GABRIEL GONZÁLEZ VIDELA, who took office as President of Chile on November 3, 1946, is a lawyer with a bent toward politics and economics. Statistics formed the subject of his thesis when he was graduated from the Law School of the University of Chile in 1922. He had already become acquainted with this topic at first hand through his work in a government office. Many years later, in the midst of diplomatic duties, he found time to attend lectures on sociology and economics at the Sorbonne.

A national election was held in Chile on September 4, 1946, to choose a successor to President Juan Antonio Ríos, who died in office June 27, 1946. At that election Señor González Videla, as candidate of the Radical party, in which he had been active all his life, was vigorously supported by the parties of the Left, including the Communist party. The September election gave the Radical candidate a vote of 188,102, which was nearly 50,000 more than the vote of his nearest rival. But this was not enough to give the absolute majority required by the Chilean Constitution, and the matter was therefore laid before Congress. At a special joint session on October 24, 1946, Señor González Videla received 138 out of a total of 185 votes cast in secret ballot by Senators and members of the Chamber of Deputies. His election was thus confirmed in accordance with the Constitution. In acknowledgment of the support he had received, the new President invited into his cabinet three members of the Communist party, who thus became the first Communists to

take official part in the government of Chile or any neighbor republic.

Gabriel González Videla was born November 23, 1899, at La Serena, capital of the Province of Coquimbo, not far to the north of Santiago. He was one of nine children of Don Gabriel González and Doña Teresa Videla de González. La Serena was the scene of the future President's preparatory education, and also of his early professional life. In 1930 he moved to Santiago to take his place in the Chamber of Deputies as a member for Coquimbo, and there he served until 1939. From 1939 to 1941 he was Chile's Minister accredited to France, Belgium, and Lux

embourg. The next year he went to Portugal as Ambassador, and in 1942 he was Ambassador to Brazil. In 1945 he was elected to the Senate to represent the northern provinces of Antofogasta and Tarapacá.

Twice in his political career Señor González Videla has presided over the Radical party. The first time was in 1932, during the campaign which resulted in the return to the presidency of Arturo Alessandri Palma, the same Señor Alessandri who as President of the Senate sat at the balloting table while the votes were being

cast for Gabriel González Videla in October 1946. The second time was in 1938, again an election year. In that year it was Señor González Videla who as leader of the Radical party directed the coalition of Leftist parties which succeeded in electing Pedro Aguirre Cerda President of Chile. In 1941, after President Aguirre Cerda's death in office, Señor González Videla was one of the candidates for the Radical party's nomination as successor.

President González Videla is to serve for a six-year term, from November 3, 1946 to November 3, 1952.

in the United States, ending in the spring of 1947 at a well-known commercial gallery in New York.

One notes first of all in the collection as a whole the absence of genre scenes or the "typical" subjects dear to the tourist. Annemarie Henle selected the drawings with a discriminating judgment based on the intrinsic quality of the works, no matter how varied their tendencies. Although not all the important Latin American artists are represented, the exhibition cannot be criticized for the inclusion of inferior works. On the contrary, it should be praised for the prestige that it will add to Latin American art in the eyes of the United States art centers.

All kinds of technique are represented in

this group of drawings, which shows not only a diversity of media but pronounced variation in the form of graphic expression. We find the neo-classic line in the manner of Picasso which, according to the statement of Edgar J. Kaufmann, Jr. in the introduction to the catalogue, has been "the most important model of Latin American draftsmen." We find too the drawing of softened outlines showing skilful use of the stump as the result of academic teaching. The simplified curve of varying width in accordance with oriental usage, sharp, violent, nervous hatching, the careful line that gives the effect of an etching, the fluent pencil shading that strives for a third dimension in the manner of Renaissance artists-all styles

are present. The purpose for which the drawings were made is also varied, from complex foreshortening for mural studies to the basic sketch or the finished analysis.

The studies for murals shown in the exhibition are by the Mexicans Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, and by the Brazilian Cândido Portinari. Rivera is represented by the preparatory sketches for the outstanding work of his best period, the frescoes in the National School of Agriculture at Chapingo in Mexico, on which he lavished his extraordinary gifts as a draftsman. Orozco shows some magnificent charcoal drawings one of them a colossal fragment of a figure from his Guadalajara murals

which catch us up into a dramatically expressive, pathetically sincere world. Portinari, who has a sure feeling for murals, is represented by sketches for his frescoes in the Hispanic Foundation of the Library of Congress. These sketches, because of their elaborate execution, may well be called definitive works. Although they show great liberty and freedom of form, they are nevertheless to be placed within the sometimes dangerous academic tradition of softened technique.

In the group of analytical and detailed pencil drawings which delight in a search for subtle values and are preoccupied with the study of planes and the division of space, we find those of Héctor Poleo, one