Alberto Pérez was a member of the Grupo Signo and writes about the group in this text. He discusses what originally led to a form of art whose exponents sought to explore the global sociopolitical situation. He classifies the group’s style under the heading of “aformalism” because of its affinity with the Spanish movement and because the members were more interested in “real” rather than formal painting. Pérez recalls several landmark events in Signo’s trajectory: their participation in the XII Biennale Internationale de la Jeune Peinture (Paris, 1961); their exhibition in the Darro salon in Madrid, with a text by José María Moreno Galván; and their exhibition at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona. He notes the group’s close ties with Spain, based on a certain international bond and the fact that they are Hispanic Americans—in his words, followers of both Unamuno and Bolívar. Pérez also discusses the member’s approach to the concept of “avant-garde” and chronicles the group’s eventual breakup.       

The art historian and painter Alberto Pérez (1926–1999) writes about his membership in the Grupo Signo, a group that also included Gracia Barrios (1927–2020), Eduardo Martínez Bonati (b. 1930), and José Balmes (1927–2016). Signo’s members produced works in the 1960s that were critical of traditional painting. Though they identified with Spanish Informalism, or “aformalism,” as Pérez points out, what was unprecedented was that they fused their political commitment with their painting. Signo’s members were interested in a painting’s material reality; rather than “representing” reality, they sought to objectify it, to present the painting as an object that could intervene critically in reality. They used non-art materials to achieve that goal, including photographs, newspapers, bits of wood, and oil paint laid on as a thick, visible paste.   

Working together, the art historians Milán Ivelic (b. 1935) and Gaspar Galaz (b. 1941) identified two periods in Signo’s production. The first was an Informalist phase during which they explored ideas associated with abstraction. The second, a Post-Informalist phase, saw them addressing different social problems, going beyond a purely visual approach to advocate a return to figuration. In terms of his philosophical interests, Pablo Oyarzún (b. 1950) places the group at the beginning of a modernizing process in Chilean art, a critical view shared by other authors such as Galaz and Ivelic, mentioned above. [Regarding the text by Oyarzún, see: “Arte en Chile de veinte, treinta años” (doc. no. 745095).]      

The group was not exactly a movement since each member developed their own ideas in their works, but they did show their work as a group and shared a political approach in which art had specific meaning. The Spanish art critic José María Moreno Galván (1923–1981) was an early reviewer of the group’s work; he said that the members of Signo were “the four cardinal points of the new kind of painting being produced in Chile.” [See the following in the ICAA Digital Archive: “El Grupo Signo de Chile” (doc. no. 751532).] Each artist had his or her own career and earned a place in Chilean art history: José Balmes was awarded the Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas in 1999; Gracia Barrios received it in 2011. [On the subject of the individual careers of the members of the Signo group, see “Gracia Barrios y la constante humana” (doc. no. 739569) by Faride Zerán; “Alberto Pérez” (doc. no. 756960) by Francisco Brugnoli, and “El realismo crítico de José Balmes” (doc. no. 778658) by Justo Pastor Mellado.]