In Isère, the exhibition “A general song” takes us back to the struggle of artists against the Chilean dictatorship

2023 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Chilean President Salvador Allende, during a coup that established the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in 1973. A sad anniversary celebrated in Pont-de-Claix, in Isère by a strong exhibition, A general song. 19 artists, all from Latin America, present their works, photos, videos, posters, which retrace these events and these broken lives.

Among the artists, the Chilean photographer and resistance fighter Patricio Pardo Avalos. In Santiago de Chile, he notably immortalized giant frescoes, symbols of artistic resistance. Walls that tell the story of oppression. “In this exhibition, there are sequences that I took in different neighborhoods. Emblematic places where very hard moments of the fight against the dictatorship took place”, he explains.

Tribute to muralism

Through these works, we rediscover one of the great artistic movements of South America, muralism, born in Mexico at the beginning of the 20th century and whose most famous representative is Diego Rivera. The movement born following the Mexican Revolution of 1910 was intended in particular to democratize art while teaching the country’s history to as many people as possible. “This exhibition shows how these peoples seize visual expressions to affirm their identity. And their courage, too, because these peoples are always in struggle”, enthuses Diego Zaccaria, the curator of the exhibition.

In parallel with these works, the visitor can also discover the work of first and final year students of the Applied Arts section at the Argouges high school in Grenoble. They made commemorative posters to pay tribute to Salvador Allende.

“A General Song”, until May 13, 2023 – Moulins de Villancourt – 85 cours saint-André – 38 800 Pont-de-Claix – open Wednesday to Saturday from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. – free admission