The Journal of Surrealism and the Americas: Vol. 3 No. 1 (2009) - Table of Contents

“Surrealism and Post-Colonial Latin America: Introduction” by Susanne Baackmann and David Craven, p. i-xvii.

“‘My Painting is an Act of Decolonization': An Interview with Wifredo Lam by Gerardo Mosquera (1980)” translation by Colleen Kattau and David Craven, p. 1-8.

“Surrealism and National Identity in Mexico: Changing Perceptions, 1940-1968” by Luis M.
Castañeda, p. 9-29. 

“Negotiating Surrealism: Carlos Mérida, Mexican Art and the Avant-garde” by Courtney Gilbert,  p. 30-50.

“1925 – Montevideo in the Orient: Lautréamont’s Ascent Among the Paris Surrealists” by Gabriel Götz Montua, p. 51-83.

“Paranoia and Hope: The Art of Juan Batlle Planas and its Relationship to the Argentine Technological Imagination of the 1930s and 1940s” by Michael Wellen, p. 84-106.

“Siqueiros and Surrealism?” by Irene Herner, p. 107-127.

“Review of 'Richard Spiteri, Exégèse de Dernier malheur dernière chance de Benjamin Péret'” by John Westbrook, p. 128-131. 

“Review of ‘Liliana Porter: Línea de Tiempo’ (Line of Time)” by Arden Decker-Parks, p. 132-134. 

“Review of ‘Zurcidos Invisibles: Alan Glass, Construcciones y Pinturas, 1950-2008’” by Susan Aberth, p. 135-138.

“Review of ‘David Hopkins, Dada’s Boys: Masculinity After Duchamp’” by Julian Jason Haladyn, p. 139-140. 

“Review of ‘Salvador Dalí: Liquid Desire’” by Ryan Johnston, p. 141-147.

This essay explores Guatemalan-born painter Carlos Merida's involvement in the surrealist movement. It examines both Merida's contribution to the surrealist understanding of Mexico in the 1940s as well as his adoption and promotion of surrealist ideas as part of his attempt to create a uniquely American avant-garde. These two sides of Merida's engagement with surrealism are studied through the lens of the artist's work as the director of the Galeria de Arte Moderno in Mexico City in the late 1920s and early 1930s, where he showed the work of painters sympathetic to surrealism, his own surrealist-inspired paintings, and his contributions to Wolfgang Paalen's journal "Dyn," published in Mexico City from 1942-1944.