Foreign News: Purge of the Arts

In a wild hunt for “Communists,” the Government of President Pedro Ramirez has purged the press, literature, labor, social clubs, officialdom. Last week it reached out to clean up art. Police sought out Antonio Berni, recipient of this year’s National Prize for Painting, the nation’s highest honor to its artists, forbade him to accept the prize because he was a “Communist.”

Berni was not the only one to suffer.

Luis Falcini, curator of the Buenos Aires Municipal Fine Arts Museum, was dismissed at the same time because some years ago he painted for a trade union a picture showing a worker with an upraised arm and a clenched fist.

The man who instituted the art purge was General Basili Pertine, the Intendente (Government-appointed mayor). His former occupation: director of the Buenos Aires branch of Germany’s Siemens-Schuckert firm.