In the eighties, the social and political context changed radically, the social scene became complex and warlike, Central America lived, with a shocking toll of death and destruction, the so-called "Low intensity war" that was one of the forms the "Cold War" acquired in the region; In fact, there are no low intensity wars, every war is a form of eliminating the intensity of life.
This context explained in a very succinct manner, crosscut all the social and cultural actions of the region, it was impossible for the crisis not to touch art and its agents, the artists. Literature, music, theater, visual arts and all artistic expression, engaged in a project that demanded decision and commitment; art adhered to a program of social freedom based on ideals of sovereignty, independence and respect for the self-determination of peoples. Artists became the cultural expression of a Central America free of imperialist oppression; the dreams of freedom of the great heroes of the anti-colonial and neocolonial struggle were among the workers of art and culture.
In the field of visual arts, an art of compromise was assumed in which the political and ideological contents had a lot of weight, the iconography of the time was crossed by barbed wire, military helmets, skulls, crosses, bullets, machetes, rifles, nails and a whole paraphernalia of signs that alluded to social combat from art.
The artists who had belonged to the Merced Workshop deepened their political commitment but no longer as a workshop but individually, in that politicized and socially committed art, Victor Lopez, Ezequiel Padilla, Virgilio Guardiola, Anibal Cruz and Dino Fanconi all stand out. They were former Mercedarians, but also new figures such as Delmer Mejia and Dagoberto Posadas appear with a graphic based on engraving. TThe engraving became a powerful means of political propaganda in that decade, which is also known as the "Lost Decade". The social sculpture of Obed Valladares should be valued.
Contemporary spirit of art in Honduras
With the limitations that our plastic bibliography presents, it is important to highlight the fact that our modern plastic production has been documented, while the documentation on contemporary art is still scattered, although in 2007 the text "Contra Punto de la Forma "written by Carlos Lanza and Ramon Caballero and in 2011, the Text" The Other Tradition "was written by Adan Vallecillo and Ramon Caballero who have contributed a lot to articulate a critical discourse on new experiences in the visual arts contemporary It can be said that the so-called "contemporary" languages emerged from the nineties, specifically since 1995 when Santos Arzu burst into the artistic scenario with the work "Temple in Ruins" and Bayardo Blandino with the work" Fragmented Epistle ".
The art that had characterized the era of the 80s, went into crisis as a result of the changes in the world after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we entered what can be called the de-ideologization of art. Understand that it is not meant that the art of the 90s lacked of ideology because it was contemporary, what happed is that in fact in the 80s art was subordinated to a fundamentally political function, in the 90s we saw an art where the aesthetic pole prevails, articulated around a premise: art as a language.
Contemporary visual art advanced in making our discourse universal, leaving behind the local and folkloric image that had characterized the national visual arts, giving way to a more active participation in important areas of international circulation, such as biennials, traveling exhibitions and acquisitions of Honduran works for renown museums.
Our artists have investigated or experimented in different visual genres: painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, video art, installations, but, we are talking about genres and not currents.
One of the most remarkable historical events of the late 90s was our first participation in the oldest biennial in the world, I am referring to the Venice Biennial of 1999, the first artist to participate was Santos Arzu Quioto with the work " Intermediate time "
Within the group of artists that can be called contemporary, Bayardo Blandino and Santos Arzu should be identify as precursors in the 90s. Other names of singular importance are: Regina Aguilar, Xenia Mejia and Alex Galo.
The 21st century draws new paths
The first two decades of this century have been productive, we have seen projects that have moved between the expression of languages that come from the tradition but have sought to renew themselves in the languages of contemporaneity, but we have also observed proposals with a clear contemporary discourse in its contents as its formal searches. Following is a profile of these proposals and their authors.
In 2004 Celeste Ponce won the Anthology of Visual and Plastic Arts of Honduras with an installation that already showed the strength of the new languages. I am referring to the piece "Plaga Sos"; Similarly, another of the artists who has proposed a transgressive and very contemporary art in her language is Dina Lagos, her work "Cariñositos y Mellizas" with which she participated in the Honduran Visual Arts Biennial of 2008, is an example of this. Likewise, her last exhibition, held on June 28, 2017, at the Museum of the National Identity (MIN) under the title "La culpa es de la flor" (The flower is to blame" shows a mature artist and consolidated in her artistic work. In 2004, the Visual Arts Worksop "El Circulo realiza la muestra "en/fronteras" en el Salvador; a piece of contemprary nature that has to be mentioned the first decade of the 21st century is "100% catracho" carried out in 2004 by Gabriel Galeano who represents the ashes of the inmates who died burned in one of the prisons of the country; In 2006, Adan Vallecillo curated the "Bloque de Nieve" project, a project that is presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, in San Jose Costa Rica, in which the artists Darwin Andino, Cesar Manzanares, Medardo Cardona, Fernando Cortes, Nerlin Fuentes, Alex Galo, Dina Lagos, Leonardo Gonzales, Alejandra Mejia, Hugo Ochoa, Celeste Ponce and Jorge Oqueli and Lester Rodriguez. A paradigmatic piece of this century is the sculpture "The fate of the object or transparency rituals" by Alex Gallic in which he experiments with clay and glass, with this piece and is awarded the Unique Prize of the Anthology of the Visual and Plastic Arts of Honduras. In 2006. Byron Mejia as a painter, ventures into object art and produces one of the best conceptual works achieved in the decade, the piece, made in 2006, is called "Toys". Adam Vallecillo surprises in 2007 with the work Placebo, a sculpture with vulcanized tires and valve. With this piece he wins the unique prize of the "Anthology".
A transcendent show in 2007 was "Los errantes” de Santos Arzu Quioto, a scenography work of abstract nature.
In 2008 a Honduran artist living in Panama confirms his experience and quality, we are referring to Nahun Flores who exposes the work "Inoffensive ways of saying I am here."
Other works of great value in this century are the Lester Rodriguez exhibition "2000 combat ships" made for the 10th Biennial of Havana, Cuba, held in 2009; likewise, in that Biennial Adan Vallecillo participates with one of the most emblematic works of contemporary Honduran art, the title of the work is Cacerolica.
In 2013, Santos Arzu presents the carpet at the MIN, a monumental work that is the prelude to "Sudarios y sentinels" that he exhibited at the National Gallery of Art in 2017 and also anticipates the work "El regreso de los errantes" presented in September 2017 within the framework of the Project "Transitos: between tradition and the contemporary" carried out in the CAC. The project transitos has the particularity of having brought together artists from two generations, which began to renew the tradition in the nineties and some artists who have proposed their work with new and diverse artistic languages in this century, under the curatorship of Carlos Lanza. It brought together the artists Armando Lara, Santos Arzu, Bayardo Blandino, Jorge Restrepo, Nahum Flores, Regina Aguilar, Xenia Mejia, Celsa Flores, Alex Galo, Darvin Rodriguez, Samuel Erazo, Luis Landa, Byron Mejia and Miguel Romero.
Since 2014, there is a transcendent fact: the UNAH resumes its Biennial, the two previous editions had been in 1989 and 1991, it took 23 years for this University to start up this event, so in 2014 the III Biennial and in 2016 the IV Biennial of the UNAH are held.