The purpose of this study was to inquire into three female artists from a vernacular viewpoint that is universal and local at the same time beyond the dichotomy of universality and locality, and by doing so, to examine visual culture that goes beyond ...
The purpose of this study was to inquire into three female artists from a vernacular viewpoint that is universal and local at the same time beyond the dichotomy of universality and locality, and by doing so, to examine visual culture that goes beyond the dichotomy of the West and Latin America and has been influenced by European modernism and, on the other hand, is created and enjoyed in Latin Americans’ everyday life. For example, when Andre Breton visited Mexico, he praised the works of Frida Kahlo (Mexico) as surrealism, but Kahlo denied it by saying that she was never a surrealist and it was because arte popular‐vernacular had been settled. Tarsila do Amaral (Brazil) was influenced by advanced cubism (Fernand Leger) in those days during her study in Paris, and after returning to Brazil, she worked together with Brazilian modernists such as Malfatti and Oswald de Andrade. This shows underlying anthropophagical art, which ingests and digests others’ things and recreates them into my own things. Amelia Peláez (Cuba) also studied in Paris, and returning to Cuba, established Cuban modernism (modernism‐vernacular), which reinterpreted Afro‐Cuban culture and colonial culture reflected in daily life by borrowing the style of cubism. In other words, the three artists’ vernacular view proves the contention that in the 1920s Dawn Ades introduced European avant‐garde to Latin America without particular connection to the tradition of formalism and the European avant‐garde might go well with its antitraditional aspect.