Justo Pastor Mellado discusses the Escena de Avanzada twenty years after Nelly Richard coined the term. Though it originally had militant undertones, the term evolved into a historical category. It applied to a set of texts and artworks that Richard championed in her early writings. According to Mellado, the Avanzada also implied a strategy for internationalizing Chilean art, at least in the case of Richard and Eugenio Dittborn, who he identifies as its primary adherents. The Avanzada transcended the idea of a group united by a “confluence of temporary interests” that sought to join forces to create interventions in Chilean society’s institutional no man’s land in the wake of the 1973 coup d’état. He thus identifies the three currents that converge in the movement and the artists involved. Something else those artists had in common was the crisis facing painting at the time and their use of the human body. Mellado compares Richard’s theoretical referents and their effects on Chilean art, generating coherence and political support during a time of great turmoil. 

The curator and art critic Justo Pastor Mellado (b. 1949) wrote this essay in 1997 for the first version of the Bienal de Artes Visuais do Mercosul, held in Porto Alegre, Brazil. He represented Chile at the event, which was also attended by the Argentinean art historian Irma Arestizábal (1940–2009); the Bolivian art historian Pedro Querejazu (b. 1949); the Paraguayan art critic Ticio Escobar (b. 1947); the Uruguayan curator Ángel Kalenberg (b. 1936); the Venezuelan critic Roberto Guevara (1934–1998); and the Brazilian art critic Frederico Morais (b. 1936), who was the general curator of the event. The curatorial focus of this Bienal (which was actually the 13th edition of the event) was on a historical revision of Latin American art centered on nations in the Mercosur group; Venezuela was the guest country. The exhibition was organized in three sections: Construtiva — A arte e suas estruturas, Política — A arte e seu contexto, and Cartográfica — Território e história, which sought to show the political side of Latin American art as well as its constructive and conceptual aspects. [The curatorial text by Morais can be seen in the ICAA Digital Archive: “Reescrevendo a história da arte latino-americana” (doc. no. 808314).]

Mellado introduced a diverse selection of artists, including some with long careers such as Roberto Matta (1911–2002) and José Balmes (1927–2016), as well as young artists such as Yenniferth Becerra (b. 1971), Paula Rojas (b. 1968), and Mónica Bengoa (b. 1969). He also presented the Escena de Avanzada through a selection of documents. This concept had already been suggested by the theorist and cultural critic Nelly Richard (b. 1948) and reiterated in her book Margins and Institutions. Art in Chile Since 1973 (Melbourne, 1986). During the 1970s and 1980s there were debates about the relationship between art and politics; Mellado participated in those discussions, though he approached the subject from a different point of view, mainly at the Seminario de interpretación de la cuyuntura (sic) plástica (1983) where he expressed his differences on three separate occasions. [See “Intervención viernes 13 de mayo” (doc. no. 749169); “Intervención viernes 20 de mayo” (doc. no. 749179); and “Intervención viernes 3 de Junio” (doc. no. 749190).] On the other hand, Mellado collaborated with key artists in the Avanzada such as Gonzalo Díaz (b. 1947), Eugenio Dittborn (b. 1943), and Carlos Altamirano (b. 1954) in essays such as: “Tránsito suspendido de Carlos Altamirano” (doc. no. 731739), which was quoted by the author in this document. [Richard discusses the Avanzada in Margins and Institutions. Art in Chile Since 1973, see: “Introduction” (doc. no. 738523); Fernando Balcells also writes about the Avanzada, decades after the movement emerged, in “La escena de avanzada: el cuerpo de la desdicha” (doc. no. 738184).]