Having been expelled from the United States, David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896–1974) traveled to Montevideo in February of 1933, and by the end of May in that same year he had established himself in Buenos Aires. In the River Plate, Siqueiros began to experiment with a radical set of concepts deriving from a lecture he had developed in the United States, titled Los vehículos de la pintura dialéctico-subversiva [the Vehicles of Dialectical-Subversive Painting]. In June he exhibited in Buenos Aires at Amigos del Arte [Friends of Art], a liberal and modernizing arts institution. He gave controversial lectures that polarized the arts field into the defenders of “arte puro” [“pure art”] and “arte político” [“political art”]. He also contributed to Crítica [Critique], run by Natalio Botana. Botana commissioned Siqueiros to paint Ejercicio Plástico [Visual Exercise] in the cellar of his estate. The mural was made by the Equipo Poligráfico Ejecutor [Lead Polygraphic Team]—formed by Siqueiros, Antonio Berni (1905–1981), Lino Enea Spilimbergo (1896–1964), Juan Carlos Castagnino (1908–1972), and the Uruguyan set-designer Enrique Lázaro). This document is part of a series of articles published in the magazine Contra. La revista de los francotiradores [Against: The Snipers’ Magazine], run by the leftist writer Raúl González Tuñón, who was not officially affiliated with the party. (See the corresponding documents.) For this reason, Contra operated as a publication of the political left, stimulating the active dialogue between the literary and political vanguards. The articles in this series were published between April and September 1933, essentially congruent with the months of Siqueiros’s stay in Buenos Aires, and his presence is a frequent subject matter in the articles. Many of Siqueiros’s artistic collaborators had worked previously at Crítica. This early document of Julio E. Payró—a prominent participant in the local art criticism in Buenos Aires during the 1940s and 1950s—presents an interesting position on traditional easel painting as well as the issues on mural art.
