Dismissed

ANDREA GIUNTA (AUTOR)

Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas

Oxforshire

Lugar: Abingdon; Año: 2007 vol. 40 p. 238 - 251

0890-5762

?Dismissed? analyzes the biggest case of censorship in Argentina since the reestablishment of democracy (1984). The conflict started with the retrospective of the work of León Ferrari, an Argentine artist born in 1920 and a living exponent of the most radical avant-garde from the sixties, who had never had ?despite international recognition?a documented book or a comprehensive exhibition of his work. His art is organized into two different tendencies: abstract (sculptures in wire and drawings, since 1961), and critical-political (starting in 1965 with Western and Christian Civilization, a montage with a figure of Christ placed over a   six-foot-high replica of an American war plane). During the seventies and eighties, Ferrari went into exile in São Paulo. In his most polemical works, he investigates the foundations of violence in Western culture, whose roots he finds in the Bible. His show drew the ire of fanatic Catholic groups which responded by destroying some pieces and demanding that the Ministry of Justice close the exhibit. Despite the violence, both the closuring and the re-opening of the retrospective were decided by the Ministry of Justice. This case put democracy to the test, which came out stronger because of the public debate. León Ferrari is now 86 years old. He lives and works in Buenos Aires.