Gonzalo Muñoz, one of the contributors to Ruptura, a magazine published by the art action group C.A.D.A. (Colectivo Acciones de Arte), produced this poetic-visual document. The text is divided into six parts and is based on a first-person statement that alludes to conflicting situations in the Soviet Revolution and thus to the left-wing anti-fascist armed struggle in Latin America. Muñoz mentions the Chinese Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art launched by Mao Tse-Tung in 1942. He also includes a news item about an activist who was attacked in Argentina. Cultural references of this kind are the basis of this contribution by Muñoz, who calls for a close relationship between art and politics.     

“Sobre arte y política (1)” is the title of the material that Gonzalo Muñoz (b. 1956) contributed to Ruptura (1982), the magazine published by C.A.D.A. (Colectivo Acciones de Arte). It is a document that helped to circulate texts that—by sharing the work of artists who were not members of the art action group or other independent projects—introduced works of art that were produced outside the group. For example, the poet Soledad Fariña (b. 1943) interviewed Juan Downey (1940–1993), the Chilean artist who lived in the United States, about his work and called the resulting text “Juan Downey: Haciendo Señales” [see the ICAA Digital Archive (doc. no. 731813)]. The researcher, academic, and politician José Joaquín Brunner (b. 1944) presented his “Lucha cultural y política” (doc. 731855). Also included in the publication were Lotty Rosenfeld’s “Trazado de cruces sobre el pavimento” (doc. no. 731835), her account of the project she started in 1979,  and Diamela Eltit’s “Socavada de sed” (doc. no. 731842) in which she describes the actions performed in the early 1980s.   

The poet Gonzalo Muñoz was involved in the Chilean art scene in the 1970s and 1980s and wrote about the work of several artists, including Virginia Errázuriz, Francisco Brugnoli, C.A.D.A., Eugenio Dittborn [see: “Una política” (doc. no. 735205) and “Eugenio Dittborn y Gonzalo Muñoz a propósito de la historia sentimental” (doc. no. 731931)]. He also wrote about exhibitions of works by Chilean artists presented in Chile and elsewhere [see: “El gesto del otro” (doc. no. 736081)]. Unlike the texts mentioned above, “Sobre arte y política (1)” is a graphic work that relies on a poetic style of writing whose elusiveness hints at the resistance (emanating from multiple artistic sources) to the military dictatorship imposed by General Augusto Pinochet in the 1973 coup d’état. Artworks and texts in those days used metaphor and ellipsis as a discursive strategy to counter the regime’s repressive censorship, as reflected in the book Margins and Institutions. Art in Chile Since 1973 published in Melbourne, Australia, in 1986 by the theorist and cultural critic Nelly Richard (b. 1948) [see: “Rhetoric of the Body” (doc. no. 744815), “Return to the pleasurable” (doc. no. 743686) and “Introduction” (doc. no. 738523].