The Puerto Rican artist José Antonio Torres Martinó explains that Puerto Rican printmaking in the 1950s was an artistic response to the political situation; it was the artists’s way of creating an awareness of Puerto Rico. Thirty-five years later there are fewer printmakers, but there are some, like Luis Alonso, whose prints are still making critical statements. Alonso thinks that Puerto Ricans are trapped, victims of an unfair, random fate. His prints are embedded in ideals of freedom and redemption. Torres Martinó mentions some of Alonso’s most important prints, such as: Desempleado [Unemployed]; Manifiesto 1; Vienen como luces [They Come Like Lights]; and Monólogo del regreso [Monologue of a Return], among others. These works were presented at an exhibition at the Liga de Estudiantes de Arte de San Juan [San Juan Art Students League] on the occasion of the VII Bienal del Grabado Latinoamericano y del Caribe [7th Biennial of Latin American and Caribbean Prints] (November 1986).

The Puerto Rican artist Luis Alonso (Ponce, b. 1928) worked with woodcuts to produce his prints, and silkscreened his posters. His work has a social and political message derived from his clear understanding of Puerto Rico’s colonial status. The Hermandad de Artistas Gráficos de Puerto Rico [Puerto Rican Fraternity of Graphic Artists] organized an exhibition of his work in 1986 on the occasion of the VII Bienal de San Juan del Grabado Latinoamericano y del Caribe [7th Biennial of Latin American and Caribbean Prints]. His work won a prize at the 8th Biennial in 1988.

José A. Torres Martinó (Ponce, born 1916) is considered the ideological leader of the generation born in the 1950s in Puerto Rico. As such, he was among those who defended the creation of an autonomous artistic movement in Puerto Rico. He also played an active role as arts educator and promoter of the graphic arts. In 1969, he founded and taught at the Taller de Diseño Gráfico [Graphic Design Workshop] de la Escuela de Arquitectura de la Universidad de Puerto Rico. Working with the artist Myrna Báez, he founded the Hermandad de Artistas Gráficos de Puerto Rico in 1981. The reason for organizing this group of artists was to protest against government intervention in cultural matters at the time.

Plástica magazine, where this review was published, was an art publication that appeared fairly regularly in Puerto Rico. It began modestly enough in 1968, as the newsletter of the Liga de arte de San Juan [San Juan Art League], but changed its name in 1978 to Plástica revista de la Liga de estudiantes de San Juan [San Juan Student League Visual Arts Magazine]. Its very specific title notwithstanding, the twenty-one issues of the magazine explored a wide range of subjects within the broad parameters of Puerto Rican and Latin American art, filling its pages with retrospective coverage of subjects, such as the V Bienal de San Juan del grabado latinoamericano y del Caribe [5th San Juan Biennial of Latin American and Caribbean Prints] (1981), Puerto Rican architecture, and Latin American visual arts. The first editorial board of the magazine included Hélène Saldaña, Delta Picó, Cordelia Buitrago, and J.M. García Segovia. In addition to the many essays written by top Puerto Rican thinkers, the magazine published contributions from some of the leading Latin American artists and critics, such as Luis Camnitzer, Damián Bayón, Jacqueline Barnitz, Samuel Cherson, Joseph Alsop, Omar Rayo, and Ricardo Pau Llosa, among many others.