Aracy A. Amaral (b. 1930) is a historian and art critic who, since 1975, has taken a very keen interest in Latin American art. She took part in the Austin Symposium in Texas and subsequently established relationships with Latin American critics such as Damián C. Bayón (1915–90) from Argentina—the organizer of the event—, the Peruvian Juan Acha (1916–95) who lived in Mexico, and Marta Traba (1923–83), who was from Argentina but who had settled in Colombia.
In several essays and articles by this same author, in which she addresses a range of subjects from the visual arts to architecture, she lays the groundwork for a topic that gained considerable traction during the 1970s; that is, the concept of a sense of identity, both at a national and an Americas-wide level. She developed this theme in articles such as “Modernidade e identidade: as duas Américas Latinas, ou três, fora do tempo” [doc. no. 776159], which covered three decades of art-related material from Brazil and Latin America, including information on history, art criticism, architecture, and urban planning. In another essay published in the same volume—Textos do Trópico de Capricórnio: artigos e ensaios (1980?2005) (São Paulo: Editora 34, 2006)—Amaral probes more deeply into the subject discussed here in “Alteridade e identidade na América Latina,” in which both “otherness” and “identity” reflected alternative facets of the crisis or decline that was apparent in the modernist works that were being produced at that time
Amaral views the neocolonial style as an example of art that transcends the local parameters of individual countries. Despite the fact that these works have been produced locally, the common features they share, and that Amaral detects, reflect a yearning for an identity that in turn suggests a desire to be involved with every other Latin American country and, ultimately, a Pan-American effort. On this subject, see Amaral’s “Projeto de trabalho: História da arte moderna na América Latina (1780?1990)” [doc. no. 776227].
This document undoubtedly reflects the author’s critical perspective as well as her reference to unifying categories based on socio-cultural criteria.