The cultural authorities proffered senseless explanations, justifying the arbitrary selection of artists invited to the Biennial and claiming that the young painters had chosen not to participate, when in reality they had not been invited. Such was the case of Antonio Rodríguez Luna (1910–1985), the painter from Córdoba (Spain) who had been living in Mexico for twenty years and had obtained Mexican citizenship. According to Salas Anzures, the selection had been undertaken by the Frente Nacional de Artes Plásticas [National Front for Visual Arts], the Taller de la Gráfica Popular [Workshop for Popular Graphic Art], and the Sociedad Mexicana de Grabadores [Mexican Printmakers’ Association]. Despite the new trends in art, the cultural politics of the day continued to support a nationalist, figurative trend and continued to present the Escuela Mexicana de Pintura [Mexican School of Painting] as the country’s artistic avant-garde. Miguel Álvarez Acosta, director of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (1954–58), and Miguel Salas Anzures, chair of the Department of Visual Arts (1957–61) of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura (INBAL) [National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature], were the organizers of the two biennials held at the Museo Nacional de Artes Plásticas [Palacio de Bellas Artes]. The first biennial, held from June 6 to September 30, 1958, consisted of four exhibition-tributes to José Clemente Orozco (1883–1949), Diego Rivera (1886–1957), David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896–1974), and the Brazilian painter Candido Portinari (1903–1962). There was widespread discontent with this biennial because of the organizing bodies and the involvement of the Frente Nacional de Artes Plásticas in the jury panel. At the second biennial, held in 1960, many artists, including José Luis Cuevas (born 1934), Francisco Icaza, and Arnold Belkin (1930–1992), among others, refused to participate in protest of Siqueiros’s imprisonment at Lecumberri. Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, the United States, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela were the countries that took part in both events. The official name of the biennial, and the one that was most commonly used, was “Bienal Interamericana de Pintura y Grabado” [Inter-American Biennial of Painting and Printmaking], though it was also known as the “Bienal de Artes Plásticas” [Visual Arts Biennial], “Bienal Panamericana de Pintura” [Pan-American Painting Biennial], among other coinages.
