The Enigmatic Bolivian Artist Who Centered Indigenous Workers’ Rights
about 3 months ago (02/06/2024)
The Enigmatic Bolivian Artist Who Centered Indigenous Workers’ Rights Skip to content Alejandro Mario Yllanes, "Estaño Maldito (Cursed Tin)" (1937), oil on burlap, 60 inches x 77 1/2 inches (all images courtesy Ben Elwes Fine Art, London) The Bowdoin College Museum of Art has acquired a painting by Indigenous Bolivian artist Alejandro Mario Yllanes, the first by the enigmatic artist to enter the collection of a museum in the United States. For decades, Yllanes was largely omitted from the dominant narrative of Latin American modern art history. A self-taught painter, engraver, and muralist who had his first exhibition at 19 years old in 1930, Yllanes’s art career was brief, with his last show at Mexico City’s Palace of Arts in the mid-1940s while he was working as a cultural attaché for the Bolivian Embassy.