This book explores Violeta Parra's visual art, focusing on her embroideries (arpilleras), paintings, papier-mache collages and sculptures. Parra is one of Chile's great artists and musicians, yet her visual art is relatively unknown. Her fusion of complex imagery from Chilean folk music and culture with archetypes in Western art results in a hybrid body of work. Parra's hybridism is the story of this book, in which Dillon explores Parra's 'painted songs', the ekphrastic nature of her creations and the way ideas translate from her music and poetry into her visual art. The book identifies three intellectual currents in Parra's art: its relationship to motifs from Chilean popular and oral culture; its relationship to the work of other modern artists; and its relationship to the themes of her protest music. It argues that Parra's commentaries on inequality and injustice have as much resonance today as they did fifty years ago. Dillon also explores the convergence between Parra's art and the work of other modern twentieth-century artists, considering its links to Surrealism, Pop Art and the Mexican Muralism Movement. Parra exhibited in open-air art fairs, museums and cultural centres as well as in prestigious venues such as Museu de Arte Moderna do Brasil (the Museum of Modern Art in Brazil) and the Musee des Arts Decoratifs (Museum of Decorative Arts) in Paris. This book reflects on Parra's socially-engaged work as it was expressed through her exhibitions in these centres as well as in through own cultural centre La carpa de la reina.

About the Author

Dr Lorna Dillon is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland. Her research is on Latin American art, specifically the relationship between symbolic representations and transitional justice. Lorna's recent publications include Violeta Parra: Life and Work (2017) and "Repositioning the Popular: The Hybrid Aesthetics of Violeta Parra's Paintings Machitun, Las tres Pascualas and Casamiento de negros", Studies in Latin American Popular Culture No 36, (2018).

Book Information
ISBN 9783030384067
Author Lorna Dillon
Format Hardback
Page Count 149
Imprint Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Publisher Springer Nature Switzerland AG