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Inthis research project, I intend to investigate the contribution made byArgentine artists to the itineraries, aesthetic debates and visualrepresentations of the Andean world (a vast region that includes the northwestregion of Argentina and the territories of Bolivia and Peru) between 1910 and1955. During this period there was a constant mobilization of artists who, withtheir own funds or thanks to scholarships offered by official institutions,moved to the aforementioned region seeking to get in touch with a geography andcultural context, in which, according to their own interpretations, anaesthetic identity of authentic American value could be found. I am interestedin addressing this problem within the framework of the various discourses onaesthetic modernity and its links with the debates on &#160;concepts of nation and identity that tookplace in Latin America during the first half of the 20th century.Thisproject is a continuation and an extension of my doctoral thesis, which focusedon the institutionalization of the arts in the northwest region of Argentina. Thisprocess was materialized by the creation of museums, teaching academies and theprofessionalization of artistic practice in general terms. This led me toinvestigate the construction of images of the landscape and the inhabitants ofthe region, which functioned as a way of stating the importance of that area increating a local aesthetic to consolidate national identity. The influence ofcultural nationalism, the development of archeology and transnational debatesabout Americanism led artists to create representations of the landscape, thetraditions of the rural popular classes, and the indigenous world and colonialpast that still survived in the present. All these aspects were considered partof an identity that was supposedly untouched by processes of immigration andsocial modernization. These ways of imagining the northwest region of Argentinaled artists to become aware of the links between that area of the country andthe territories of Bolivia and Peru, which shared a common history that defiedthe present national boundaries. In addition, the vast archaeological andcolonial heritage of these countries, as well as the survival of theseindigenous legacies in the present, transformed them as privileged sceneriesfor the pursuit of the types and customs represented by the artists. Thedissemination of avant-garde ideas and experiences introduced new factors thatfueled an interest in the Andes: the positive value of “primitive” art and its ritualcharacter pushed new generations of artists towards the encounter withancestral cultures in which they hoped to find an alternative to overcome thespiritual crisis of the West. Because of this, the Andean space captivated theimagination of a large number of diverse artists for a long time.Themain objective of this investigation is to deepen the way of reflecting on atheme of Argentine and Latin American Art History that has been only partiallyaddressed in the past. I intend to put the interpretations on the dynamics ofthe Argentine arts in a regional perspective that has not yet been fullyinvestigated: the circulation of ideas and images throughout the Andean region.This type of inquiry will favor a decentered interpretation of Latin AmericanArt History that questions stylistic categories, geographical limits andtraditional historical blocks. In addition, this research project aims to makea contribution to the debates about the category of aesthetic modernity that,at least during the last decades, has occurred in Art History, both in LatinAmerica and in the rest of the world.Pablo Fasce was born in Buenos Aires (Argentina), where he lives and works today. He has a PhD in history from the Instituto de Altos Estudios Sociales of the Universidad Nacional de San Martín (IDAES-UNSAM). His thesis, entitled “The Northwest and the Institutionalization of the Arts in Argentina: Transits, Dialogues and Tensions between Region and Nation (1910-1955)”, was presented in December 2017. Fasce is Assistant Professor at IDAES-UNSAM and the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA). He currently holds a postdoctoral fellowship granted by the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET). He has also received funding from the Argentine Ministry of Culture and the Getty Foundation. Among his recent publications is “The Argentine Northwest as an Entrance into the Andean World: Nativism and Americanism in the Aesthetic Debates of the Early Twentieth Century”, published in Volume 12 of the journal Artelogie (2018).