Richard, Nelly (editor) and Adriana Valdés, as well as Enrique Lihn (authors).

[ESCENA DE AVANZADA CHILENA – CHILEAN NEO-AVANT-GARDE – AUSCHWITZ] Roser Bru.

Santiago de Chile: Galería Cromo, 1977. Quarto (32 × 21.5 cm). Original side-stapled pictorial wrappers, with black tape to spine and two holes with enforcements, as issued (to allow for housing in ring binder); [12] pp. With reproductions. Wrappers and leaves somewhat toned; a few leaves with minor stains; one leaf with small crease; else good or better. Item #54656

Rare catalog on the occasion of the exhibition entitled “Kafka y nosotros” (Kafka and us) by the artist Roser Bru, which was shown at the Cromo Gallery in 1977. The publication mainly contains essays, for example by Adriana Valdés, who provides an insight into the work of the Spanish-born artist. She divides the work into three sections. Initially, Bru worked with thick layers of oil paint under the influence of Antoni Tàpies. From the mid-1960s, she increasingly incorporated texts, stamps, and photographs into her works. And finally, according to Valdés, a phase of dematerialization (“La desmaterialización del cuerpo”) followed in the 1970s, in which paint was applied more sparingly. Bru came from Catalonia and emigrated to Latin America at the end of the Spanish Civil War. This experience ultimately also shaped her relationship to the Chilean military dictatorship. Adriana Valdés interprets the gaze in Bru's portraits of Franz Kafka, Milena Jesenská, and Anne Frank as hints of death. Valdés interprets the exhibition as a whole as a thematization of memory and collective trauma against the backdrop of Auschwitz. The writer Enrique Lihn also relates the artist's work to the Shoah in his essay “El efecto 'Auschwitz”.

The Cromo Gallery was the center of the Chilean avant-garde, the "Escena de avanzada", before the founding of the C.A.L. Gallery. The term was later coined by the French-born writer Nelly Richard, who played an important role in the neo-avant-garde scene in Chile as an essayist, cultural critic, curator and theorist. She curated the exhibitions and edited the catalogs of the Cromo Gallery and later the C.A.L. Gallery. Together with the artists Carlos Leppe (who designed this catalog) and Carlos Altamirano, she formed an influential group that was active from 1977 onwards. She also moved to the C.A.L. gallery with the two artists when the Cromo gallery closed. The catalogs edited by Richard for the Cromo Gallery are recognizable at first glance. They are united by their striking binding, which allowed for gathering the catalogs together in a ring binder. The catalogs are produced with simple means, but they play with the material limitations.

As of September 2024, KVK, OCLC lists only one copy worldwide (Chile).

Price: €2,500.00

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