Chilean art

Art was seen as vital for the education and religious conversion of the indigenous people and played an important role in the transmission of Spanish dominance and Catholic world vision.

Colonial painting developed in a time when South American countries were not politically or geographically grouped as they are today and had not yet formed national identities, art and cultural individuality.

Overall, colonial painting in Chile and across all Latin America was influenced by Spanish art, which taught the anatomical study of bodies, the chiaroscuro style, and subjects clothed in aristocratic attire.

The same author also emphasizes the influence of indigenous people on Chilean art, which can be seen in the simplicity of the composition of religious scenes, as well as local traditions, customs and mannerisms represented in the paintings.

Art historians Ivelíc and Galaz [9] agree that painting in the early Americas lost some of the academic rigor and technique of Europe in the process of mixing with native styles, as Álvarez Urquieta has also claimed.

[10] The Compañía de Jesús (Jesuits) were one of the most influential religious groups, contributing to the expansion of the fine arts throughout Latin America as well as the monastic educational tradition.

One such skilled Jesuit was Ignacio Andía y Varela, who would later sculpt the Spanish coat of arms that now sits upon Cerro Santa Lucía hill in Santiago, among other works.

San Francisco Church also holds another of the most important paintings of the period, the Genealogía de los Franciscanos (Genealogy of the Franciscans), an oil of over four meters length and width.

The canvas has 644 small portraits, crowned by the Virgin Mary, and reads: "For the honour and glory of our Lord and the Holy Mother Church, this tree of the religion is dedicated to the parents of the order."

However, as wealthy Europeans began to commission portraits of themselves and their families, reducing their donations to the church, this decreased the production of religious art in Europe and its Latin American territories during the 18th century.

Among its exponents were the Italian painters Angelino Medoro, Bernardo Bitti and Mateo Perez de Alessio who brought the first engravings and religious prints to Chile.

However, soon after the process of independence began, various foreign artists came to Chile on scientific expeditions and to make documentaries, bringing with them their tastes and thematic frameworks, that would go on to influence the future direction of Chilean painting.

The latter was more varied and rich, ranging from portraits of famous people by artists such as José Gil de Castro and Raymond Monvoisin to the representation of folkloric scenes of independence by the Chilean Manuel Antonio Caro and the German Mauricio Rugendas, [C1] to scientific and bibliographic representation of plants, animals and cities by Claudio Gay, Charles Thorold Wood and the scientist Charles Darwin.

The popular painter was dedicated to painting portraits of the leaders of the revolution against the Spanish, such as Ramón Freire, Bernardo O'Higgins, Isabel Riquelme, José de San Martín and Simón Bolivar.

His work focused on the representation of the top aristocrats of his time, most notably Carmen Alcalde y Velasco Cazotte, General and President Manuel Bulnes, Mariano Egaña and Venezuelan politician Andrés Bello who became a Chilean national.

Monvoisin was asked several times to assume the role of Director at the Academy of Fine Arts which the government looked to found but the artist had refused on several occasions previously, before Alejandro Ciccarelli[21] finally took the position.

There are also other less famous painters that are little known but belong to the same period, including: John Searle, María Graham, Johan Heinrich Jenny, Francis Martín Drexel, Camilo Domeniconi, Augusto Borget, Procesa del Carmen Sarmiento, Juan Bianchi, Clara Filleul, Alexander Simón, Giovatto Molinelli and Theodor Ohlsen.

The national artists still did not gain their own clear identity during this period, however, as painting remained dedicated predominantly to portraits, nature and representing the most important historical events.

It opened on 17 March 1849 and was sponsored by the government of Manuel Bulnes as part of a state plan to promote fine art and other intellectual activities to the young Chilean population.

The attempt to bring the European model to Chile by replicating its techniques has been seen as a failure in terms of the number of artists produced, especially for Ciccarelli, who presided over the academy for over 20 years.

The outdated neoclassical style developed by Ciccarelli and imposed on his students is manifested in themes which had never been seen before in Chilean painting, like mythology, ancient history and the Classics.

Some of his students resisted his teachings, the most prominent being Pedro Lira and Antonio Smith, who, independent of their studies at the academy, developed their own style and gained great recognition.

For historians, this meant that while the early years of the academy saw the first effort made in Chile to improve the quality of the arts, they were also a springboard for several independent artists who tired of academic dogmatism and started to look elsewhere for new styles, techniques and inspiration.

Pablo Neruda called them a “heroic captaincy of painters” in recognition of the effort to portray the life of the working classes and the customs of the Mapuche people.

Although there is not an exhaustive list of the 13 Generation, several authors have noted that the most representative were: The Montparnasse Group was a Chilean art collective, formed in 1922 by artists strongly influenced by the European trends of Post-Impressionism, especially the works of Paul Cézanne, and Fauvism.

The exhibition was a contest organised by the executive committee of the Museum of Fine Arts, and was open to both Chilean and foreign artists, as long as their pieces were created in Chile.

Members of this generation included: Augusto Barcia, Ana Cortés, Ximena Cristi, Manuel Gómez Hassan, Sergio Montecino, Fernando Morales Jordán, Eduardo Ossandón, Francisco Otta, Arturo Pacheco Altamirano, Carlos Pedraza, Tole Peralta, Maruja Pinedo, Aída Poblete, Inés Puyo, Israel Roa, Reinaldo Villaseñor and Hardy Wistuba.

This group[91] was formed by Alberto Pérez, Gracia Barrios, José Balmes and Eduardo Martínez Bonati with the motto “create a casual and instinctive art”.

They introduced a new form of art which focused on achieving a new visual style, giving importance to the artistic materials themselves, disregarding the representation and portrayal of subjects, and expanding the concept of painting.

The following artists took part in the exposition: Jorge Tacla, Samy Benmayor, Omar Gatica, Ismael Frigerio, Rodrigo Pascal, Victoria Calleja, Mamy Ussui and Álvaro Cortés.