Taller 99

Retrospective exhibition presenting eighty-seven prints by various artists who participated in the emblematic "Taller 99" workshop for five decades, from its foundation in 1956 by the prominent creator Nemesio Antúnez till today. Taller 99 has hosted many generations of artists who have contributed significantly to the development and knowledge of graphic arts in Chile. In the exhibition catalogue, Rafael Munita, Vice President of Corporación Cultural Taller 99 recalls: "countless members who have given life to the workshop have been commissioned to transmit the original orientation to future generations; this is not the workshop 98 or 100. This implies that its participants collect and take into themselves the invitation by Nemesio Antúnez to install in Chile a space for engraving, open to artists and to any interested person. The collective workshop, where knowledge and materials are generously shared as a conduct statute, creates an adequate area that favors the demanding creative exercise that takes place there." Created inspired in "Atelier 17" the workshop that W.S. Hayter started in New York, Taller 99 became a subjective reference of the new figuration and abstract art, as an option to the abstract primitivism and the illustration of the popular imposed in the Faculty of Arts of the University of Chile.