This article by Ana María Risco was included in her book Crítica situada. The latter was originally written as an academic thesis in which she explored the network of authors with whom Enrique Lihn communicated in the field of the visual arts. The author refers to two texts written by Lihn. The first text, written in 1988 (possibly the last text that Lihn wrote about the visual arts), discusses the paintings and prints produced by Eugenio Téllez; the second is Lihn’s poetry anthology, París, situación irregular, published in 1977. Risco draws from both works to describe the connection between Lihn and Téllez, especially regarding their cultural distancing from the standard submission to European tradition and the way in which they each boast about the “exotic” nature of Latin American life and art. The first text emphasizes how Téllez’s visual work—described as “a tropicalism generated from without”—reflects his desire to disassociate himself from the Chilean avant-garde, which, at that time, was a closed, cryptic circle. This was not a very complicated undertaking, considering that he was not then living in Chile. His work is described as a form of opposition to the military dictatorship, which proposes “a back-to-front dictatorship.” In the case of the anthology of poems, Risco explains that Lihn talks about the First World’s ignorance about Latin America, thus underscoring the self-satisfaction that was an endemic vice in societies that have forgotten the scars of the two world wars.

This article is similar in many ways to another essay in Crítica situada, the book by Ana María Risco, entitled “Lihn y Pablo Burchard, borrando a Europa.” [On that subject, see in the ICAA digital archive “La escritura de Enrique Lihn sobre artes visuales” (doc. no. 753791) and “Lihn y Pablo Burchard, borrando a Europa” (doc. no. 753819)]. Both essays help clarify what Enrique Lihn (1929–1988) thinks about the “European legacy” with regard to the strengthening of Latin American and Chilean artistic identity on the basis of their own merits. In writing “Lihn y Eugenio Téllez en la tierra sin suelo,” the author used the catalogue Eugenio Téllez, descubridor de invenciones (1988) as a reference. However, the exhibition held a couple of years earlier at Casa Larga (1986) cannot be overlooked.   

The title that the author chose for her essay hints at an analogy regarding the careers of these two artists who worked in different places, hence the paradoxical and errant idea of “la tierra sin suelo.” In Lihn’s case, the concept is highlighted in three poetry anthologies––Poesía de paso (1966), París: situación irregular (1977), and A partir de Manhattan (1979)––in which the poet establishes a dialogue with European tradition and quotes artists and works to which he was exposed during his visits to overseas cities and museums. Eugenio Téllez (b. 1939), for his part, left Chile in the late 1960s to study printmaking under William Hayter. He later settled in Toronto, Canada, and returned only occasionally to Santiago, Chile.      

[For other articles about Lihn’s work, see the following in the ICAA digital archive: “Enrique Lihn, en el trazo de Juan Emar” (doc. no. 753808) by Ana María Risco; “Conversaciones con Enrique Lihn” (doc. no. 754001) by Pedro Lastra; “Enrique Lihn: Entrevistas” (interviews) with Daniel Fuenzalida (doc. no. 754484); and “Enrique Lihn: Escritura excéntrica y modernidad” (doc. no. 778836) by Carmen Foxley].