Review by Choice Review
As a means for collective reception, printmaking, along with mural painting, was one of the favorite techniques used by the Latin American avant-garde to make its ideals accessible to a larger public in order to have a deeper impact on society. While the work of the Mexican Taller de Grafica Popular is the most typical and commonly known of this position, it does not begin to tell the complex story of printmaking in the 20th century. Frank begins to answer that need. Here, the story of a group of Argentine artists who began working together around 1912 is described and poignantly demonstrated as one of the earliest socialist realist movements in Latin America. These artists, instead of following the vanguardist currents of the time, chose to depict socially important themes and calls for action for the working class using a socialist realist formal vocabulary. Frank convincingly shows how the group's alliance with other leftist writers in Buenos Aires yielded many of the subjects within Argentine culture, history, and society they would depict. Thoroughly illustrated, the book also includes translated texts and manifestos by the artists. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. General readers; lower-division undergraduates through faculty. L. E. Carranza Roger Williams University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
