Lecture: Latin America in Kassel? A look at the documenta exhibitions of the 1960s

Lecture by Claudia Cendales Paredes

Even though Latin American women artists were still an exception at the first documenta exhibitions, some players in the German art world showed great interest in South American art. In addition to Arnold Bode, who in the 1960s was also active as an expert assessor for the São Paulo Biennial in addition to his work in Kassel, the museum director Dietrich Mahlow, who worked for a long time in Baden-Baden, Nuremberg and Caracas (Venezuela), should be emphasized in this context. Among the representatives of South American art repeatedly proposed and exhibited in Kassel are the Venezuelan Jesús Rafael Soto, the Brazilian Sergio de Camargo and the Colombian Fernando Botero, who was represented in Germany by the Munich-based Galerie Buchholz.

In her lecture, Cendales Paredes sheds light on the networks of Latin American art in Germany. Connections to the documenta in Kassel become tangible via key players, locations and institutions.

Claudia Cendales Paredes (Bogotá/Munich) holds a doctorate in art history (TU Berlin). From June to November 2023, she was a Goethe Fellow at the documenta archiv, researching the role of Latin American artists in the discourse of the 1950s and 60s and their representation at the first documenta exhibitions. She presented her research findings to the public for the first time at the conference IN | OUT: Canonization Processes of Modern Art and the First documenta (30.11. - 2.12.2023, organized by the documenta archiv). She is currently a fellow at the Käte Hamburger Research Centre Dis:connectivity in Processes of Globalization (global dis:connect), funded by the BMBF, at LMU Munich.

Organization and moderation: Dr. Sebastian Borkhardt