THE NEW ICONOCLASTS

During the 1960s and early 1970s, a handful of young Colombian artists, including Feliza Bursztyn, Beatriz González, Bernardo Salcedo, Álvaro Barrios, and Antonio Caro, boldly transgressed artistic conventions to create art that critics labeled New Realism, Pop, Environments, and Conceptual Art. They achieved success with the crucial support of national and local art institutions. While critics and curators promoted this striking new work as international, it was firmly rooted in national artistic, social, and polítical reality. This work is a nuanced examination of this transgressive art with regard to its relationship with institutional goals and structures.