctions of Latin American art are steady, thanks partly to new international buyers, but still below their 2008 peaks (when Christie's sold a Tamayo for $7.2m).
The slowdown may have its biggest impact on contemporary art. Virgilio Garza, the director of Latin American art at Christie's, highlights the strength of modernist sales at last month's auctions—a Tamayo and a work by Remedios Varo, a Spanish-Mexican surrealist, both topped $3m—while the market for post-1960s art has softened.
Mr de Szyszlo complains that the region's contemporary artists are just as derivative of foreign fashions as those of the early 20th century, a judgment that seems too sweeping. Latin America has changed immeasurably since he began painting. It is less provincial, more outward-looking and less socially divided, and its culture enjoys greater international recognition. Creative industries are an important potential area of economic growth for the region. If, contrary to Mr de Szyszlo's expectation, its postmodern art proves to be as original as its modernist tradition, Latin America will be well served.
This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline "The last modernist"
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