Good Neighbors on Tour

This week summer ended in Argentina, and art sprouted. Along narrow, fashionable Calle Florida, Buenos Aires' 57th Street, dealers readied their galleries for their patrons' return from the beaches. Defying the seasons, Argentine art also sprouted some 7,000 miles north, in the uncertain March weather of Washington, D. C. Its greenhouse: the Barr Building, headquarters of the American Federation of Arts. To be displayed in Manhattan next month, it will bloom for a year (possibly two) on a coast-to-coast tour of the U. S.

The Federation-sponsored traveling show is a varied flower bed of 30 paintings, eight pieces of sculpture and 28 prints all culled from Richmond's big Argentine exhibit (TIME, Jan. 29). The show will give many a gallerygoer his first glimpse of a national art which parallels U. S. art more closely than any other country.

Though the Argentine Government sent only the work of prize winners, the show is no tame academic display, spans schools from staid classicism to surrealism. Argentine artists have absorbed European techniques, put them to lively local use. Best section is the prints. Argentine print-makers are good hewers of woodcuts and drawers of water colors.

"Ill feeling and misunderstanding between nations is often due more to what one thinks of the other than to what one does to the other," says polished Argentine Ambassador to the U. S. Felipe A. Espil. Fully aware of inter-American divergence and its causes is the Department of State. To help along its "good neighbor policy," it has set up a Division of Cultural Relations. Leading off with the Argentine show, the cultural program will really get under way this year.

Coming high lights: the biggest show of Mexican art ever held anywhere, to open at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art in May; a Pan-American exhibit next fall at the Los Angeles Museum.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.