Diagramming Modernity. Books and Graphic Design in Latin America, 1920-1940

This massive publication offers the first comprehensive panorama of the Latin American illustrated book between the 1920s and 1940s, a period characterized by the rapid modernization of the region. The books reproduced here encapsulate this transformative era, expressing and embodying emergent national and continental narratives in Latin American countries. Diagramming Modernity reproduces more than 1000 illustrated first editions, analysing the cornucopia of cultural narratives they contain.

In addition to showcasing relatively unknown work by many consecrated artists, the publication also boasts an extensive repertoire of avant-garde artists largely forgotten until today. Chapters are dedicated to countries and to specific themes such as Word-Image, Verbal Visualities, Pre- Columbianisms and Ancestralisms, and Social and Political Graphics. Writers and thinkers Rodrigo Gutiérrez Viñuales, Riccardo Boglione, Juan Manuel Bonet, Marina Garone Gravier and Dafne Cruz Porchini conscientiously investigate these themes through their extensive research.