A Pan-American network for the Allies. Hemispheric collaborations during WWII

SERVIDDIO, LUISA FABIANA

Grenoble

Congreso; Transnational collaborations and global fraternity. Congreso internacional y seminario doctoral Solidaridad transnacional y cultura visual: resistencia y memorias revolucionarias desde la Segunda Guerra Mundial hasta la Guerra Fría.; 2019

Universidad Grenoble Alpes, Maison des Sciences de l?Homme,

Following Spanish Republican emigres? presence in Latin America, and US intervention in World War II, a strong Pan-American network of artists, critics, and curators expanded across the Western Hemisphere to support the Allies? cause in its battle against Nazi values of ethnic superiority and a political system based on dictatorship. American and Latin American artists engaged in transnational collaborative projects that ranged from circulating art exhibitions, to field trips, poster contests, conferences, radio programs and artistic endeavors specifically elaborated to state their resistance to the fascist regimes, a peril that, at the time, was thought to be imminent for the Americas too. The paper will seek to explore how political solidarity was mediated through visual practices, which were the predicaments artists had to confront, and to which extent government intervention in the activities of this Pan-American network of solidarity with the Allies challenged artistic freedom. American filmmaker Julien Bryan?s Americans All, Brazilian artist Candido Portinari?s painted murals at the Hispanic Reading Room of the Library of Congress, and Argentine caricaturist Florencio Molina Campos? participation in Disney?s animated film Saludos Amigos will be case studies to investigate this transnational network of Pan-American collaboration that transitorily joined left wing and liberal artists and intellectuals under a unified cause against the Nazi regime.