In 1935, the first visual arts guild and association was created in Uruguay which dissolved in 1937 due to dissention concerning what policies to follow under the dictatorship of Gabriel Terra and with the Comisión Nacional de Bellas Artes [National Commission of Fine Arts], a governmental institution. During that time, many groups including artists were formed intending to be representative of large populous sectors. Such was the case, among others, of the FEPU (Federación de Estudiantes Plásticos del Uruguay [The Visual Arts Student Federation] ) created in 1939; and also of the APU (Agrupación de Plásticos del Uruguay [Viusal Arts Group of Uruguay]) created in 1942, both briefly existing. El Sindicato [The Syndicate] that was formed in 1945, managing to bring together the most significant and current artists of the time, such as José Cúneo, Bernabé Michelena, José Luis Zorrilla de San Martín, Miguel Ángel Pareja, Alfredo De Simone andFelipe Seade, among its 86 affiliated artists. On the other hand, the provisional Comisión Directiva [Board of Directives] was formed by the architect Carlos Herrera Mac Lean and the visual art artists Óscar García Reino and Germán Cabrera, among others.
The declaration that was signed by the Comisión Directiva [Board of Directors] emphasized “safe from the hatred of war”, few months after the end of the global crisis, the outlook of a future, and points to the law passed in 1944 and its important local relevance for the visual art artists to intervene in creating murals for public school buildings. The strong political content of the new association would guarantee its continuance for almost two decades, with some periods of interruption, up until the end of the sixties when UAPC (Unión de Artistas Plásticos Contemporáneos [The Union of Contemporary Visual Art Artists]) was founded and that was obviously dissolved by the coup d’état of 1973 that incorporated a military dictatorship for eleven years.
