In the 1960s the arts in Uruguay entered a phase of neo-realism and embraced an all-encompassing synthesis of the visual arts. The main driving force behind this local burst of creativity was the prevailing mood of protest against, and reaction to, tradition. Contemporary artists felt compelled to continue “the rupture” of their visual languages that had begun a decade earlier.
In his essay Haroldo González (b. 1941), the Uruguayan visual and conceptual artist, refers to Las veredas de la Patria Chica, the exhibition of prints by Teresa Vila (1931–2009), an event that was considered one of the first “conceptualist” exhibitions ever held in Montevideo. Vila’s drawings on fabric and paper and her prints represented her research into and portrayal of the history and culture of Uruguay.
Vila’s work combined sounds, texts, visual languages, and performances to present a view of Uruguayan art history from a contemporary perspective (“Today’s sidewalks, where yesterday’s memorable events took place.”). According to González, this series of prints should be understood as the work of a pioneer in Uruguayan performance art. Her interventions—which she called “actions with a theme or subject”—reflected difficult social transformations in which middle class students and workers played more important roles in politics and the media, since these actions were significantly different from the playful hurly-burly of happenings. They involved well-thought-out interactions between the artist and the public that were both provocative and critical of what was going on in the world at that time, from the Vietnam War to the Cuban revolution, student demonstrations, a new social strata as regards the death of the individual within the context of group ideals, and so on.
