Ever since Andy Warhol published the famous pop art banana cover for The Velvet Underground’s album in 1967 (“Peel slowly and see” were the instructions), avant-garde art and music have been forever linked. Actually, the concept wasn’t all that new: The Beatles had done it with the line drawing/collage cover of their album Revolver a year earlier—and continued with Sgt. Pepper’s and the minimalist cover of The White Album—but the pop art design patented by Warhol was the one that left the most lasting impression on the modern imagination.
And no, Warhol’s banana isn’t Latin American, but it certainly continues to influence the art world across the globe.
The connection between art, rock and roll, pop, and the avant-garde shows no signs of slowing down. We recently discussed the iconic album covers of Latin American rock , and today we’ll talk about artists, album covers, and songs from South America that have also been linked to architecture, painting, and the visual arts.
Marcelo Zappoli: From GIT to Virus in a State of Grace
Marcelo Zappoli is an Argentine artist who, in addition to his work with visuals in the music industry, has an impressive body of work in fashion, music, gastronomy, and architecture photography. Of course, he is best known for having photographed many of the legends of Argentine rock, most notably the legendary band Virus. His work includes studio photographs for Vogue, Elle, Dior, and Chanel, among other magazines and brands. One of his most celebrated covers is that of the album Vol. III by Git, the Argentine band that released this album in 1986, filled with XTC-style pop and street rock.
The Bauhaus-inspired design, which owed a great deal to the cover art of the British band Wire’s album *154* , is proof that not everything had to be garish during those neon-lit 1980s. However, the prize goes to the designof Locura by Virus, released a year earlier by the band at the height of their creative powers, shortly before Federico Moura, their legendary lead singer, became one of the first famous figures in Argentina to die from HIV-related complications.
Functional Art: Friction
That same year, another well-known Argentine band called Fricción— led by Richard Coleman, one of the most accomplished figures in Buenos Aires’ alternative rock scene—released the single “Arquitectura moderna” from their album *Consumación o Consumo*, a delicate track filled with synthesizers whose chorus repeated the sophisticated mantra “Modern Architecture/Functional Art.”
“For me, album covers have always been part of the artwork. I’ve bought a lot of records just because of the cover,“ Coleman said in an interview in 2022.
The Three: 19th-Century Art on a 1990s Canvas
Other members of the club, the Chilean band Los Tres, released one of their most important albums in 1995: La Espada y la Pared, one of the most prestigious albums in their country’s music scene and an influence on Mexican artists such as Café Tacvba—who later covered them on an entire EP—as well as Chilean artist Javiera Mena and her fellow countrymen Lucybell.
The cover, featuring a more postmodern background, is none other than the 1881 painting titled “Portrait of Nadya Repina, the Artist’s Daughter,” created by the Russian realist painter Ilya Repin. This work, painted in oil on canvas and housed at the Saratov State Art Museum, depicts the artist’s young daughter in a relaxed pose. Incidentally, this album includes a cover of The Velvet Underground, bringing things full circle.
As far as we know, there was no mention of the album cover Honey’s Dead (1992) by the English band The Jesus and Mary Chain, which features a detail from the painting “Ophelia (First Version)” (1852) by the Pre-Raphaelite painter Arthur Hughes.
Yellow Love for the Masses
A little earlier, the iconic cover of Amor amarillo (1993), Gustavo Cerati’s first solo album, had been designed by Alejandro Ros and Gabriela Malerba. The cult of personality surrounding his then-disbanded band was banished in favor of a groundbreaking, contemporary, and minimalist design in shades of yellow and orange, with no direct text on the cover and a special plastic case.
From the University of Buenos Aires to Babasónicos
The designer Alejandro Ros is another leading figure in South American art linked to album covers. The artist is part of the first generation of graduates from the Graphic Design program at the UBA and was responsible for the design of major albums such as Babasónicos’ *Jessico* (2001) and the highly graphic Leche by Illya Kuryaki and the Valderramas (1999).
The album *El Dorado* catapulted Aterciopelados to fame beyond Colombia. In 1995, the duo—composed of Andrea Echeverri and Héctor Buitrago—released their most iconic album, a showcase of what Latin American popular music might have become had it not been swept aside by urban trends.
The album has such artistic merit that, to celebrate one of its anniversaries in 2023, the band—which is still active—presented an art exhibition in L.A. California, an art exhibition curated by Mariana Gómez, founder of DAMA Galería, where 20 artists of different nationalities presented works inspired by the album.
