In this introduction to her book En busca de lo propio, the art historian and critic Ivonne Pini sets forth her methodological principles and the basic questions that guided her research. First, the author states the need to undertake a study of modernity and identity in Latin American art, setting aside biases and bearing in mind the diversity and specific characteristics of each country. She goes on to emphasize the danger of falling for the concept of “reflected modernity,” based on the false assumption that in the 1920s, Latin American art was copied from the methods and attitudes of the European avant-garde. In her opinion, to the contrary, the recovery of Native and African elements allowed art in the region to show marked differences from the European art of the time. The introduction also explains her research methodology: she based her work on primary sources written during that period, attempting to reconstruct the cultural milieu that surrounded the artists instead of on the stories of the individual artists. Finally, Pini justifies the space/time structure of the study proposed. To that end, she explains the fervor for “what was new” that prevailed in the 1920s, reviewing the differences between art in Cuba, Mexico, Uruguay, and Colombia—the four countries she chose.

Ivonne Pini, a researcher born in Uruguay, has had a career as a professor, art critic, and historian at the Universidad de los Andes and the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá. The text whose introduction is summarized here was her thesis for her master’s degree in art and architectural history and theory at the Universidad Nacional. In this work, the writer examines the beginnings of modernity in the visual arts in the twentieth century in the four different Latin American countries that made up her study: Cuba, Mexico, Uruguay, and Colombia.

The different milieus that developed in each of these countries led to different art histories, based on the political, cultural, educational, and social situation of each country. Such differences are precisely those that guided the study done by Pini, who maintains that there can be no homogeneous study of Latin American art. In her opinion, we must pay attention to the specific characteristics of each country in order to do it justice when we are writing the history of the avant-gardes in Latin America.

In this regard, the value of this text lies in its recognition of “the difference.” Pini’s book goes beyond the Latin Americanist positions based on the assumption that there is a single body of Latin American art, while they ignore its diversity and plurality. This is a recurrent theme for the author, whose work is focused on the development of modern and contemporary art in Latin America (see “Memoria e identidad de las últimas décadas del siglo XX” [doc. no. 1091831]). This entire book is a very complete study of Latin American art in the 1920s in the four countries selected; for this reason, researchers interested in this subject should make sure to include it in their bibliographies.