Chapter 1: Setting the Backdrop

Introduction

Two great thinkers of the arts and art history in the 20th century can help

us understand the meaning of the art created by one of Argentina’s greatest

artists, Antonio Berni (1905 - 1981). Diego Rivera once said that art is a social

creation. In his essay The Revolutionary Spirit in Modern Art, published in 1932,

Rivera writes about how Honoré Daumier was revolutionary in both his

expression and content and that to do so, he created a new technique by seeing

his subjects through class-conscious eyes (Rivera 54). Art, according to Rivera,

has advantages in speaking a language that can be easily understood by working

class individuals and the lowest rung in the social class structure (Rivera 57).

Meyer Schapiro states in his The Social Bases of Art that it is in terms of changes

in the immediate conditions in the world that artists create their work. He also

states that that there is evidence that binds art to the “conditions of its own time

and place” (Schapiro 118). Schapiro says that the artist acquires the “courage to

change things, to act on his society and for himself in an effective

manner” (Schapiro 126). Berni, his art (especially the Juanito Laguna series), and

its lasting influence are the subject of this thesis.

Antonio Berni could easily fit into Rivera’s description of Daumier because

Berni also took a revolutionary approach to his art by seeing his subjects through

a class-conscious lens, too and then taking it a step further in his collages that

1
were to become his Juanito Laguna series. And Berni also created works in

response to the conditions that plagued the society in which he lived, such as no

authentic political representation for the working classes, widespread poverty,

and modernization projects that, to him, clearly were not working.

Antonio Berni, along with other Argentinean artists, wished to forge an art

that was a tool for social justice, expressing his opinions the best way he knew

how - through his art. Berni would express the plight of the working class and the

residents of the villas miserias most notably during the latter part of his career

during the late 1950s and well into the 70s. His paintings and collages, which

resonated with many people at the time they were made and displayed, continue

to resonate with the people of Argentina, and indeed the world, to this day.

However, before beginning to understand and interpret Antonio Berni’s work, it

is imperative to understand the artist’s country, its political climate, and the

societal circumstances that helped to shape his body of work. Only then will the

groundwork be laid to better understand and appreciate his work so that the

aesthetic quality is not all that is appreciated, but also the cultural portrayal of

the artist’s view of his world. In this chapter, the political history of Argentina,

the arts of Argentina, and the villas miserias (shantytowns) that is the subject of

Antonio Berni’s Juanito Laguna series will be introduced and discussed.

2
A Brief Political History of Argentina from the Late 19th Century to

the Mid 20th Century

During the late 19th century, Argentina was beginning to modernize at a

rapid rate and was also trying to establish itself as a modern metropolis. During

these years the public administration was organized and the first political parties

began to emerge. Buenos Aires was declared a federal district and land was being

appropriated in large numbers. The population began to rise sharply, mostly due

to the influx of people from Spain and Italy. These immigrants would change the

“social, economic, demographic, and cultural profile in Argentina” (Pacheco

1992, 124). A number of loans were being received by the state and inflation

generated. Pacheco notes the monetary instability that was “permanently altered

by immense public expenditure bringing about constant economic crisis...within

an apparently well-off and growing nation” (124). Argentina was also in the era of

engaging in a national discourse of identity that also was occurring among

intellectuals and artists and by the end of the 19th century, “socialism and

anarchy appeared together within the newly born proletariat” (Pacheco, 124). The

workers began to use strikes as an “active method in the fight against excessive

workdays, low wages, unemployment, and electoral fraud” (Pacheco 1992, 124).

In the first few years of the 20th century, different social sectors were

beginning to occupy major decision-making positions. Immigration started again,

the rural population declined, and the number of people settling in the cities rose

once more. Pacheco mentions the decline of international prices of farm products

3
which affected the economy. This, coupled with excessive public spending, was

the cause of budget deficits (125). According to Pacheco, the First World War and

the Russian Revolution were the two international events that most influenced

Argentina at the beginning of the 20th century (125). On September 6, 1930, a

provisional regime of a coalition of military officers and civilian aristocrats

ousted President Yrigoyen “on the grounds that his government was

illegitimate” (Skidmore & Smith 86). General José F. Uriburu directed the

provisional government but was won out by the group led by General Agustín P.

Justo. Elections still took place but “fraud was freely practiced” (Skidmore &

Smith 87).

Justo was succeeded by Roberto Ortiz in 1937 and in 1940 he was forced to

resign due to health conditions. Ramón Castillo succeeded him but he stuffed the

ballot box to get there, increasing his illegitimacy. It was at this time that military

officers were watching how Germany and Italy had played key roles in “displacing

the wavering civilian governments” (Skidmore & Smith 88). Seeing the Axis

powers on the winning side of the war, the chief military officers “saw the need

for steady, sure leadership in their own land” (Skidmore & Smith 88). So, while

the military was seizing control of the government, there was a surge in class

consciousness among the working class. According to Skidmore and Smith, the

“urban working class, especially in Buenos Aires, had changed...[and] was now

about 90 percent literate and it was mobile, with many of its members having

recently arrived from the countryside” and most of the urban workers “were now

4
native Argentines, not European immigrants” (89-90). The urban working class

had no effective political representation and so none of the major parties in

existence had a working-class base.

Enter Juan Domingo Perón, a man of the middle-class who had risen to

the rank of colonel through his career in the Argentine army. He was made

Secretary of Labor and eventually began to “rally the urban classes, especially the

proletariat, against the estancieros and foreign business” which was his strategy

for winning power (Williamson 466). He won his popularity “by introducing a

whole range of welfare benefits for trade unionists” and the established parties

“feared what they saw as a fascist threat to the constitution and

liberty” (Williamson, 467). The military junta dismissed Perón, but on October

17, 1945, trade unionists organized massive demonstrations to demand his

release. In the presidential election of 1946, he won 54 percent of the vote and

once in power “he proceeded to purge the army leadership, raise officers’ pay and

give political posts to his military followers” (Williamson 467). His biggest

political asset, however, was Eva Duarte who became Perón’s wife in 1945. The

Eva Perón Foundation provided hospitals, clinics, schools and many forms of

charitable relief for the poor and the sick (Williamson 467).

Perón would soon face economic problems and in 1949, the country saw

its first trade deficit since the war which reduced the foreign exchange reserves to

low levels (Skidmore & Smith 92). This economic crisis coincided with his

“decision to strengthen his political grip” and his first move was to amend the

5
constitution to allow for the reelection of the president and also to “reiterate a

1947 law which gave women the vote” (Skidmore & Smith 93). The government

was reverting to authoritarian measures and Perón’s ideology was broadly

corporatist, recalling “aspects of fascism in its personality cult and in its

authoritarian emphasis on the supremacy of the state over civil

society” (Williamson 468). Opponents were persecuted or jailed under a new law

of contempt for the authorities; the critical press was hamstrung by “selectively

rationed newsprint, while Peronist publications flourished” (Skidmore & Smith

470). The government was taking a lurch toward totalitarianism and extending

its control over the independent unions, employers’ organizations, professional

associations, schools, and universities (Skidmore & Smith 470). But, when Perón

decided to take on the Catholic Church, the military leaders had had enough and

the Church “turned hostile after Peronism began to encroach on its traditional

domains of education, welfare, and public morals” (Skidmore & Smith 470). In

1954 divorce and secular education was legalized and the remaining relation with

the Church reached a breaking point. During a mass rally of Peronists outside

the presidential palace, military aircraft bombed the palace, killing several

hundred people, inflaming the political realm. The Peronists responded “by

putting many churches in Buenos Aires to the torch; violence and counter-

violence broke out in the streets...” and finally, on August 31, Perón told his

followers to “take up arms and kill five opponents for every murdered

Peronist” (Skidmore & Smith 471). Civil war seemed to be nearing, but two weeks

6
later, army revolts succeeded and they ousted Perón, allowing him to escape to

Paraguay (Skidmore & Smith 471).

The end of Perón did not mean an end to Peronism. There continued to be

a split between political and economic power and inflation and public deficits

“needed to be tackled in order to prevent further deterioration of the productive

base of the economy, but any plans to solve these problems met with bitter

opposition from the Peronists” (Skidmore & Smith 472). In 1958, the Radicals

were allowed to form a government that was led by Arturo Frondizi that lasted

from 1958 until 1962. Frondizi tried to appeal to the Peronists by legalizing their

party but when the Peronists won majority of the seats, the military forced

Frondizi to annul the elections because of his failure to convert the Peronists.

Frondizi refused to resign and on March 29, 1962, “the army tanks rolled onto the

streets and removed Frondizi from the Casa Rosada” and in stepped José María

Guido (Skidmore & Smith 472-73).

Guido would serve for a year and a half, but the real power of the

government was held by the military. The military annulled the elections of 1962

and held a new election in 1963, in which Arturo Illia would win. Illia’s governing

style was more low key and he “made no overtures to the Peronists”. Despite the

fact that he held down prices and increased wages, he still found it impossible to

meet the Peronists half way. In 1966, Illia was overthrown by the military who

had decided to try “the indefinite suspension of electoral politics and the

establishment of a technocratic military regime” and General Juan Carlos

7
Onganía announced another Revolución argentina (Williamson 473). This, too,

would not last long. The uprising in Córdoba in May 1969 led the military to

believe that the nation “was ungovernable without Perón, who alone could put an

end to the escalating terrorism and reconcile political forces to the need for

economic discipline” (Williamson 474). Thus, Perón would have a second chance

to rule from 1973 to 1976.

8
The History of Social Realism in Argentina up to Antonio Berni’s

Emergence

As Argentina was modernizing, the working class was becoming more

socially conscious. At the end of the 19th century, there was a rise in the number

of strikes and demands for acceptable working conditions and wages and the

people were becoming aware of electoral fraud. There were also, beginning in the

1930, a series of military coups that repressed the people and the freedom of

expression, in print and in art. With Perón, we are led to believe that he was a

man of the people, but he did not convince everyone and indeed repressed the

press as well as artists working during his presidency.

Social realism as we know it today can be traced back to the 19th century

and the rise of modern industrialized societies “in which social struggles began to

emerge and the proletariat was first defined" (Pacheco 1992, 123). In some

countries, like Italy or France, some forms of realism held steadfastly to the

commitment to the social reality in which the artists worked with an aim of

denouncing and transforming it (Pacheco 1992, 123). However, despite the fact

that we can trace the origins of social realism to the 19th century, social realism

has actually been present throughout the history of art and cannot be confined to

just one period in history. Marcelo Pacheco points out that social realism is not a

style, nor is it a school of art. Rather, it is a trend in art that flowers in “distinct

moments and [is] enveloped in various aesthetic formal orders specific to certain

groups or individual artists” (Pacheco 1992, 123). Therefore, it is not a local

movement, but a commitment to analyzing one’s world and the social reality of it.

9
Artists, particularly in the Western hemisphere, called for an art that was both

responsive to the struggles of the working class and also had a wide appeal

(Anreus, Linden, and Weinberg xiv). However, there is more than one definition

of Social Realism. David Schapiro writes that social realism is an attempt to use

art to “protest and dramatize injustice to the working class” which was caused by

capitalist exploitation according to many artists (Anreus, Linden, and Weinberg

xvi). Others suggest that it is an attitude about where art fits in to life and that

this question emerges in the mid-1930s. However, Argentina was, and to some

extent still is, a conservative country, creating a harsh environment for artists

wanting to express themselves via social realism. But artists in Argentina and the

rest of Latin America realized art’s potential to create class consciousness that

can lead to social change (Anreus, Linden, and Weinberg xvi).

With the modernization of Argentina, the population began to rise chiefly

because of immigration of Spanish and Italian peoples. This would change not

only the demographics of Argentina, but the culture, the social, and economic

aspects of reality as well. For the generation of artists in the late 19th and early

20th centuries, travel to Europe to perfect techniques was an absolute and

fundamental step toward professional development. Despite the fact that France

served as a social and cultural model for the Argentina of the late 19th century,

Italy also was highly influential to the early generation of artists. Many artists,

including Ernesto de la Cárcova, Lucio Correa Morales, Angel della Valle,

Eduardo Sívori, Reinaldo Gíudici, and Eduardo Schiaffino, studied first in Italy

before moving on to study in France. Their stays in Italy would influence their

10
use of social realism due to the social struggles of the country and how they were

reflected on the canvas. However, according to Pacheco, despite their influence,

there are no signs of social realism in their later work (129). Pacheco goes on to

say that a key theme in the early social realism of Argentina was a “lack of

articulation of such works within the artists’ production and the lack of a defined

ideological stance” (129). This, however, was not necessarily the case for Sívori

who reflects:

A painter goes to Europe, studies and works there for years, makes

paintings in his own style, and thinks of composing them in his

native land. When he returns home, he finds that there is no

market.... Why should he produce paintings of local culture which

no one will buy?... So, with this sad knowledge, he devotes himself

to portraiture and makes portraits and more portraits, alternating

this with giving painting lessons,...the only way of making a living....

That is why Argentine painters create works of spirit and courage in

Europe but do not continue to do so here (Pacheco 1992, 130).

Moving forward to the early 20th century, Martín Malharro introduced

impressionism to Argentina in 1902 upon his return from France. Thus,

impressionism began to be seen in Argentina but not without opposition from the

Nexus group, two members in particular, Ana María Telesca and José Emilio

Burucúa, who had “discovered an important distinction between an impressionist

11
influence, in terms of a style both dynamic and modern, and an impressionism

reduced to its technical, scientific elements, at once closed and

repetitive” (Pacheco 1992, 132). So, there were two rival trends: the trend toward

renewal and the “officialism of the Nexus group [a group of young artists working

in Rosario]...[and its] techniques of impressionism” (Pacheco 1992, 132).

However, Malharro’s departure was linked to the theoretical philosophy of

French philosopher Jean-Marie Guyau who included the aesthetic within the new

field of scientific sociology. Guyau considered art as a means of communication

between people, allowing “individual consciousness potentially to communicate

with all consciousness”. The relationship established by Guyau “between esthetic

emotion - always of a social nature - and the creation of a different world

superimposed on the known world, changes art into a powerful means for the

transformation of societies”. However, art can have both “civilizing effects” or the

“effect of social disintegration” according to Guyau (Pacheco 1992, 133). With the

theories of Guyau, the modernism of impressionism, anarchy, and nationalism,

Malharro found a way to denounce social reality and helped pave the way for the

Cinco Artistas del Pueblo, the founders of social art in 1920s Argentina.

The Artistas del Pueblo were both humanist and revolutionary, wanting to

use art to achieve “direct contact with the masses” (Santana 20). They took their

art to the masses, including libraries where they would often lecture, city squares,

and even took exhibitions to the factories and streets (Santana 20). These artists’

main aim was to denounce injustice and raise awareness of the working

conditions of the working class while also denouncing militarism and war. They

12
did this using art, usually reserved for the elite classes, but instead of using

myths, legends, or scenes from the Christian doctrine, they used the ordinary

men and women that make up society. With the Artistas del Pueblo, there was,

for the first time in Argentina, a reflection upon the function of art within a

contemporary society.

Numerous other movements followed the Artistas del Pueblo and in 1937,

Raquel Forner entered the scene. Wtih Raquel Forner, social realism meant more

than just looking at local dynamics. Forner reflected on the pain and impotence

of humanity with the tragedy found all over the world. She started out looking to

Buenos Aires for her early themes, but after the Spanish Civil War, she began to

“broaden her horizons and denounce the situation of the millions of disinherited

humans punished by the war and the irrationality of power” (Pacheco 1992, 144).

Forner said that

painting should be a dramatic echo of life, of events, of what weighs

down on the human heart. I always tried to convey in my pictures

something more than an artistic purpose. Even some of my still lifes

tried to reflect a cosmic sense through their component elements

even if, at that time, reality did not seem so pressing; but then the

world climate began to bear down upon me (Whitelow 50).

An interesting trend seems to occur around the same time that Raquel

Forner was beginning to emerge. According to Pacheco, there was “a generation

13
of artists, active since the twenties, who came from the middle or lower classes

and made their living in areas not related to art, while at the same time devoting

themselves to painting or sculpture” (146). Enrique Policastro was one such

artist. Policastro worked in a factory for thirteen years and from the beginning of

his artistic career, his interests lay in his sense of solidarity with the working

class. He formed a group with Antonio Berni, Juan Carlos Castagnino, and

Demetrio Urruchúa, exhibiting and publishing pieces together. They each held

the same ideas, including “anti-fascism,...sympathy for the Latin American

revolutionary movements, [and] the same ‘muralistic’ formal tendency” (Pacheco

1992, 146). Demetrio Urruchúa, together with Castagnino, Berni, and Manuel

Colmeiro, formed the Taller de Arte Mural in 1944. Muralism was highly debated

in Argentina in the thirties and forties, especially in regard to David Alfaro

Siqueiros’s 1933 work in Buenos Aires.

Another artist bound to social realism was Antonio Berni. Pacheco says

that the “quality of his work resides in the precise balance that he attained

between narrative painting with strong social content and esthetic

originality” (147). Berni studied in Europe from 1925-1930 and he eventually

“aligned himself with the ideology of the French Communist Party” (Pacheco

1992, 147). At this same time, other artists from Argentina were studying in Paris

including Aquiles Badi, Héctor Balsadúa, Lino Spilimbergo, Raquel Forner, and

Juan del Prete. All of these artists first studied in Buenos Aires and then were

immersed in the contemporary art of Europe. Many also traveled to other areas

of Europe allowing them to be exposed to Near Eastern art, pre-Columbian art,

14
Etruscan art, and the Italian masters. For many of these artists, “the end result

was an eclectic introduction to art in which elements of neocubism,

neoexpressionism, and neofavism intermingled in images of syntax” (Pacheco

1992, 148). Juan del Prete, however, followed the abstract style in both painting

and sculpture and he “introduced nonfiguration in Argentina with his exhibition

of paintings in 1933 and sculpture in 1934, after his return from

Europe” (Pacheco 1992, 148).

15
Fast Forward: Art in Argentina in the 1960s

To tell the story of art in Argentina in the 60s requires us to go back in

time to the rule of Juan Domingo Perón. In April of 1945, the artistic and cultural

sectors began to organize themselves and held a massive march for La

Constitución y Libertad (The Constitution and Liberty) on September 19, 1945

(Giunta 2007, 26). Two days before the march, the Salón Independiente

(Independent Salon) opened its doors in opposition to the Salón Nacional

(National Salon), which had become synonymous with the government. Artists

had assumed their civic responsibility and called for a return to democracy saying

that

The works on exhibit here were intended for the National Salon this

year. The artists whose names appear on these works participate in

this exhibit in solidarity with the democratic desires expressed by

the intellectuals of this nation. With this attitude, the exhibitors

wish to express that they are not indifferent to the problems

affecting the activities or artists and citizens (Giunta 2007, 27).

A number of prestigious names were involved in the Salón Independiente and it

was because of these names that “Antonio Berni was able to uphold the

importance of the Salon and raise it to a level equal to the significance of the

march for the Constitution and Liberty” (Giunta 2007, 28). Berni was an active

participant in the Salón Independiente and spoke of the reasons for creating the

Salón by saying,

16
 What is extraordinary is that against all the restrictions imposed on

artists over the years to keep them within unworkable and narrow

conventional limits of a purist and romantic world, these artists

have collectively broken out of their self-imposed isolation, as well

as that imposed on them, in order to mix in with the mass of

citizens (as well they should), fighting for the cause of Argentine

democracy without which, they know, the necessary spiritual

probity and opportune climate for the free expansion of human

personality is impossible (Giunta 2007, 28).

The word “freedom” was the principle that these artists felt they were

defending when they exhibited work favoring the end of the war, which would not

be shown because the government had taken a stance with the Axis forces.

Whatever the government’s stance, artists did not hesitate “to shun the official

ceremonies and to utilize their works as instruments for social advance” which

caused Berni to exclaim during a tribute ceremony, “Barbarians! Ideas cannot be

killed!” (Giunta 2007, 30).

After February 1946 and the elections of that year, artists dissolved the

Salón Independiente, but the conflict, both in the political and arts sectors, did

not disappear. At the same time artists were boycotting the Salón Nacional and

demonstrating a defense of civil liberties, other artists were leaning toward

17
geometric abstraction, leaving politics out of their art, and opposing realism

altogether (Giunta 2007, 33).

When the Revolución Libertadora (Liberating Revolution) was established

in 1956, all of the discourses seemed to collide in the form of a controversy over

the selection of delegates to the 28th Venice International Biennial Art Exhibition

of 1956 (Giunta 2007, 61). Jorge Romero Brest and Julio E. Payró had selected

artists based on their ability to represent hope for the future and not images of

the past. They did this by selecting young, recent graduates of art school and left

out the artists who had been left out of the Biennial during the Peronist years,

excluding them not because of lack of quality, but “for reasons as superficial as

those of ‘youth’” (Giunta 2007, 62). The group of selected young artists expressed

their opinions to the minister saying that “We cannot accept that any group

should assume the right to monopolize artistic quality and civic-minded

conduct” (Giunta 2007, 62).

Argentina was trying to establish itself on the international art scene and

the idea was to show “what was considered new and innovative” (Giunta 2007,

282). However, the style that North American institutions favored was

increasingly leaning more and more toward abstraction and less toward realism.

Argentine artists were experimenting with new materials in their art which

opened up a new discourse about the work of art and its relation to its physical

reality. Artists, such as Kenneth Kemble, Luis Felipe Noé, Greco, and Jorge de la

Vega, all added organic and/or found objects to their artwork. Greco “promoted

the destruction of painting for painting’s sake in his organic works by adding

18
elements such as bitumen, urine, rain, and wind” (Pacheco 2004, 129). Kemble

chose Informalism for his pieces and included wood, sheet metal, and other

disposable materials. The materials in Kemble’s artwork “maintained a memory

of origin and constructed a real landscape that referred to the emerging and

growing shantytowns in Argentina at the time” (Pacheco 2004, 129). So, the

theme in the new art of Argentina, as determined by the artists of the avant-

garde, was disposable materials.

One of the leading critics of the period, Jorge Romero Brest, wanted “to

propel an Argentine avant-garde to international recognition [and] the creation

of up-to-date art was essential” (Giunta 2004, 79). Romero Brest’s idea of

progress was equated with abstract art. In his modernist view, Informalism was

just a detour and an impulse toward regression. But, there were others that

believed that Informalism was the new art and Guido Di Tella was one who would

help to convince Romero Brest that this was so. Romero Brest eventually chose to

analyze it instead of looking at it with a pessimistic eye.

At the beginning of the 1960s, there was a noticeable shift from the

contemplation of art to actual participation in it. Romero Brest affirmed the

international quality of this art in terms of the international art market. He

suspends all of his aesthetic thoughts and judgements and “declares the term

‘experience’ a key word and announces the initial stages for the production of a

great art in his country” (Giunta 2004, 82). Rubén Santantonín wrote in a

manuscript that “While the art of the galleries and salons agonizes, we carry out

19
this form of art that cannot be sold. ‘Pamphleting’ is art that isn’t for sale, it’s an

image to be given...is a solitary and egoless rebellion...” (Santantonín 480).

These artists are all under an umbrella of art named Conceptual by Mari

Carmen Ramírez. According to Ramírez, Conceptualism is not a style or

movement, but “a strategy of antidiscourses whose evasive tactics call into

question both the fetishization of art and the systems of art’s production and

distribution in late capitalist society” (Ramirez 2004, 425). She goes on to say

that Conceptualism is not limited in its medium and can appear in a variety of

forms and that it “can be read as a ‘way of thinking’ about art and its relationship

to society” (Ramirez 2004, 425). The artist offensives against General Onganía

came together with the collective event Tucumán Arde (Tucumán Is Burning). In

the pamphlet given out at the exhibition, the artists claim that

Revolutionary art is born of a consciousness on the part of the artist

of belonging to the political and social complex that encompasses

him or her. Revolutionary art considers the aesthetic act as the core

where all the elements that constitute human reality--economic,

social, and political--come together. ...The work carried out by the

Artistas de vanguardia is the continuation of a series of acts of

aggression against institutions and representatives of bourgeois

culture. ...In order to fulfill their responsibility as intellectuals

engaged with their surrounding social realist, the avant-garde

20
 artists responded to the Operativo silencio by executing Tucumán

Arde (Gramuglio 535).

The last major theme in Argentine art of the 60s was that of Consumerable

Art in which Romero Brest maintained that art “no longer invites the viewer to

contemplate, but rather to consume” (Giunta 2004, 88). The new art objects were

clothes, accessories and posters and one of the goal’s was to shape popular taste

(Giunta 2004, 88). But, consumption was one of those words that “provoked

resistance and irritation in the world of art and culture, as much among those

who thought that art should remain pure...as among those committed to the

revolution who were searching for an art that would support their cause” (Giunta

2004, 88).

As described above, artists throughout the late 50s and 60s Argentina

were experimenting with new methods, theories, and materials. Some artists

were wanting to have the public participate in their art, while others chose to use

materials from their surroundings to create a “real” landscape for their collages,

bricolages, and other forms of Informal art (which could also be considered

Conceptual according to Ramírez). Artists were not able to separate the political

realm from their art and in fact chose to take it upon themselves, as their duty, to

ask questions and demand a return to democracy.

21
Berni’s Theme: The Villa Miseria in Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires was a key site for social struggle and debate in the 1950s and

1960s. The villas miserias of Buenos Aires had been present since the 1930s but

grew rapidly after World War II for numerous reasons. Migration from other

provinces into the city was increasing due to the “decreasing agricultural

production and increased industrialization, primarily in factories around Buenos

Aires, which offered new employment opportunities” (Podalksy 101). So from

around 1945 onward, the population of the city “became stabilized, and it was the

suburbs (Greater Buenos Aires) which incorporated the incoming

population” (Polakow and Guillean 221). But, the new arrivals put even more

strains on an already existing housing crisis in Buenos Aires.

The Peronist administration was constructing working-class

neighborhoods and multifamily units. The administration was also trying to

offset this crisis by extending loans to lower-income families. However, state

policies “unwittingly constricted the market while driving up housing

prices” (Podalsky 102). Podalsky notes that the rental property law that was

supposed to benefit the working classes by freezing the rents and preventing

evictions also “discouraged investments in rental properties” thus having mixed

results “that did not always benefit the increasing number of lower-income

residents of Buenos Aires” (102).

In 1959, the Frondizi administration reduced the available funds for low-

interest housing loans and the terms from the banks made housing accessible

only to those with higher income. Therefore, the lower-income families did not

22
have the access to credit making it more difficult for them to find housing

(Podalsky 102). Families with lower incomes thus turned to villas which steadily

grew during the 50s and into the 70s. According to Podalsky’s charts, the period

from 1963-1968, witnessed the population of the villas more than doubling, and

then almost doubling again between 1968 and 1975 (Podalsky,103). The

population of the villas centered largely around Greater Buenos Aires,

approximately 80 percent.

The government also tried to repress the villas and in the 1950s, a wall was

built around the villas located by the new airport “presumably to hide them from

the view of middle-class motorists” (Podalsky 78). According to Podalsky, the

wall also symbolized the shift from working-class interests to that of the middle-

class (78). The villas were seen as a blight on the city, one that had to be covered

up. The government would try to eradicate the villas throughout the 1950s and

into the 70s, “particularly those considered an eyesore by the upper-income

residents perched above Plaza Martín. In the late 60s, one villa was completely

removed making way for a Sheraton Hotel and, later on in the 70s, a business

complex (Podalsky 105). Those living in the villas frequently protested their

removal but in 1978, the military removed “about 12,000 families from Villa 31

located northeast of Retiro station between the tracks and the river” (Podalsky

105-106).

The villa residents recycled old buildings by scavenging cast-off boards,

sheet metal, wood, chicken wire, corrugated tin, and bricks to construct their

homes. They made use of unused space, making no-man’s land someone’s land.

23
They were “wedged in between railroads and highways or perching on the edge of

established neighborhoods” (Podalsky 107). Since the villas were “illegal

occupations of public land”, they often had “narrow and sinuous corridors

instead of streets...[and had a] prevailing deficit in urban infrastructure such as

sewerage, running water, or pipelines” (Polakow and Guillean 221).

As the development of high-rise apartments grew, the separation between

the rich and the poor also grew “by placing land values and rents beyond the

means of those who were not well-to-do” (Podalsky 121). Podalsky notes that the

villas changed the face of the city in another way. Some of the immigrants coming

into the city from other provinces had indigenous features, such as darker skin,

that “set them apart from other long-established urban dwellers” (Podalsky 107).

These immigrants clashed with the modernization of the city, and the projected

image of the country as a whole and served as a reminder of the other areas of the

country that were far less developed.

Within the city of Buenos Aires and its surrounding areas, the cruel reality

of a nation trying to modernize itself could clearly be seen. There was no way to

hide the villas and even though high-rise apartments would give a privileged view

of the city, there was no escaping the definite reality of the surroundings. While

some would choose to ignore the villas existence, others, like Antonio Berni,

would try to speak out on behalf of their inhabitants. The villas represented what

true modern life was in Argentina and Berni saw them as more realistic than the

skyscrapers and promises of consumerism.

24
 Chapter 2: The Birth of Juanito

This chapter examines Berni’s life in more detail: the time he spent in

France (which could arguably be called his most formative period for both his art

and political ideals), and his relationship with the French poet, novelist, and

Communist supporter, Louis Aragón. I will also discuss Berni’s early works,

including his surrealist phase and participation in David Alfaro Siqueiros’s

Ejercicio Plástico (Plastic Exercise), so as to emphasize the fact that Berni was

continually criticizing economic and social problems through his art from the

start of his career.

While one can look at a piece in the Juanito Laguna series, it is close to

impossible to see past the aesthetic quality of the work without knowing the

background story of the artist and his subject. To understand the development of

the character of Juanito, it is critical to see the development of Berni’s political

imagery. I will argue that as viewers of Berni’s work, we must look past the

aesthetic quality and not look at these works as “expressions of defeat” like

Andrea Giunta suggests, but rather, we should look at these works with the

questions of “how” and “why”, thus allowing us to think with our eyes because

Berni wanted more than his viewer to just look at his work, he wanted the viewer

to take action against injustice. Andrea Giunta writes “Whereas in the 1930s he

had painted working men in political demonstrations, depicting them as

protagonists in the great march of history, he now focused on the world of those

living on the fringes of society and his work expressed defeat” (2006, 77). Giunta

25
understands the subject matter but chooses to see it in a negative light instead of

in the way Berni intended, to incite change on society.

Berni’s Life and Influences

Antonio Berni was born in Rosario in the Santa Fe province of Argentina

in 1905 to Italian immigrant parents. He had his first one man show at the age of

16 in Rosario and in 1925, he traveled to Europe on a government grant to study

art. He started out in Spain and in 1926 he went to Paris to study at La Grande

Chaumièr. While in Paris he studied under the surrealists Andre Lhote and

Othon Friesz. His stay in France would prove to have direct and indirect

influences. These influences were not limited to direct artistic influence, but also

intellectual, philosophical, political, and moral (Berni 1999, 45). There, he

learned the Marxist theory of Henri Lefebvre, who introduced him to the poet,

Louis Aragón in 1928.

In 1928 Berni was introduced to the work of Giorgio de Chirico at his

retrospective in Paris which had a major impact on Berni’s earliest mature works.

The discovery of de Chirico “co-incided with friendship with members of the

Surrealist group, particularly Louis Aragón” (Elliot 42). Aragón and Berni quickly

became friends and agreed on many things. David Elliot states that at this time,

Berni became aware of both the “political and social circumstances” that

separated him “as both Argentine and Latin American from his European

contemporaries” (42). The surrealist paintings (fig. 1, 2) that Berni created from

1928-1932 in Paris and upon his immediate return to Argentina encompassed a

26
wide variety of elements including “images of the sea, coastal walls and

unpopulated architecture [which created] dream-like spaces within which

dismembered bodies, images of murderers and Platonic solids coexist[ed]” (Elliot

42).

Fig. 1 La siesta y su sueño, 1932. Image taken from http://www.ceciliabalza.com.ar/obras/berni2.html

27
Fig. 2 La muerte acecha en cada esquina, 1932. Taken from Argentina, 1920-1994: Art from

Argentina, p. 43.

It was through Aragón that Berni was introduced to Communist ideals

(Kivatinetz 7). By this time Surrealism was “a revolutionary movement not only

in art, but in the political field as well” (Kivatinetz 7). In 1930, Aragón distanced

himself from Andre Breton and the Surrealist circle, which had taken a Trotskyist

position. Aragón joined the Communist Party. According to Kivatinetz, the fight

between these two artists was very public and other artists were taking sides.

Because of Berni’s close relationship with Aragón, he sided with him and joined

the Communist Party (7).

Berni would later tell of his continued relationship with Aragón after his

stay in France:

28
 Es [una] lástima que haya perdido, entre tantas cosas que perdí, las

cartas de Aragon [que] me escribió desde Francia; serían hoy, creo,

magníficos documentos; porque en esa correspondencia

debatíamos temas como las relaciones directas entre la política y la

cultura, las responsibilidades del artista y del intelectual para con la

sociedad, los problemas de la cultura en los países coloniales, el

tema de la libertad” (Berni 1999, 48). It is a pity that I have lost,

among the many things I have lost, the letters that I received from

Aragón all the way from France; if I had them today, I think, they

would be magnificent documents; because in that correspondence

we discussed topics such as the direct relationship between politics

and culture, the responsibilities of the artist and the intellectual for

the society, the problems of the culture in the colonial countries, the

issue of freedom (Translation by author).

Antonio Berni states that the time in France, and indeed his entire time

spent in Europe, was a time of personal transformation, which was, according to

him, perfectly logical. He had gone to Europe with a total ignorance of what had

happened in modern times and within the last twenty years or so, including the

development of new ideas and politics (Berni 1999, 45). Berni also says that his

stay in Europe did not make him forget his own experiences and the reality of his

country and time and that he never strayed away from Argentina and the

problems of Latin America (Berni 1999, 47). Indeed, his time in Europe fed him

29
with the intellectual, philosophical, and moral tools that he would use in his art

and life until his death.

When Berni returned to Argentina in 1930 after five years of traveling in

Europe, his art took the form of social realism, an artistic form that depicted the

working class. He began commenting on the economic crisis and political and

social problems of Argentina and the world. In 1931, Berni became a municipal

employee in Rosario, his hometown and one of Argentina’s main industrial cities,

to make ends meet. He turned a necessary struggle for financial survival into

artistic inspiration, as he observed the effects of unemployment and misery, and

witnessed labour demonstrations. He also saw the port and streets of Buenos

Aires overflow with the unemployed (Troche and Gassiot-Talabot 13).

30
The Presence of Siqueiros and Other Early Works

The Mexican Muralist, David Alfaro Siqueiros, arrived in Argentina on

May 25, 1933 to give a few lectures and to exhibit some work at the request of

writer Victoria Ocampo. Siqueiros’s lectures sparked such a controversy that his

third lecture was canceled (Kivatinetz 10). Siqueiros sought to “summon artists to

participate in the development of a proletarian art” but given the circumstances

the country was currently facing, unemployment, labor demonstrations, and

conservative rule, this was clearly not a time for “revolutionary speeches in

Argentina, and Siqueiros found himself in trouble” (Kivatinetz 10-11). The artists

of 1930s Argentina had just freshly returned home from Europe and were still

heavily influenced by the mainstream movements of Europe, paying more

attention to aesthetic value “rather than focusing on political messages about the

social events of the time” (Kivatinetz 12). Needless to say, Siqueiros was not met

with open arms from a vast majority of Argentineans.

On June 2, 1933 David Alfaro Siqueiros published “Un llamamiento a los

plásticos argentinos” (“A Call to Argentine Artists”) in Crítica. In this document,

Siqueiros calls for all producers of art to join him in creating art for the popular

masses:

We are going to liberate painting and sculpture from dry

scholasticism, academicism, and the solitary cerebralism of art-

purism, and bring them into the wretched conditions of social

reality that is all around us, hitting us in the face...in order to walk

31
 in the full light of human and social reality, in factories, the streets,

working-class neighborhoods, highways, and the vast countryside....

It is therefore urgent that all producers of visual art who

understand the truthfulness of our principles prepare now to join

our ranks (Siqueiros 501).

Antonio Berni, along with Lino Eneas Spilimbergo, Juan C. Castagnino, and

Enrique Lázaro, answered that call to artists and together, with Siqueiros, created

the mural Ejercicio Plástico (Plastic Exercise) in 1933 (fig. 3). Berni was

interested in Siqueiros’s message and his art for the people. Berni said in an

article written for Nueva revista in January 1935 that Argentina lacked a “history

of revolutionary popular art” that they could draw from and use and that it was

“an opportune moment to take advantage of it” (Berni 2004, 502). Berni goes on

to say that Siqueiros did not get the spaces to work because the bourgeoise were

the ones who would have given the space to paint the murals and they did not

support him like the intellectual community did (Berni 2004, 503). It is because

of this realization that Berni moves to large-scale canvas paintings that “could

serve an equally public function and that he could develop major themes

comparable to those of the muralists” (Kivatzinetz 31).

32
Fig. 3 Ejercicio Plástico, 1933. Image taken from http://www.taringa.net/posts/arte/1372792/

Ejercicio-Plástico---Siqueiros.html

Beginning in the early 1930s, and right after his encounter with Siqueiros,

Berni moved into nuevo realismo (new realism). Up to this point, social realism

had been associated with the Communist Party and Berni chose to define nuevo

realismo in the context of Argentinean art and culture which allowed him to

maintain “his independence, [both] aesthetic and political” (Anreus 104-105). He

created Manifestación (Demonstration) (1934) (fig. 4) with the suffering of the

underprivileged in mind. According to Kivatzinetz, Berni had “appropriated

traditional Argentine iconography and [transformed] it into a new, politicized

context” forging it into a “revolutionized national identity” using Ernesto de la

Cárcova’s Sin pan y sin trabajo (1893-94) (fig. 5) as this iconographic and

33
conceptual source (37). The faces of the workers and their families in the crowd

are not angry, hateful, or vengeful; instead, they are filled with anxiety. In this

painting, Berni shows the unity of the people who are struggling. He also shows

the painstaking reality of their situation, but also the hope that there is a solution

to their crisis.

Fig. 4 Manifestación, 1934. Courtesy of International Center for the Arts of the Americas.

34
Fig. 5 Sin pan y sin trabajo, (1893-94) by Ernesto de la Cárcova. Taken from http://www.iuna.edu.ar/

departamentos/carcova/historia.html

Desocupados (The Unemployed) (1934) (fig. 6) also depicts the

impoverished workers. In the foreground a young man is highlighted sitting atop

a box and resting, asleep, as if waiting for someone to come by to offer him a job.

The group of men to his right also rest with their hats off. But not everyone rests

and sleeps. The mother stares off into the distance as if to ponder what she is

going to feed the daughter she holds in her arms. A man in a red pullover towards

the center of the composition twiddles his fingers, thinking about the situation he

is in and if he will ever get out of it. The row of workers in the background

illustrate the hopelessness that the people as a whole must have felt.

35
Fig. 6 Desocupados, 1934. Courtesy of International Center for the Arts of the Americas.

Both Manifestación and Desocupados’s subjects were based on

photographs Berni had gathered on his own in order to document, as graphically

as possible, the “abysmal conditions of his subjects” (Barnitz 84). These “abysmal

conditions” were documented through his paintings throughout the 1930s and

Berni continued to portray working men as the “protagonists of history” (Giunta

2006, 71). In an article written for Forma, an arts magazine, in 1936, Berni

defends his nuevo realismo by saying that the decline of art is the product of the

division between the artist and the public and proposed that nuevo realismo

should stimulate a mirror of the spiritual, social, political, and economic reality

that surrounds them (Berni 1936). Berni would keep this idea of nuevo realismo

36
throughout the rest of his career and his social realist style would reach its height

in the 1960s and 1970s with his creation of Juanito Laguna.

37
Juanito Laguna: “Un pobre chico, pero no un chico pobre”

Berni continued to address issues of poverty and continued his

commitment to social causes in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1958, Berni began to use

the creation of Juanito Laguna as a social commentary on the issues of

industrialization and poverty. This new series would be based on the elements of

his early social realist paintings, a “bold reworking” of the collage technique, and

a “renewed critical Marxist vision, this time humorous and even erotic [in the

case of the Ramona Montiel series]” (Anreus 112). The narrative series tells the

story of a boy living on the fringes of society, the outskirts of Buenos Aires, in the

“ring of shacks and hovels straggled along the industrial belt that divided the city

from its peripheral zones” (Giunta 2006, 73).

Juanito developed from humble beginnings in oil painting and prints to

highly popular and renowned large-scale collages that incorporated materials

collected by the artist in the villas miserias surrounding Buenos Aires. The

Argentinean capital was also the home of some of the most extreme disparities

between the wealthy, elite Argentinean aristocracy, and the real-life “Juanitos” of

the vast, depressing slums, which inspired Berni to create his legacy.

When Berni moved away from his paints and began making collages of

found objects, he made his means of creating art work as poverty stricken as what

he was portraying. His collages “created a sense of immediacy, by palpably

confronting their viewers with the presence of poverty in the here and now of the

viewing moment in a way his realist oils could not” and turned his artistic

practice into a dweller of the villa (Podalsky 108).

38
 Juanito represented one archetype of social exclusion in industrialized

societies and Berni wanted to “seek out and record the typical living truth of

underdeveloped countries and to bear witness to the terrible fruits of

neocolonialism, with its resulting poverty and economic backwardness and their

effect on populations driven by a fierce desire for progress, jobs, and the

inclination to fight” (Ramirez 1999, 190). The story of his epiphany goes that

Berni was walking through a shantytown, much like the one Juanito would have

lived in, and he had a revelation in his “reality and its interpretation” (Ramirez

1999, 190). Berni explained this epiphany in an interview in Le Monde in 1967:

One cold, cloudy night, while passing through the miserable city of

Juanito, a radical change in my vision of reality and its

interpretation occurred...I had just discovered, in the unpaved

streets and on the waste ground, scattered discarded materials,

which made up the authentic surroundings of Juanito Laguna - old

wood, empty bottles, iron, cardboard boxes, metal sheets etc.,

which were the materials used for constructing shacks in towns

such as this, sunk in poverty (Lucie-Smith 177).

Juanito’s true environment did not lie in paints and canvas, but in the scrap

wood, metal, discarded objects, empty bottles, cartons, card board boxes, etc. that

lined the streets of the villa miseria (Ramirez 190). Berni said, “Beginning that

day I bought fewer and fewer bottles of paint, because in the shantytown where

39
Juanito lived, I could find the components for my paintings” (Ramirez 1999,

190).

Berni was the first painter to address the ways the villas were

“transforming Buenos Aires and to use them as inspiration for developing new

compositional techniques” (Podalsky 108). Berni did not stop at the portrayal of

the villa life at Juanito. He continued to share Juanito’s life with the world by

introducing his family and his friends. Juanito could be seen reading with his

friends, taking family vacations in a jam-packed truck, flying his kite, dreaming,

with his family at Christmastime and during Carnival, and even taking his father

lunch at a factory that dwarfed him in size. Berni was intent on establishing the

presence of Juanito and his family as representative of all those who lived a slum

life.

40
Discussion of Three Works

El mundo prometido a Juanito (The World Promised to Juanito) (1962)

(fig. 7) is a large scale collage depiction that makes real the disparities of

technological advances and the effects of poverty. El mundo prometido... draws

the viewer’s gaze immediately to the colorful bursts of painted cardboard pieces

that form two atomic mushroom clouds having the festive look of fireworks. The

sky is a very dark, ominous black color with no clear indication of whether it is

night time or if the sky is just scorched black with the remnants of industrial

waste clouds. As we move our gaze down, we can see the villa miseria in all of its

poor qualities with the patchwork style of dwellings, hardly homes. As we make

our way down the piece, we can see that this is a neighborhood constructed of

found materials. Two girls emerge from what seem to be doorways in the massive

heap of junk and discarded objects and Juanito is centered and wide-eyed.

41
Fig. 7 El mundo prometido a Juanito Laguna, 1962. Courtesy of International Center for the Arts

of the Americas.

In El mundo prometido a Juanito, the background is pieced together with

tin, wood, corrugated cardboard, chicken wire, and other various objects. In fact,

it is pieced together much like the walls of the real villa miseria in which the real

Juanitos would have lived. The life like proportions of the collage indicate the real

life references Berni is making. Podalsky writes that while he was “deriving his

patchwork technique from the precarious constructions in the villas, his work was

less interested in the buildings themselves than their effect on their

inhabitants” (108). Instead, it seems as though Berni was focusing on the

humanity of his subjects, not where or how they lived. By focusing on the

children of the villas miserias, he was able to humanize the peoples of villas and

42
bring to the forefront his concerns of the relationship between industrialization

and the growth of poverty.

All three figures are carrying a bag, readying themselves to leave. But as

the viewer, we must ask ourselves, where would these children go? What place

would they have to run to? When we see Juanito’s pale face outlined with the

redness of the explosions in the background, it is as if he is witnessing these

atomic explosions all around him and is standing outside his doorway being left

to wonder where he will go and how he will survive. This festive atomic show

suggests how technological advances can distract us all from the real life

destructive effects and the reality of the underclass. Juanito and his friends are

constructed with burlap, cloth, and thread and seem to melt into the background,

and their “zombie-like stares underline the inhumane effects of technology’s

‘promise’” (Podalsky 116). Podalsky goes on to comment that in El mundo

prometido..., Juanito’s stare “speaks to his lost childhood in the villa where the

only bright sign is the confetti-like brilliance of an atomic bomb” (116).

In 1961, Berni used burlap, metal strips, wood, and other materials to

“create the misshapen face and upper torso of his antihero” (Podalsky 109).

Retrato de Juanito Laguna (Portrait of Juanito Laguna) (1961) (fig. 8) is a twist

on the traditional techniques of portraiture. The entire background is constructed

of wood pieces that have been made to somehow form a wall behind Juanito’s

face. His hair is made up of dark pieces of threads and shredded burlap. His face

is constructed of different shapes, tones, and textures of various woods,

cardboards, and metals. His eyes are cut from two pieces of tin and Berni has

43
placed two green specks in the center to show the color of his eyes. Juanito’s nose

is constructed from two separate pieces, one metal and one wood. As we move

down toward the mouth, we see that his lips are constructed of several pieces of

thin metal. Juanito’s torso is also made of burlap and scrap pieces of metal.

44
Fig. 8 Retrato de Juanito Laguna, 1961. Courtesy of International Center for the Arts of the

Americas.

45
 When looking at traditional portraiture, we are usually confronted with a

distinguished person, or, at the very least, with a nicely painted figure with

intelligible features. With Retrato..., we are confronted with a hodge podge of

found objects that have been carefully crafted into the face of a young boy. Berni

has not referenced any beauty, possessions, or dignity. Instead, Berni has chosen

to define Juanito in the very things he lacks and by accentuating the fact of the

villa life he is so engrossed in. In doing so, we see Juanito’s true self in his true

environment. If ever there was a portrait of the true portrayal of someone’s status

in society, this would be it. Podalsky notes that “Juanito’s distorted features

resemble the craggy figures of Jean Dubuffet’s painting” (109). Podalsky goes on

to say that Jacqueline Barnitz has made the comparison before and that Dubuffet

along with the CoBrA group, Willem de Kooning, and Francis Bacon, “were the

artists whose work was most associated with Latin American neo-

figuration” (109). Podalsky also mentions that numerous younger Argentine

artists were “nurtured on postwar existentialism, embodied in their art by

distorted images of anguished, grimacing humanoids” (109). Berni’s work was

considerably less abstract than the younger generation of Argentinean artists, but

he nonetheless took up a preoccupation with his own local realities that seemed

to deform the fabric of humanity and human existence. In Retrato..., we see a raw

look at an impoverished and wasted childhood.

One of Berni’s most well-known pieces is Juanito va a la ciudad (Juanito

Goes to the City) (1963) (fig. 9). Juanito is dressed in his Sunday best while he

makes his way through the villa. On his way to his destination, he passes

46
mindlessly by the heaps of junk that make up his world. The very top of the

composition is filled with a black, cloth-like material incorporated into pieces of

tin to create the dark, smoky haze of an industrial area. The buildings in the

background are made from pieces of wood and tin and made to look like villa

multi-story residential buildings. Juanito walks on top of the heaps of trash that

line the streets of the villa. Juanito’s clothes are made of burlap and scraps of

cloth. His hat and satchel are cut from a real hat and satchel that was probably

found among the heaps of trash in a villa. The sack on his back is textured like a

potato sack, probably filled with things to try to make a dollar or perhaps his shoe

shine kit. Juanito’s shoes are also made from pieces of leather that have been cut

into the shape of a nice pair of loafers that have definitely seen better days.

47
Fig. 9 Juanito va a la ciudad , 1963. Courtesy of International Center for the Arts of the Americas.

48
 This work is particularly interesting because it is one of the first pieces to

introduce his “monsters”. Claudia Laudano says in her review of Berni’s

posthumous homage that for Elena Olivera, the show’s curator, Berni’s

motivation in this type of work [the monster] is three-fold: first, to

highlight the material, granting it a total predominance in the most

unusual combinations not devoid of humor and irony. Secondly, to occupy

practically all the immediate spaces by invading our own space with this

genre of installed bulks. And finally, “to give content more visibility,”

placing the object as the raw material for his surroundings and

environments (Laudano 101).

These monstrous figures reflect miseries, our own and everyone around us. The

two monstrous figures that look toward Juanito embody his own misery, the

same misery that he lives with every day of his life, the misery of having to carry

his sack over his back to hopefully come back home with a buck to help his

parents make ends meet. These monsters go beyond “psychological laceration by

alluding to social disgraces, war, genocide, devastation, and sacrifice of innocent

victims” (Laudano 101).

Monsters challenge our idea of what is real and felt. They can shake our

perception of reality and the world’s regularity. Laudano says that the monster

“always sins of excess, never of defect” (102). Laudano also goes on to say that

monsters stretch the boundaries of what is possible, “the monster is a mystery, an

49
enigma yet to be solved” (102). They are also destabilizers of everyday life and the

rules we all need to know in order to understand and sustain the normality of our

lives.

Another way of seeing these monsters is through an allegorical lens. On

the surface, these monsters look very menacing and dangerous in relation to

Juanito. However, looking beneath the surface of these monsters, we see that

there are many things that these monsters represent. They reflect our miseries,

but they also do much more than that. These monsters are personifications of

“human ‘depreciated values,’ animal-like prototypes of certain subterranean vices

and defects. In them we notice a double function: the metamorphosis from

human to animal, and viceversa” (Laudano 102). The egg carton on the back of

the monster in the bottom left corner of Juanito va a la ciudad and the plastic

pieces that make up his scaliness call attention to the fact that the things that

make up our everyday lives, including that carton of eggs that we get from the

refrigerator, contribute to the heap of trash that makes up our daily lives.

Although people who are not residents of the villas may not experience the

struggles they face, they still contribute to the problem by participating in a

consumer society. These monsters, and by extension the collage pieces in general,

are made into true still lifes of consumerism.

Berni’s Juanito collages are a source of narrative style that alludes, “in a

metaphorical code, to the city, the shanty town, the factory, the machine, and the

mass media” (Laudano 103). Laudano also notes that Berni places his archetype

figures, Juanito Laguna and later, Ramona Montiel, into the sociopolitical

50
context of 1960s Argentina. Berni exhibited “the national folklore and

paraphernalia found during the desarrollista push, Illia’s radical government, and

the military dictatorship’s bullet-riddled years” (Laudano 103).

In 1962, Antonio Berni won the Grand Prize for Printmaking at the Venice

Biennale for his work on Juanito Laguna and Ramona Montiel. It was not until

after this achievement and the successes of numerous one man shows in Europe

and the United States that Berni received wider recognition for his work. He was

written up in numerous magazines and in 1965, Argentina’s prestigious Di Tella

Institute sponsored an Antonio Berni retrospective featuring about 100 works,

focusing on his Juanito Laguna and Ramona Montiel series. According to

Podalsky, the collages’ social critique was unrecognized by reviewers in the top

arts magazines throughout Argentina and Latin America (117). Instead, they

focused on the creativity of the pieces instead of what the pieces represented. The

European art circles would have been ignorant to the growing villas in Buenos

Aires and “would have been even more inclined to focus on the collages’ formal

principles and see the works as general rumination on Third World

poverty” (Podalsky 117).

While this critique of his works showing a “general rumination” is

somewhat true, it is an inaccurate understanding of his work. Berni was not just

merely suggesting the relationship between consumerism, industrialization, and

poverty--he wanted to create an awareness of this situation to help incite change.

His goal was to educate the people of Argentina and the world so that real

progress could be made and not covered up by modernizing projects that clearly

51
were not working. However, it is apparent that Berni’s critique of his city’s

burgeoning villas was not radical enough “for the new cultural institutions

promoting the modernizing project that his work denounces” (Podalsky 117).

Andrea Giunta says in her essay for “Versions and Inversions” that Berni’s

Juanito series “focused on the world of those living on the fringes of society” and

that his work “expressed defeat” (77). I beg to differ. Berni’s work brings to light

the very real realities, miseries, and effects of what modernization,

industrialization, and consumerism can do. These collages are a call to the

viewers’ conscience. Berni asks simply, “What are you going to do? Will you sit

idly by and let this continue? Or will you do what you can to help solve this

problem?” Berni said that he could save one person, two people, maybe ten, but

that he could not save them all by himself. To save all of them, he would need

everyone's help. Berni says "yo no los he explotado, yo estoy reivindicándolos" (I

don't exploit them, I am claiming them) (Berni 1999, 59). In 1976, Berni wrote in

an article that

[E]very artist and all art is ultimately political, or we may say, using

the terminology in vogue today, that all art 'also' admits a political

reading. In my case, I recognize this; I think that the political

reading of my work is fundamental, that one cannot leave it out,

and that if one does leave it out, the work will not be understood in

depth; and, moreover, I believe that a merely esthetic reading

would be a betrayal (Pacheco 1992, 153).

52
 Berni had defined his “social” vision of reality as “being modern, not

through a simplistic imitation of the style of a Cézanne or Picasso, but in

interpreting, the way they did, one’s own era with its new phenomena and

realities, the spirit and originality of the moment...being empirical, never

diminishing the real with an ideology, but adapting that ideology to the reality,

and through it radically revising the real” (Anreus 112). When we stand before

one of Berni’s collages, we can see the truth of the misery that surrounds Juanito,

his friends, and his family. We can see the lost opportunities that Juanito will

never have. We can see the factory that his father works in that does not help to

better the lives of his family. And we can see that we, as consumers, have helped

to create and sustain the problem. Juanito Laguna stands for every child of Latin

America and for all the children of Third World countries. Berni has given,

through Juanito, a voice to the voiceless children of the villas of the world.

53
 Chapter 3: The “Juanito Phenomenon”

As we have seen in the first chapter, there were many political and social

events, including a rise in the social consciousness of the working class paired

with successive repressive governments, that developed in the beginning of the

twentieth century that helped to shape the intellectual climate in Argentina of

which Antonio Berni was a product. We also saw that social realism becomes

more frequent in times of political and social upheaval. In the second chapter,

Berni’s early work was introduced as well as his intellectual influences and the

character of Juanito Laguna. These chapters will allow me to examine in this final

chapter what I have come to call the “Juanito Phenomenon.” Although there is no

documented scholarly research to my knowledge about what follows on these

pages, I begin a discussion of the meaning of this phenomenon and hope to

encourage further research.

I have previously discussed where we see the character of Juanito most, on

the canvas and in mural sized collages, however, in the last few years Juanito is

now appearing elsewhere in our ever more virtually connected world. With the

development of online websites, YouTube in particular, we have begun to see

Juanito online accompanied by music, including that of the Beatles. We are

seeing snippets of plays that are being performed with Juanito as the protagonist.

There are also musicians in Argentina who are creating songs inspired by Juanito

Laguna and his fictional life. Juanito Laguna is also the name of a rather posh

looking bar in Rosario. And Juanito made another appearance in the city of

54
Buenos Aires for Antonio Berni’s centennial anniversary in which children all

over Buenos Aires created their own Juanito-inspired worlds in their classrooms.

This creates a very unique problem that was most likely not anticipated by

Antonio Berni because Juanito can now be seen abundantly in areas of modern

society that embrace consumerism. As stated in the last chapter, the character

was created as a critique on the growing villas and consumer society which

Antonio Berni denounced. But before examining this, let us first take a look at a

sample of the videos, the centennial celebrations, and the music that has been

created.

Juanito Makes His YouTube Debut

The first video that will be examined is a fan video entitled “Juanito and

the Beatles” and was created in 2007. The video uses the song “Blackbird” by the

Beatles as the background music. The music is set to a montage of fourteen

selected works from Antonio Berni’s Juanito Laguna series. It starts out with

Retrato de Juanito Laguna (1961) and ends with El mundo prometido a Juanito

Laguna (1962). The person who made this video, I would speculate, made it with

the intention of publicly recognizing his or her love of Antonio Berni and his

works.

The song seems to have been picked more than likely for its reference to

that which is broken and waits to be freed from its constraints. It is also

worthwhile to mention that Paul McCartney originally wrote this song about

escalating racial tensions in the United States. This may be tied in to the fact that

55
the inhabitants of the villas also faced discrimination, not solely based on race,

but more because of their status in society. The bird in the song has broken wings

and therefore cannot fly on its own. It would need help, nourishment, and care

from someone to get back on its feet. The second constraint, however, is two-

fold. The “sunken eyes” which describe the bird can also describe the audience

because we, too can “learn to see”. At the very end, we see that the author of this

video has inserted a slide which reads “Perdón Berni, todavía no hicimos

nada” (Forgive us Berni, we still do nothing). This resonates with not only

Juanito Laguna, but Antonio Berni as well because of its cry for forgiveness to the

painter and its recognition of a need to do something. In this way, the video itself

is a new means to incite the change that Berni wanted to bring about through his

work. This video is not unique in using contemporary music in the background of

a Juanito Laguna montage.

Another such video is one titled “Nature Boy” after the song that was made

famous by Nat King Cole. This video was created in 2008 and features a montage

of about twelve works from the Juanito Laguna series. The song also plays in the

background by an unknown female artist. This song, too, resonates with the

character of Juanito Laguna because it is expressly about a young “enchanted”

boy who, at the end, gives the advice that the greatest lesson to be learned is to

love and be loved. In a way, Juanito is an enchanted boy because he does teach us

about where he comes from and how he lives through the stories on the canvas.

He teaches us that we are participants in this consumer society that continues to

marginalize people and that we are root cause, according to Berni.

56
 Both of these videos have songs that resonate with Juanito, but they also

have a special meaning to the respective authors of the videos and only they know

the reasons why they chose these particular songs to enhance their video collages

of Berni’s Juanito Laguna works. It is not known if these videos were shown

elsewhere before they were uploaded to YouTube. But, even so, the videos speak

for themselves. They are a testament to the fact that Berni’s paintings have

caused many people to admire and comment on his work through the use of

video montage and song.

The second pair of videos I wish to look at have documented actual events

and have brought Juanito to life via the stage. The first video is titled simply

“Juanito Laguna” (fig. 10 and 11) and is a short film that starts off with a quote

that is read by Antonio Berni himself with the painting La familia de Juanito

Laguna (1960) (fig. 12) in the background. The painting is then faded into the

background of the short play done by sixth graders about Juanito’s family. There

are no audible words spoken, but there are gestures made between family

members suggesting dialogue. The children are dressed in clothes that look

scavenged and scrapped. But, the mood of the play does not seem negative.

Instead, the family is shown as happy despite their meager living conditions.

When I first came upon this video, I was baffled that sixth graders would be

putting on plays based on the character of Juanito Laguna. Other videos have

shown elementary age children creating their own Juanito worlds and Juanito

collage pieces. This shows that not just Antonio Berni is included in the general

study in secondary schools, but that the specific character of Juanito Laguna is

57
instilled in the general knowledge of Argentine children, thus making Juanito

Laguna a cultural icon.

Fig. 10 Still from “Juanito Laguna” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaQdpNQCh2o

58
Fig. 11 Still from “Juanito Laguna” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaQdpNQCh2o

59
Fig. 12 La familia de Juanito Laguna, 1960. Courtesy of International Center for the Arts of the

Americas.

The second video is titled "La verdadera historia de Juanito Laguna y su

hermana Ramona" (“The true story of Juanito Laguna and his sister Ramona”)

(fig. 13 and 14) which was performed in 2005. In this snippet, Osvaldo Tesser,

Argentinean actor, director, and author of this musical, stresses that he did not

create the characters of Juanito Laguna and Ramona Montiel, but that Antonio

Berni did. He also says that they are not really siblings by blood because they are

of the canvas. Instead, their father is Antonio Berni. Tesser speaks in a very

enthusiastic way with a smile on his face the whole time he is speaking. It is clear

that Tesser is an admirer of Berni’s work and particularly that of Juanito Laguna

and Ramona Montiel. The songs in this play were created specifically for this

occasion and have not been reproduced either before or after to my knowledge.

The snippets of the play that are included in this video use paintings of Ramona

Montiel and Juanito Laguna as backgrounds for the scenes. The actors perform

on a bare stage and the characters reflect the characters in the paintings. It is

important to note, as this chapter develops, that this play was realized in 2002

but did not have proper funding until 2005 and has been performed since 2005

in several other places throughout Argentina (Canan).

60
Fig. 13 Still taken from http://blogs.clarin.com/juanitolaguna/posts

61
Fig. 14 Still from “La verdadera historia de Juanito Laguna y su hermana Ramona” http://

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqdnoJhmOTc

These are just a very brief sampling of videos where Juanito Laguna is the

subject. There are several other videos that celebrate the life and work of Antonio

Berni. I chose the above videos simply because they focused specifically on the

character that we have been examining and because they represent the majority

of Juanito Laguna videos that include songs in the background from pop culture.

This technological evidence via YouTube of Juanito Laguna’s influence and the

admiration of people toward this character does not stop here. He is present in

blogs, MySpace, and Flickr as well. One just needs to do a Google search for

“Juanito Laguna” and the search results will flood with various websites

connected to blogs and photo albums. The internet and YouTube are

62
phenomenons in and of themselves and much of what is on the internet or

YouTube have to deal with pop culture and the numerous opportunities for

people to have their voices heard. Berni had changed the way he created his work

after his epiphany when walking through a villa and, here, again, is a change in

medium. This time, it is digital and done not by Berni, but by the people.

63
Juanito Influences Music

Beginning in the late 1960s, Juanito Laguna began to be seen as the

subject of various songs, mostly in the folk tradition in Argentina. The earliest

recording that I was able to find was “Juanito Laguna remonta un barrilete”

which was performed by Mercedes Sosa on the album Para cantarle a mi gente

from 1967, less than ten years after Berni’s first Juanito works. Mercedes Sosa is

a folk singer from Argentina and was born in 1935 in San Miguel de Tucumán.

She agreed with leftist ideas and was forced into exile by the 1976 dictatorship.

She also recorded “La navidad de Juanito Laguna” on the album Navidad con

Mercedes Sosa (1970) in which the album cover was a painting of Antonio Berni’s

from the Juanito Laguna series. Another major Argentinean artist who has

recorded songs with Juanito as the subject is César Isella who was born in Salta

in 1938. He has done various recordings since the 1960s as well and put out an

album titled Juanito Laguna (fig. 15) in 1976 as a tribute to Antonio Berni and

Juanito Laguna.

64
Fig. 15 César Isella’s “Juanito Laguna” released in 1976. Photo taken from eBay listing for item

number 390037952054.

In 2005, a CD was released as a homage to Antonio Berni which was

compiled and arranged by César Isella. The songs were all centered on Juanito

and included songs by Mercedes Sosa who recorded “El mundo prometido a

Juanito Laguna” which César Isella composed, César Isella who recorded

“Juanito Laguna se baña en el río”, the instrumental song “Antonio Berni”, “La

familia de Juanito Laguna”, and “Coral por Juanito Laguna”. There are a few

songs by other important Argentinean musicians that were included in this

compilation as well including Marcelo San Juan, Dúo Salteño, Eduardo Falú, and

65
Las Voces Blancas, as well as two short tracks of Antonio Berni speaking during

what could possibly have been interviews.

El mundo prometido a Juanito Laguna is probably one of the most

recorded songs by musicians choosing to sing about Juanito. Here are a few lines,

first in Spanish and then translated, followed by an analysis:

El mundo prometido de Juanito Laguna

El cielo de zinc en Buenos Aires

agrisa las villas de cartón,

Juanito Laguna es la niñez

de ese color.

Arroró mi sol, todos los niños

traen bajo el brazo un sueño de pan,

mundo prometido a su candor,

que su candor de niño y Juan no entenderá.

...

Todo niño es Juan, todos los niños

...

66
The Promised World of Juanito Laguna

The zinc blue sky in Buenos Aires

it greys the cardboard towns,

Juanito Laguna is the childhood

of that color.

I saw the sun, all the children

they bring under the arm a dream of bread,

world promised to its candor,

that its candor as a child and Juan will not understand.

...

Every boy is Juan, all the children

...

I want to first address the issue of the “zinc blue” sky. Zinc is corrosion

resistant and generally plates steel which alludes to the factories. This ties in to

the next line which describes the villas as being grey (referring to the tin used to

construct houses) and cardboard. Juanito Laguna is a child of the villas and as

such, also a child of that “color” (grey). There is an emphasis on bread, or the lack

thereof, throughout this song which refer to poverty. Usually bread is the

cheapest staple food but it seems as though even Juanito has to dream of having

bread. The lyrics also say that every child is Juan, meaning every child of the villa

in all parts of Latin America and Third World countries.

67
 In the 1960s and 70s, there were several people who came into power and

then were forced out by a military coup representing the conservative interest.

These were politically volatile times in which those who spoke out against the

government were quickly silenced. While these governments were trying create

wealth for the country, and succeeding to an extent, Berni, and others like César

Isella and Mercedes Sosa, critiqued the government for what they were not

accomplishing as evident in many of the songs about Juanito Laguna’s fictional

life - an end to these villas.

68
Juanito as the Subject of Antonio Berni’s Centennial Celebration

In 2005, Argentina celebrated what would have been Antonio Berni’s

100th birthday. Several governmental organizations including the Ministerio de

Educación, Ciencia y Tecnología de la Nación, the Secretaría de Turismo de la

Nación, and the Ministerios de Educación de las Provincias. These government

organizations, along with the youth organization De Todos Para Todos and

possibly others, formulated a program for youth for that year. De Todos Para

Todos organized an art show titled “Un cuadro para Juanito, 40 años después (A

painting for Juanito, 40 years later)” which was curated by Lily Berni, Antonio

Berni’s daughter (Rouillon). There was also an exhibition at the MALBA (Museo

de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires) that was a retrospective of Antonio

Berni’s work as well as his contemporaries.

According to the Programa Federal de Turismo Educativo y Recreación,

their main goal was to have the participation of all schools in thinking about and

exploring the diverse geography, the people, and culture of Argentina (Programa

Federal). In the document created by this organization, there are several

examples of children’s artwork that was created as a result of this program from a

variety of different schools in different cities. The children were asked to

contemplate Berni’s works and then create their own art pieces using collage

techniques. There are two videos on YouTube that I have located that show the

children speaking about Juanito and their little Juanito “worlds” that they have

created. It also should be mentioned that the play “La verdadera historia de

Juanito Laguna y su hermana Ramona” was backed with funding from the

69
national government as well as the city of Buenos Aires, according to the credits

at the end of the video.

The centennial celebrations involved schools, government organizations,

children, adults, art spaces, musicians, and nonprofit organizations. It seems as

though every major part of Argentinean society participated in this year long

celebration of Antonio Berni’s life. However, it is still unclear to me the reasons

why the organizers felt they had to center it all specifically on the Juanito Laguna

series instead of looking at Berni’s career as a whole. Perhaps Juanito was a

feasible subject for the younger school children to grasp and understand because

he would have essentially been their age and, therefore, more relatable. It is

particularly interesting that the government continues to sponsor the continuing

legacy of Juanito Laguna, especially when Berni was against capitalism which is

the basis of the Argentine economy and the underlying reason these villas exist.

70
Juanito: Commodity or Hero?

With Juanito popping up in areas of pop culture, especially on YouTube

and other various websites, it is worth pondering whether or not Juanito has

become another commodity or if he is truly regarded as an antihero of the people

because of his lack of heroic qualities which in turn make him closer to reality.

This question presents a problem when one looks at the work and ideals of

Antonio Berni because Berni was very much against capitalism and the

consumerism of society as we have seen in the previous chapter. He created

Juanito to help the world see and recognize that these problems do exist and that

it is up to us as individuals in the larger global society to make a difference. He

created his works with the hope that they would incite change and incite a will to

make real change that was not centered in building and expansion projects that

do not work.

While on this issue of consumerism, it is worthwhile to look at two other

instances where Juanito Laguna has been found. One is a bar in Rosario, Berni’s

home town, as mentioned above that bears the name “Juanito Laguna” (fig.

16-18). The bar looks rather posh on the inside and serves food in addition to

having a full bar. The bar itself seems to be geared toward a younger crowd with

performances by rock bands and displaying the art of young artists. A bar bearing

the name of this important character seems quite significant. However, I have to

question the connectedness that the fictional character of a young boy would have

with a bar. Perhaps the name itself is a homage to Antonio Berni since the

location of this bar is in his home town. The second instance of this phenomenon,

71
or more a glimpse into the future of this phenomenon, comes in the form of a t-

shirt (fig. 19 and 20) that I found while searching through many images of

Juanito. However, the image on the shirt is not of Juanito, it is of the Ramona

Montiel series which was done around the same time as the Juanito series. Seeing

this image, though, I cannot help but think that a t-shirt with Juanito will be next.

Fig. 16 Interior view of the Juanito Laguna bar in Rosario. Photo taken from www.glamout.com/

Juanito-Laguna-para-los-amigos.html

72
Fig. 17 Exterior view of the Juanito Laguna bar. Photo taken from www.glamout.com/Juanito-

Laguna-para-los-amigos.html

Fig. 18 Juanito Laguna bar logo against interior. Photo taken from http://

juanitolagunabar.blogspot.com

73
Fig. 19 El coronel amigo de Ramona, 1964.

Fig. 20 T-shirt inspired by El coronel amigo de Ramona, 1964. Photo taken from

www.carolinamas.com.ar

74
 Technological advances have been able to spread the works of Antonio

Berni to those who may not have otherwise been exposed to them. Technology

has given humanity horrible things such as weapons, biological warfare, and has

contributed to climate change and of course to the poverty of the Third World

nations (and even those that are not Third World nations). But, technology has

also allowed people to open new doors. It has allowed them to disseminate

information to people in other parts of the world that they would never be able to

meet and connect with in person. In this way, perhaps the methods of modern

consumption, including the computer that I am using to type these very words

and search for these very videos, can help in a positive way.

Juanito Laguna is what made Antonio Berni a household name and is the

reason people still celebrate his work. He was revered for his social realist work in

the 1930s, especially Manifestación and Desocupados but never to the extent that

Juanito has given him. It is remarkable that this character began to filter into pop

culture less than ten years after his creation and continues to be present, most

probably for years to come. There are no other instances of a character being

created and inserted into pop culture. However, there is one person, perhaps the

most famous Argentine of the 20th century, who has captured the world of

capitalism and consumerism by storm. That man is Ernesto Guevara, or better

known as the revolutionary “Che” Guevara. One photograph of this man by Korda

taken in Cuba has been seen on everything from CD cases and t-shirts to bikinis

and postcards. The beginning of all of this was more dignified, much like Antonio

Benri’s character was perhaps a little more dignified when alone on his canvas,

75
but Che’s life story seems to now be besides the point, much like Juanito’s

fictional life seems to be besides the point when one sits at a bar and orders a

drink because he or she has the money to afford it. This could very well be the

reason that Capitalism “won”. It is the only system that understands that we all

want to change the world, but we are just too lazy to do anything. So, instead,

people wear the “Che” shirts and carry their “Che” CD cases or wear, what I am

sure will be, a Juanito Laguna shirt or have fun at the Juanito Laguna bar or

listen to songs inspired by Juanito. Perhaps this is also the reason that people

create videos because, to them, it is all they can do.

Juanito Laguna is now part of Argentine culture and any culture can

change over time, growing and adapting to its surrounding environment,

including technological advances such as the computer. Just as culture can

change and is transmissible, there are numerous ways that culture can be

portrayed. It can be portrayed through art, film, literature, spoken word,

monuments, etc or by shirts, YouTube videos, and music. Perhaps at this point in

our consumer society, or rather the consumer society of Argentina, there is a

surge in consciousness about the realities of the conditions of the villas that was

not present before. Or, perhaps there are just more outlets for people to express

themselves. Whatever the case, Juanito is one such figure that will continue to

resonate with the people of Argentina, and the world, so long as there is poverty

in it.

76
Conclusion

Antonio Berni lived in a very politically volatile time and country. He

witnessed the beginning of the labor movement in Argentina, he was witness to

many of the repressive governments which censored his work and that of other

artists, and he formulated his own ideologies which he held dear up to the day he

died. The creation of Juanito Laguna allowed the artist to explore new methods

and techniques in art making, such as incorporating trash in his collages and

using less paint, while commenting on the villas miserias which were abundant

throughout Buenos Aires and other major Latin American cities. Antonio Berni

has become one of the most celebrated Argentinean artists of the twentieth

century and it is of no wonder because the character of Juanito Laguna touched,

and continues to touch, so many lives.

While Juanito was created in the very humble medium of oil paint, he

grew into large-scale collages made literally of trash. Antonio Berni faced the

crisis of the burgeoning villas head on and not only observed from afar, but from

up close while walking through these villas miserias. He aimed at creating an

awareness of this crisis. Whether or not he was successful can certainly be

debated. With the rise in videos, a bar, plays, and quite possibly t-shirts in the

future, Juanito is now being transformed again, and may continue to be

transformed by admirers for years to come, into a new figure. This new figure is

not just Juanito, the boy from the villa, but Juanito, the cultural icon. It seems as

though there may have been created a separation between the artist and his work,

at least on the surface. Although people pay homage to Berni, these homages are

77
almost always centered on the character of Juanito Laguna and the reason why is

yet to be explained.

Antonio Berni’s Juanito Laguna works were not created as images of

defeat as I argued earlier. These images were a call to the consciouses of everyone

and anyone willing to really look and think with their eyes. The continuing power,

even commodification, of Berni’s art may be tied to the crisis of the villas. They

are an example of the stark realities of Argentina, but also of Latin America.

These images have been embedded into the souls of Argentineans and have

instilled in them a sense of national pride. This could be because the social

struggle is the richest, most intense subject an artist can choose and this is what

Antonio Berni chose as the subject of the vast majority of his work. Berni was

truly an artist of the people who created for the people. And this is, in my

opinion, why he continues to be so highly regarded and revered today.

78
 Works Cited

*Anreus, Alejandro, Diana L. Linden, and Jonathan Weinberg. “Introduction.”

The Social and the Real: Political Art of the 1930s in the Western Hemisphere.
Eds. Alejandro Anreus, Diana L. Linden, and Jonathan Weinberg. University
Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006.

*Anreus, Alejandro. “Adapting to Argentinean Reality: The New Realism of

Antonio Berni.” The Social and the Real: Political Art of the 1930s in the Western
Hemisphere. Eds. Alejandro Anreus, Diana L. Linden, and Jonathan Weinberg.
University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006.

Barnitz, Jacqueline. Twentieth-Century Art of Latin America. Austin: University

of Texas Press, 2001.

Berni, Antonio. “El nuevo realismo.” Forma No. 1 (Aug 1936): 8, 14.

---. Berni: escritos y papeles. Ed. Marcelo Pacheco. Buenos Aires: Temas Grupo
Editorial, 1999.

*---. “Evocación de Antonio Berni: Siqueiros Aquí (Evocation, Siqueiros Here).”

Inverted Utopias: Avant-Garde Art in Latin America. Eds. Mari Carmen Ramírez
and Héctor Olea. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004.

Canan, Marcelo, “La obra.” La verdadera historia de Juanito Laguna y su

hermana Ramona Montiel. 5 Dec 2008. 30 Mar 2009 (http://blogs.clarin.com/
juanitolaguna/posts).

Chase, Gilbert. Contemporary Art in Latin America. New York: The Free Press,
1970.

*Elliott, David. “Antonio Berni: Art and Politics in the Avant-garde.” Argentina,
1920-1994: Art from Argentina. Ed. David Elliott. Oxford: Museum of Modern
Art, 1994.

Giunta, Andrea. “Rewriting Modernism: Jorge Romero Brest and the

Legitimation of Argentine Art.” Listen, Here, Now!:Argentine Art of the 1960s:
Writings of the Avant-Garde. Ed. Inés Katzenstein. New York: The Museum of
Modern Art, 2004. 78-85.

*---. “Art in the Sixties in Buenos Aires: Words, Images, and Frontiers.” Versions
and Inversions: Perspectives on Avant-Garde Art in Latin America. Eds. Héctor
Olea and Mari Carmen Ramírez. Houston: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston,
2006.

79
---. Avant-Garde, Internationalism, and Politics: Argentine Art in the Sixties.
Duke University Press, 2007.

*Gramuglio, María Teresa, Nicolás Rosa, et. al. “Tucumán Arde (Tucumán Is
Burning).” Inverted Utopias: Avant-Garde Art in Latin America. Eds. Mari
Carmen Ramírez and Héctor Olea. New Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 2004.

Kivatinetz, Magali. Antonio Berni and Ejercicio Plastico: The Development of

Political Imagery. Thesis (M.A.)--City College of New York, 2004. (Dept. of Art),
2003.

*Laudano, Claudia. “Antonio Berni: Centro Cultural Borges.” ArtNexus No. 44

(June 2002). 1 July 2008 < http://www.artnexus.com/servlet/NewsDetail?
documentid=8640>.

Lucie-Smith, Edward. Latin American Art of the 20th Century. New York:
Thames & Hudson Inc., 1993.

Pacheco, Marcelo E. “An Approach to Social Realism in Argentine Art:

1875-1945”. The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts Vol. 18, Argentine
Theme Issue (1992), pp. 123-153. JSTOR. University of Houston Libraries,
Houston, TX. April 2008. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/1504092>.

*---. “Posh Art and Post-Historic Art: Argentina (1957-1965).” Inverted Utopias:
Avant-Garde Art in Latin America. Eds. Mari Carmen Ramírez and Héctor Olea.
New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004.

Podalsky, Laura. Specular City: Transforming Culture, Consumption, and Space

in Buenos Aires, 1955-1973. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004.

Polakow, Valerie and Cindy Guillean. International Perspectives on

Homelessness. Contributions in sociology, no. 135. Westport, Conn: Greenwood
Press, 2001.

Programa Federal de Turismo Educativo y Recreación. Juanito Laguna y

Nosotros: Homenaje a Antonio Berni por los niños. (Dec 2005). 20 Feb 2009 <
www.me.gov.ar/turismoeducativo/docs/berni.pdf>.

Quijano, Aníbal. “Modernity, Identity, and Utopia in Latin America”. boundary 2

Vol. 20, No. 3, The Postmodernism Debate in Latin America (Autumn, 1993), pp.
140-155. JSTOR. University of Houston Libraries, Houston, TX. April 2008.
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/303346>.

Ramírez, Mari Carmen. Cantos Paralelos. Austin: Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art,
The University of Texas at Austin, 1999.

80
*---. “Tactics for Thriving on Adversity: Conceptualism in Latin America,
1960-1980.” Inverted Utopias: Avant-Garde Art in Latin America. Eds. Mari
Carmen Ramírez and Héctor Olea. New Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 2004.

*Rivera, Diego. “The Revolutionary Spirit in Modern Art (1936).” Social Realism:
Art as a Weapon. Ed. Meyer Schapiro New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co.,
1973.

Rouillon, Jorge. “Juanito Laguna, revivido en fotos por chicos de las villas.” La
Nación. (15 Jul 2005). 2 Mar 2009 <http://www.lanacion.com.ar/nota.asp?
nota_id=721527>.

*Santana, Raúl. “Artists of the People: Art and Society 1920-1930.” Argentina,
1920-1994: Art from Argentina. Ed. David Elliott. Oxford: Museum of Modern
Art, 1994.

*Santantonín, Rubén. “Pamphleting.” Inverted Utopias: Avant-Garde Art in Latin

America. Eds. Mari Carmen Ramírez and Héctor Olea. New Haven and London:
Yale University Press, 2004.

*Schapiro, Meyer. “The Social Bases of Art (1936).” Social Realism: Art as a
Weapon. Ed. Meyer Schapiro. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1973.

Scott, John F. Latin American Art: Ancient to Modern. Gainesville: University

Press of Florida, 1999.

*Siqueiros, David Alfaro. “Un llamamiento a los plásticos argentinos (A Call to

Argentine Artists).” Inverted Utopias: Avant-Garde Art in Latin America. Eds.
Mari Carmen Ramírez and Héctor Olea. New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 2004.

Skidmore, Thomas E., and Peter H. Smith. Modern Latin America. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1984.

Troche, Michel and G. Gassiot-Talabot. Berni. Paris: Editions Georges Fall, 1971.

*Verlichak, Victoria. “Berni y sus Contemporáneos: Malba-Coleccion

Constantini.” ArtNexus No. 58 (Nov. 2005). 1 July 2008 <http://
www.artnexus.com/servlet/NewsDetail?documentid=15739>.

*Whitelow, Guillermo. “Raquel Forner: Witness of Two Wars.” Argentina,

1920-1994: Art from Argentina. Ed. David Elliott. Oxford: Museum of Modern
Art, 1994.

81
Williamson, Edwin. The Penguin history of Latin America. Allen Lane The
Penguin Press, 1992.

82