Poets and visual atists in La Carpa. “The integralist desire to live poetry and art”

Abstract

In the process of modernization, affirmation, and institutionalization of the specific fields of arts and social sciences in northwestern Argentina, the 1940s and the emergence and actions of the group of poets and visual artists gathered around the La Carpa
group hold particular significance. In this paper, we will make a first approximation to the relationships between the poets and the visual artists of La Carpa in order to demonstrate that this, as a cultural formation centered in Tucumán, was not a purely
poetic phenomenon, but rather proposes an opening and a dialogue between all forms of art as an alternative for designing a regional identity. In this sense, from its inception, visual arts, performing arts, design, held as much importance as literature, as all of
them shared the cultural climate of the 1940s, which was characterized by a rejection of folklorism and localisms and a thematic renewal with a more human and universal projection. Throughout its publications – the notebooks and bulletins – the images,
design, literary texts, news articles, reviews, demonstrate this “integralist desire to live poetry and art”, as expressed by its organizers in the credit pages of the bulletins. This desire spread to the rest of the region, as is the case of the magazine Ángulo, which will also be referred to, to confirm their coincidences and affinities.