Marie Latham

BA Honors | Art History

BIO

I am graduating with an Art History major and minors in Italian, Business & Economics, and Digital Marketing. I look forward to postgraduate study at Tyler School of Art, where I will pursue a Master’s degree in Art History concentrating in Arts Administration. I hope to combine my love of art with education to create interpretive materials for museums. As an avid painter and calligrapher, my favorite artists include Shirazeh Houshiary and Alice Neel. In my research, I investigate how artists respond to their geographic realities, especially in areas of diaspora. In my free time, you can find me singing with the Folk Choir, practicing the electric bass guitar, or working on graphic design projects.

THESIS ABSTRACT

Mosaic Modernism: Tracing Emilio Pettoruti’s Artistic Influence from Italy to Argentina

I explore how Italian-Argentine painter Emilio Pettoruti was able to synthesize his distinctive geometric paintings because of his study of Byzantine mosaics while learning from stained glass artisans in Italy. His theories on light, movement and color advanced modern art in Argentina and abroad during the burgeoning avant-garde in Buenos Aires of the 1920s. Many of his works, however, are read in a Eurocentric manner, assuming him to be a disciple of French Cubism or Italian Futurism. I trace elements which are uniquely Argentine in his works and writings to dismantle these structures of external categorization.