In 1976, the Mexican art magazine Artes Visuales appeared with commentaries on one potential model for Latin American art: Etsedrón: Project III, a mixed-media installation that Grupo Etsedrón (an artistic collective from Northeastern Brazil) presented at the 13th São Paulo Biennial (1975). Despite the installation’s unfavorable reception in metropolitan Brazil, Aracy Amaral’s reading proposes Etsedrón as a new paradigm for art production stemming from the margins. As an alternate model for Brazilian art, it offers an undiluted mestizo or mulatto visual language in overt opposition to taste and fads embedded in the country’s institutionalized art milieus and circuits. In Amaral’s view, Etsedrón (Nordeste or Northeast spelled in reverse) should be seen within a Latin American critical perspective rather than through the lens of a biennial that obediently follows the dislocated model of Venice.
Extending the debate, Juan Acha argues that the installation constituted a hostile disruption of Brazil’s art production. For the Peruvian critic, Etsedrón: Project III epitomizes one of the many possible aesthetic avenues available to art in the Americas. However, he cautions against presupposing that a single work could “redirect” the totality of Brazilian art or could even serve as the basis for a cohesive regional style or trend.
Uruguayan critic María Luisa Torrens and Mexican abstract artist Manuel Felguérez (born 1928) also weighed in on Etsedrón group and on its potential. In her paper, Torrens calls attention to the fact that Etsedrón: Project III should be understood within the context of the biennial’s timid refocusing on Latin American art. Rather than seeing the group in marginal terms, Torrens argues instead that Etsedrón employs the most up-to-date modes of artistic production: happenings, multi-media, film, photography, and so forth. Felguérez insists that Latin American art is inevitably a plural and highly differentiated expression, noting that Etsedrón broadens the discussion in several fields. In thinking about his native Mexico as well as the Latin American works shown at the biennial, the artist recognizes that his peers have assimilated American and European trends to produce original works.
These four essays were published in Artes Visuales [(Mexico City), no. 10 (April–June, 1976): Aracy Amaral, “Etsedrón: una forma de violencia,” 5–8; Juan Acha, “Etsedrón; respuesta a Aracy A. Amaral,” 9–10; María Luisa Torrens, “Etsedrón o la carencia de interés libidinoso por la realidad,” 11–13; and Manuel Felguérez, “La necesaria pluralidad del arte latinoamericano,” 2–4]. Their translations are by Betty Sisto for Artes Visuales. [SEE DOCUMENTS IV.2.6 AND IV.2.7 FOR ESSAYS PUBLISHED IN THE SAME ISSUE AND ADDRESSING THE QUESTION: WHEN WILL THE ART OF LATIN AMERICA BECOME LATIN AMERICAN ART?].