The Club de Grabado de Montevideo

Georgia Phillips-Amos

    I dreamt I was going far away from here,
    the sea was choppy,
    waves black and white,
    a dead wolf on the beach,
    a log surfing,
    flames in open seas.

Was there ever a city called Montevideo?

— Christina Peri Rossi

In Montevideo I searched for nothing in particular in mounds of flea market junk: acrid leather goods, discount bras, and little bottles of designer perfume. Then I started noticing recurring pages from small publications from the 1960s and '70s buried there. Moldering calendar months covered in poetry of utopian imagination, and poetry of exile, different from year to year. As loose pages of frayed paper they blended in easily, hidden beneath other lost things come apart. Commanding printed images of caged birds, flowers growing from layered barbed wire, a dove reaching with fingers instead of feathers, men meeting, looking suspicious and paranoid, all shared small references to a Club de Grabado de Montevideo (CGM). Together these fragments tell a history in woodcuts and screenprints of collectivized art-making, international socialist solidarity, and a radical vision for shared cultural production.

The following is the product of interviews with some of the surviving members of the CGM, as well as my own translations of archival interviews and of the texts contained within the prints themselves.

* * *

1953–68

The CGM printmaking collective existed between 1953 and 1993 in Uruguay's capital city. In August of 1953 a building in the center of Montevideo — the former studio of the painter Pedro Blanes Viale — was turned into club headquarters. Over time it became a public workshop for making woodcuts and linocuts. A forum for communal printmaking and a space for teaching and exhibiting work, the CGM was an independent local platform for participating in political, and aesthetic, conversations internationally.

Cultura Independiente

We affirm that in order to advance towards our first stage, which we see as the massive diffusion of printmaking as art form, we can't remain at the margins of the political social and cultural processes of our country (Uruguay), of Latin America, or of the world.

On the contrary, it is our duty to assume a combative, and fearless defense of civil liberties, to act in defense of a social justice that permits a just redistribution of resources and a respect for human rights.

— Club de Grabado de Montevideo (1967 Almanac)

In 1949 the twenty-six-year-old artist Leonilda González arrived in Paris to study in the studios of the cubist painters André Lothe and Fernand Léger (also a Communist Party member). In April of 1953 she attended the socialist Continental Congress of Culture, organized by Pablo Neruda in Santiago de Chile. González connected with other Uruguayan artists while abroad, and came in contact with collective initiatives developing elsewhere in Latin America, such as the Taller de Gráfica Popular from Mexico (founded in 1937), the Club de Grabado de Porto Alegre (founded in 1950) and the Club de Gravura de Bagé (founded in 1951), both from Brazil. Upon her return to Montevideo, González, together with Aída Rodríguez and Nicolas Loureirro, rented a space initially known as "El Taller" (The Workshop) where the CGM evolved into being. At the time, most young Uruguayan artists with the financial means to do so would go to Europe in order to be recognized at home. It was a great shift to establish a vibrant shared place for learning in Montevideo itself, with other collectives in Latin America as points of reference.

In an attempt to break from capitalist conditions for cultural production, the CGM functioned on a membership basis; socios paid small dues in exchange for monthly prints, and access to the workshop. A national history of social clubs in Uruguay meant a framework for reimagining a means of art-making already existed in cinema and theater clubs funded by member dues. As a consequence, the print club grew fast, and participating artists quickly became accountable to fellow members, rather than the wider market. There were 50 members to begin, 1,500 in 1964, and 3,500 by 1973. With each member paying one peso a month, the model wasn't just financially pragmatic but also political, representative of a concerted effort to create a cultura independiente, a popular narrative that could exist parallel to state-approved cultural production.

Influenced by the cultural criticism of British anarchist Herbert Read, the collective saw an educational role for artists, and sought to reduce the barriers preventing proletariat workers from being consumers of art. González sought to have prints be "as readily available as potatoes." Aiming to do away with the idea of art as precious and develop a direct line between artists and nonartists, the CGM made their process accessible. In 1955 the Club de Grabado threw their first of several street exhibitions on Plaza Libertad. They held workshops in their Montevideo studio, the prints they produced were inexpensive, and CGM artists traveled with exhibitions through rural Uruguay, making portable prints available throughout the (very small) country.

Many of the images focus on populist scenes — people carrying baskets of fruit, a group of workers, women resting on a balcony with their hair in rollers. Most layer sharp contrasting color with radical prose and poetry, taken from the works of South American writers and poets. But beyond a shared aesthetic, CGM members were bound to one another in their use of printmaking as a public and socialist practice — working to create places to make art outside of preordained state or university patronage.

In addition to monthly pieces, the club began producing an annual almanac in 1966. These were collaborative calendars, with artists taking on different months, together weaving their works chosen around a theme, their connective tissue being a shared reflection on the political climate of the year. Together they act as a people's history for the years in which they were made.

* * *

1968–73

"I shall say only one sentence. The revolutionary ideal of the nineteenth century was internationalist; in the twentieth century it became enclosed in nationalism and the only internationalists left are the artists."

— Herbert Read, Cultural Congress in Havana, Cuba, 1968

By 1969 signs were starting to show of the vicious Cold War violence that would spread throughout the Southern Cone in the years to come. In 1968 Uruguayan president Jorge Pacheco Areco declared a national state of emergency in order to quell labor disputes and censor the press. The Montevideo-based socialist urban guerrilla group Los Tupamaros responded by escalating their militancy, kidnapping a bank manager and a former FBI agent, as well as establishing a people's prison to deal with what they saw as state impunity. Political dissidents were being imprisoned in mass numbers by the government, suspected insurgents were disappearing, and the Uruguayan government began fiercely using torture against civilians during interrogations.

The CGM's quotidian imagery from this period includes jarring frames of chained limbs and censored mouths. Within this political climate the CGM space was raided by police on multiple occasions. But the collective succeeded in keeping strong alliances with socialist art collectives internationally and maintaining their mobility. They traveled to international gatherings in South America and sent members annually to Eastern Europe to participate in Intergrafik, an international gathering of printmakers in East Germany. Intergrafik brought together artists from across continents for a series of workshops and traveling exhibitions, uniting work from otherwise disparate collectives in a multilingual socialist practice.

* * *

1974–85

The National School of Fine Arts was closed soon after the 1973 military coup established a dictatorship in Uruguay. By that point the CGM already had its roots planted as a shared environment for learning and art-making. With the art school closed, artists were drawn to CGM workshops as an avenue to further their practice.

Their formal status as a stand-in art school didn't serve to protect the collective from state scrutiny. After the publication of the 1974 Almanac Rimer Cardillo recalls spending a night in prison together with Leonilda González, Octavio de San Martín, Rita Bialer, and Gladys Afamado. That year, the almanac was covered in protest songs. According to Óscar Ferrando, who was then a student of the club, their arrest took place immediately as the almanacs were printed in December 1973. The almanacs themselves were seized by the state and the group was held overnight. The militant voice of the club necessarily folded in on itself after that, many members were forced into exile, and all were censored.

Deeper into the dictatorship, between 1976 and 1979 several key members — including Leonilda González and Rimer Cardillo — left Uruguay. The club maintained itself as a straightforward school, with artists such as Nelbia Romero, Óscar Ferrando, Héctor Contte, Ana Salcovsky, and Alicia Asconeguy offering classes in screenprinting, metal etching, woodcut, and linocut. The group carried on with younger printmakers maintaining the name, but the political edge of the project had been dulled in order to survive military rule.

The ability to gather together in groups was limited and hushed the artists' meetings. Fear and self-imposed censorship created distance from the public, and the quality of the art changed. A closely guarded culture proved corrosive to creating a public art practice. Whereas in 1974 they produced four thousand prints a month, by 1979 the monthly print runs had dropped below one thousand.

* * *

1985–93

In 1985 the military dictatorship gave way to a democratically elected presidency. The 1985 Almanac was made with the theme of return, piecing the poetry of Uruguayans in exile — famed poets and young children together:

    Out with the Madness
    Out with the madness, though today I would,
    With my heart, I would go,
    from street to street,
    To tell everyone how much I love them,
    To tie a blue ribbon round each tree,
    Climb the railings,
    To yell out that I love them,
    Out with madness,

But today I would

— Líber Falco

Dreams

Bodies, embraced, change position while they sleep, looking here and there, your head on my chest, my thigh on your stomach. And as the bodies spin, so does the bed, and the room spins and the earth spins. "No, no" — you explain to me, thinking you're awake — "we're not there anymore. We moved to another country while we slept."

— Eduardo Galeano

    Letter to Grandma

    In winter I'm also happy
    But it's cold
    And I'm finding it's fun
    White white white
    Like the paper of the card
    On which I write you

— Andrea Gomez, nine years old, three years spent in Switzerland

    There is snow
    I see the snow in Switzerland
    Through my television
    Through my window
    Outside
    And I feel happy
    I play with in the snow
    And I miss Uruguay

— Patricia Gomez, eight years old, three years spent in Switzerland

Disappeared

They are in some place / ordered disconcerted / deafened looking for each other / looking for us blocked by the signs and the doubts contemplating the gates of the squares the bells of the doors / the old attics organizing their dreams, their lost memories perhaps convalescing from their private deaths

no one has explained to them with certainty if they're already gone or they're not if they are banners waving or trembling survivors or requiem songs

they see trees and birds pass by and they ignore their own shadows

when they started to disappear three, five, six ceremonies ago to disappear like without blood, like with no face, and with no motive they saw through the window of their absence what remained / that scaffolding of arms, sky and smoke

when they started to disappear like to the mirage of an oasis to disappear without last words

This is the cover and seven months of internal illustrations from the 1985 Almanac. The theme of this year was "exile," and none of the artworks were individually authored, but reproduced from designs made by a team including Elbio Arismendi, Beatriz Battione, Héctor Contte, Angel Fernández, Óscar Ferrando, and Ana Tiscornia.

    they had in their hands the little pieces of things they loved

    they are some place / cloud or tomb
    they are some place / i am sure
    there in the southern soul
    it's possible that they've misplaced their compass
    and that today they wander, asking, asking
    where the hell is the good love because they're coming from the hate

— Mario Benedetti

    The Return

    With your mouth pressed smack
    Against my back
    I follow the direction
    Of immense streets
    And on my shoulders
    a flag of dust
    seems to fall.
    Is that the shadow
    Of a people
    Who after this shadow
    Rise up?
    Is there a name
    Written in these airs
    Or is it a trace of smoke
    That leaves with my voice?
    However, each day
    Is completed by the birds

    Who arrive perhaps
    From coastal depths.
    A heavy blood looks
    For avenues to open
    Crossing our bodies
    And you push me
    You rename me
    You tell me which cards to write
    What I must write
    You whisper in my ear
    The sizes of the sky
    You place in my flesh
    The tensions of the sun.

    I can speak of your distance
    With letters
    And listen in my glass
    For the sound of the waters
    Which one inevitable day
    Will enter the sea.
    Who are you
    After all these years
    Used up on thinking
    Like a pungent wind
    Dissolving in the light?
    What will become of you
    When my memory
    Finds you
    And we measure up
    The sums of death
    The exact numbers of pain
    The quantities of ash
    And the tears
    The lost kisses

    The insulted mouths
    And those persistent hands
    In their final gestures?
    What will I be:
    What walking thing
    With hair and bone
    What dear form
    Returned to tell
    That some bloody way
    We'll have to sing.

      — Saul Ibargoyen (from Historia de sombras,Mexico, 1984)

The French-Chilean theorist Nelly Richard has written about the need for artistic reinvention following political repression, pointing out that the systems that survive, after withstanding the catastrophe, are no longer capable of identifying their own remains. By the late 1980s the club was in a deep crisis of identity, the international socialist network that had held the group together was faltering. Many artists didn't return from exile, and those who did were disconnected.

Leonilda González maintained a correspondence with Óscar Ferrando and other active members of the club in Uruguay throughout her exile, but when she returned after the collapse of the dictatorship she didn't rejoin the collective. By that time the school for fine arts had once again reopened and expanded, and there were new avenues for collaboration; the purpose of the Club was no longer clear. By 1993 the headquarters were being used without political intentions, primarily as a private company. And in 2004 all of the printing materials were sold off haphazardly, along with the entire archive of prints.

The CGM foreshadowed and informed later Uruguayan arts collectives such as the Octaedros, Axioma, and Los Otros, as well the Club de la Estampa de Buenos Aires, the Club de Grabado en Santo Domingo (Chile), and the Club de Grabado en Guadalajara (México), where Leonilda González spent time in exile. A small Uruguayan collective, entwined within an international socialist alliance, built and spread an alternative model to capitalist and nationalist cultural production, and survived for more than four decades. At ninety-two, González is now concerned with how the historical record of her work will stay afloat. The history of the collective needs to be made vivid, and the precarious condition that the prints are in is worrisome, but there is some small joy in imagining more being unearthed so casually out on the streets.