From the Peñaflor Mural to the Santiago Metro: Sixty Years of Vitreous Mosaic in Chile

Abstract

The difference with the vitreous glass mosaic tradition in European countries, the case of Chile has short data, traceable from their origins, but no less influential within the urban seeing of the last sixty years. The first records of this event in public space, it appears just started the second half of the twentieth century, beginning a devel‐ opment that was linked to a social and political model characterized by cultural ties with other Latin American countries, economic developmentalism, and great achievements urban that this material had reflecting modernization. This transit passes from figurative, in murals that were part of a political project, to the abstract, receiving in the sixties and seventies the influence of Concrete Art, in close relation‐ ship with urban plans that changed the landscape of Chilean cities, especially of its capital Santiago. The presentation intend to explain these origins, its key players, their influences and characteristics, working from the file that are oral records of the actors involved, and the publications of that time were aware of the use of this material as synonymous with modernity. At the same time, it seeks to establish possibilities of their study in the current conditions, proposing typologies of use from photographic records, and reflecting on their heritage status, being related to one of the peak periods of indus‐ trial and urban recent history of Chile, where vitreous glass mosaics played a key role as a coating material, which can be studied from its architectural condition, but especially from its symbolic dimension.