Medellin’s Museum of Modern Art (MAMM) is currently exhibiting politically charged screen-printings – which give voice to marginal groups and critique the Vietnam War – made by the ’70s art collective, Taller 4 Rojo.
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“Shut up and we’re accomplices, or fight and we’re free,” reads the text below a screen-printing of a combat boot stepping on a book.
Taller 4 Rojo, which loosely translates as “Red Studio 4,” was a group of artists, six of them at the core, that created images and messages with a vivid modern look, which they exhibited in the street more than in museums. The collective was created in the global context of social rights, feminism, the Vietnam War and the increasing reach of capitalism.
The early 1970s was a politically charged time in Colombia, as it was worldwide. Powerful social movements on the part of the indigenous peoples, students and trade unions bubbled up. Because of the National Front, when the two largest political parties in Colombia agreed to trade off governing and thus monopolized four presidential terms, many of the smaller voices in the country had lost what little political clout they had.
Taller 4 Rojo created artistically refined material with strong political messages, vocalizing the plight of the repressed. They gave original and creative design material to the social movements, like the posters that protesters carried.
A screen-printing triptych translated as “Imperialist aggression towards the hamlets” by Diego Arango and Nirma Zarate in 1972 shows three images of a similar-looking Vietnamese woman with a dollar bill above her head. In the first image she is distraught, in the second as she looks confidently towards the future, the dollar bill above her is partially dissolved. In the third image she is jubilant and the dollar bill is barely recognizable. The message is pretty clear.
The collective also contributed artwork to the publication, “Alternativa,” founded by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Nobel Prize-winning Colombian author.
The MAMM is located in the Cuidad del Rio neighborhood of Medellin. The Taller 4 Rojo exhibition will be open until June 2, 2013. Coming to the MAMM in April is a fanzine workshop hosted by local cartoonist, Truchafrita.
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