Angel Kalenberg’s Diorama for the Latin American Section in the X Paris Biennial (1977)

After intense negotiations with Paris Biennial artistic director Georges Boudaille, Uruguayan critic Angel Kalenberg curated a Latin American Art Section in the 10^th Biennial in 1977. The exhibition presented the work of 22 artists and groups from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Uruguay, and Venezuela, which were selected in consultation with local curators. Stating that Latin American art was virtually unknown in Europe, Kalenberg decided to provide visitors with some cultural context that would enable the international audience to better appreciate the artworks. To that end, the curator opened the exhibition space at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris with a diapositive presentation of 480 images dating from Pre-Colombian temples to the most current artistic production. The diorama alternated vernacular and modern forms in a transhistorical fashion that evoked George Kubler’s seminal 1962 work The Shape of Time. Kalenberg stated that the intended aim of this visual narrative was to provide “an honest and polemic image” of the region.This presentation situates Kalenberg’s diorama vis-à-vis 1970s ongoing political discourses of a regional art identity. I examine the diorama’s circular narrative alongside debates about the importance of popular art and folklore in the region—debates which had already surfaced in the 1975 symposium at the University of Austin, Texas. I propose that Kalenberg’s diorama capitalized on the success of the Latin American literature boom to create a view that associated Latin America to surrealism. This view, although contested at the time, would become predominant in the curatorial discourses of the 1980s.