The art that the world gave to Chile of Allende and was lost in the dictatorship

Allende founded this company in 1971 with a totally innovative approach, seeking to create a broad space for expression. with a strong "ethical and aesthetic" look through the compilation of works of hundreds of authors who sympathized with the "Chilean way of socialism".

However, many of these works, especially those that were donated between 1972 and 1973, did not arrive at their final destination and were smuggled into the warehouses of the National Museum of Fine Arts until the end of the year. 2017. (Read here: Nobody wants to talk about Salvador Allende)

47 years later, the Museum of Solidarity Salvador Allende (MSSA) presents in the exhibition "debut" 43 of donations from Switzerland, the United States, France and Japan, composed of graphic, pictorial and sculptural works.

In this are framed creations such as the Abstract Expressionist Robert Motherwell, the screenprints of Tetsuya Noda or the background "Armando Zegrí", belonging to the Chilean writer of the same name who installed in 1953 the One of the first Latin American art galleries New York

A few pieces that will join the most remarkable collection of the museum, among which those of Joan Miró, Eduardo Chillida and Noemí Gerstein, which have been exhibited in one of the three exhibitions that the museum has to realize until its fall in 1973.

The director of the MSSA, Claudia Zaldívar, explained to Efe that the aim of the museum is to institution is to "combine art and politics" to give life to the pioneering project Salvador Allende who, with the entry of the military regime of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), had to live in exile until the early 1990s.

"The success of the initial idea The role of the Museo de la Solidación was to create a network of international left-wing artists and intellectuals who will continue to live with other causes such as Palestinians, Nicaraguans, or the struggle against "l & # 39; 39, apartheid, "says Zaldívar

. from embbadies, works of art could travel the world without falling into the hands of censors, and the museum eventually became a constantly growing itinerant institution.

Thus, the gift that Allende (1970-1973) wanted to make the Chilean people become a collectivist ideal that sought, through the art, to denounce situations of social injustice through the planet.

An approach that, continued Zaldívar, did not include art as "a beautiful object to be placed in the living room", but as an exercise in badysis that serves to "put on the table such problems as as the lack of water, immigration or the lack of utopias in modern society ", in short," conflicts Therefore, the building that houses the museum and served as a center of torture during the dark military era, hosts a triple exposure that includes the three stages that the project underwent: its creation, its diaspora forced by the fear of repression, and its subsequent return to Chile.

In addition, there is also a more intimate space for the promotion of contemporary works under contingent themes which is nowadays occupied by the project "Ciudad Negra" by the Chilean artist Víctor Hugo Bravo

In this, Bravo explores the idiosyncrasies of modern cities, which he considers to be "dominated by the abuse of power and premeditated violence ", a concept that reflects through and violent objects and wars built with all kinds of industrial waste.

In short, the initiative promoted by the museum reproduces what the Chilean painter and poet Roberto Matta drew with words under one of his paintings: to give birth to a new man. "

A piece of his work that has been censored, as well as the desire for freedom and political expression that the army has silenced by a gunshot, curfew and marches in uniform, but who has returned to the present thanks to the collaborative effort of a network of artists and researchers who refuse to forget the past.