Format:
220 x 220 mm
144 pages
200 colour illustrations
Paperback with flaps
£14.95
Published
April 2008
ISBN 978-0-9554322-1-7
Rights sold: USA, Chile
"In 2007 art historian Rod Palmer moved to Chile – abandoning his home in London with the idea of working without distraction – in order to record the paintings that cover the walls of our cities. The collection of these murals form Street Art Chile, a serious book on local graffiti published in England."
La Tercera, Cultura, May, 2008
Chile has long been a centre for radical propaganda painting. As early as 1940 leading Mexican and Chilean artists, including David Alfaro Siqueiros, Fernando Marcos and Gregorio de la Fuente, were painting murals in Chile. Today, Latin American street art is as innovative as any in the world, and Chile plays a leading part.
Much as Spain witnessed a boom in the arts post-Franco, so, since the end of Pinochet’s dictatorship in 1990, Chile has embraced an era of new freedoms. Chile has made up for lost time. The contemporary artists and graffiteros shown on these pages have their roots in Latin American propagandistic murals, but look forward. Artists such as Bomber West, Charqui Punk, Dana Pink, Elodio, Inti, Piguan, Pussy Soul Food, Ritalin Crew, Vazko and Yisa are informed by Latin American, European and North American (especially West Coast) art and music, but have their own Chilean slant. Their carefully planned visual and verbal jokes, strategies and techniques are derived from an array of sources: Picasso, Surrealism, Pop, São Paulo’s Os Gêmoes, Vitche and Herbert, Brazilian pichaçao lettering, Peruvian photorealism, Argentine stencils, Bolivian hats and masks, US subway graffiti, hip hop, punk, Barcelona’s street art, Japanese animation, pornography, Gilbert & George, Brit art, Banksy. The resulting mixture is anarchic, accessible art.
All parts of Chile are covered, from Arica to Punta Arenas, with special focus on Santiago and Valparaíso, both key centres of Latin American street art. Distinctive cities such as Iquique, Chillán, Concepción and Puerto Montt, and areas of the country rarely seen, are featured. The book includes an introduction to the history and flavour of Chilean street art; a glossary of graffiti terms; manifestos; and translations of all the graffiti shown.
Dr Rodney Palmer is an art historian, writer and critic. He has worked on Latin American art since the 1980s when he wrote his Courtauld Institute MA report on ‘René Portocarrero and Cuban Painting 1937–67’. In 2000–01 he was Getty World Art Research Fellow at the University of East Anglia and he has taught at the University of Leicester and the University of Sussex. He was the co-editor of The Rise of the Image: Essays on the History of the Illustrated Art Book (2003) and contributor to the Atlas of World Art (2004).