Last Thursday, September 28, at 6:30 p.m., Ecuadorian curator Rodolfo Kronfle -who visited us on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition «Un metro del Ecuador»- gave a lecture at Il Posto Documentos on «La avanzada ancestralista 1958-1975.»

LA AVANZADA ANCESTRALISTA 1958-1975

Today, curators and directors of biennials, fairs and museums of reference strive to diligently comply with historical corrections of representation of all kinds. Notable among these corrections is the proliferation of works staging ancestral referents. Functional and critical interculturalism has prompted an outburst of interest in artists who express their adherence or belonging to multiple ethnic cultural profiles and the transmission of their codes in works of art. This intercultural meta-narrative, which is based on the unconditional equality of cultures, finds a pertinent -and practically unknown- antecedent in the ancestralist movement, a modern art current developed from 1958 onwards in Europe by Ecuadorian artists. The production of this group of artists became the most authentic, lucid and relevant episode of aesthetic modernity in Ecuador. The talk will analyze the background and conditions that led to its emergence.

Rodolfo Kronfle is an Ecuadorian researcher and independent curator. Between 2003 and 2015 he edited RioRevuelto.net, the most extensive virtual archive of Ecuadorian contemporary art, after which he co-founded the art diffusion platform paralaje.xyz. He has carried out some revisionisms of local modern art and has several publications on Eduardo Solá Franco, including the complete volumes of his Diarios Ilustrados 1935-1988. In 2011 he published the book Historia(s)_en el arte contemporáneo del Ecuador 1998-2009 and more recently Limpio, lúcido y ardiente: Artes visuales y correato (Ecuador, 2007-2017). He has been a juror for salons, grants and biennials in several countries and also serves as an advisor to cultural institutions such as the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO), the Rockefeller Foundation, the Cuenca Biennial and the Museo Casa del Alabado in Quito.