While the term magical realism in its modern sense first appeared in 1955, the German art critic Franz Roh first used the phrase in 1925, to refer to a painterly style also known as Neue Sachlichkeit (the New Objectivity), an alternative championed by fellow German museum director Gustav Hartlaub. Carpentier's work was a key influence on the writers of the Latin American 'boom' that emerged in the 1960s.Īn example of magic realism can be seen in Julio Cortázar's ' La noche boca arriba,' in which an individual experiences two realistic situations simultaneously in the same place but during two different time periods, centuries apart.

Carpentier's conception was of a kind of heightened reality in which elements of the miraculous could appear while seeming natural and unforced. The Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier (a friend of Uslar-Pietri) used the term 'lo real maravilloso' (roughly 'marvelous reality') in the prologue to his novel The Kingdom of this World (1949).

The term was initially used by German art critic Franz Roh to describe painting which demonstrated an altered reality, but was later used by Venezuelan Arturo Uslar-Pietri to describe the work of certain Latin American writers.

Magic realism (or magical realism) is an artistic genre in which magical elements appear in an otherwise, mundane, realistic setting.Īs used today the term is broadly descriptive rather than critically rigorous.

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