CHILE 50 YRS: Art Censored in UK to Appease Pinochet

September 10, 2023

Fifty years after the murderous coup in Chile, the U.K.’s most important political artist recounts how the Barbican censored his work to placate high-ranking Chilean finance officials and British bankers.




‘Santiago Stadium 1’. Photomontage by Peter Kennard. This image was covered up by Barbican staff so Pinochet officials would not have to see it on the way to meeting with British bankers in 1985.

By Peter Kennard
Declassified UK

On September 11th 1973 a military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet and backed by the C.I.A. and big business overthrew Chile’s constitutional government and inflicted 17 years of terror on the Chilean people.

Salvador Allende, whose ‘Popular Unity’ socialist government had nationalised some of the country’s key assets and resources, died in the coup and a fascist military regime was set up in which thousands were tortured, murdered, and ‘disappeared’ (grabbed from their homes by military thugs and never seen again).

I immediately began making art about it.

Then in 1985, I had a retrospective exhibition titled ‘Images Against War 1965-1985’ at the Barbican Arts Centre in London to coincide with the production of War Plays by Edward Bond at the venue’s theatre.

But the day before the exhibition opened, Henry Wrong [sic], the director of the centre, approached me and demanded that two of the photomontages, ‘Santiago Stadium’ 1 and 3, should be removed immediately. Both works were made in 1973 in response to the military coup in Chile, portraying the bloody repression and killing that followed.

More:
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/09/10/chile-50-yrs-art-censored-in-uk-to-appease-pinochet/