Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This unsigned article reviews the works of the Colectivo Acciones de Arte (CADA), the art action group that took the name used as the title of the article in question: Para no morir de hambre en el arte (To Avoid Dying of Hunger [or Starving to [...]

This is a short review of the play by the Italian playwright Ugo Betti: El delito de la Isla de Cabras (Crime on Goat Island), performed by the theater group Sociedad Venezolana del Teatro and directed by the Argentine director Carlos Gorostiza, who [...]

In this text, Sergio Benvenuto, director of Artes journal, describes and analyzes the visual arts in Uruguay and its connections to the rest of Latin America; he points out cultural differences from Anglo-Saxon America. Benvenuto asserts that [...]

This article by Diego Rivera denounces the “reactionary” agents of Delahuertismo who were the true architects of the conspiracy to infiltrate Masonic lodges at the beginning of 1924 in order to murder the governor of Yucatan, Felipe Carrillo [...]

This document is a didactic-political text directed toward the working class organized around identification of its enemies. These include the fake socialist parties (equated with the Italian fascists). And also the intellectuals unable to understand [...]

This document was part of the action with the same name—¡Ay sudamerica! 400.000 Textos sobre Santiago—[Ay, South America! 400,000 Texts over Santiago] carried out by C.A.D.A. (Colectivo de Acciones de Arte) [Art Action Collective] in 1981 in [...]

In this April 1964 magazine article, Marta Traba attests to Beatriz González’s artistic talents, reaffirming the decision by MAM (Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá) to exhibit the young artist’s work in a debut solo exhibition [...]

After a scandalous raid in Mexico City in which forty-two homosexual men were detained, known as the Ball of the Forty-One, the poem describes the possible foundation of a mutual aid society in which a dance was mentioned: “El traje debía de ser [...]

The presentation of the Premio Torcuato Di Tella 1964, written by the French critic Pierre Restany, states that art should be de-mystified. In his judgment, the divorce between art and myth was emphasized during the Renaissance and easel painting, [...]

The text “¡Pare de sufrir!: Decálogo de autoayuda para espectadores intimidados por las exposiciones de arte,” written by artist and critic Lucas Ospina was initially published on the website http://esferapublica.org on July 15, 2007. It was [...]

Fausto Castillo interviewed Mr. Miguel Salas Anzures who—when asked about the accusation that he was spending a great deal of money on the first Bienal Interamericana de Pintura y Grabado [Inter-American Biennial of Painting and Printmaking], [...]

The article “¡Que viva ‘La novia’ que viva!” was published in the Culture – Entertainment section of the Bogotá newspaper El Tiempo on September 16, 1997 on the occasion of the performance of La novia ( [...]

The article “¡Que viva Manrique!” [Hooray for Manrique!], written by the editorial team at the Bogotá newspaper El Espectador and published on April 16, 1996, referred to Pedro Manrique Figueroa. Precursor del Collage en Colombia [Pedro [...]

This was the headline of the supplement—dedicated to the muralist on the centenary of his birth—that published a document dated December 19, 1929 in which Diego Rivera explained “My Expulsion from the PCM.” The text discusses [...]

Juan B. Climent interviews Manuel Rodríguez Lozano, who leaves no doubt about his position regarding the figures of Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros in Mexican art. Lozano talks about the need to vindicate the native figure stemming from [...]

In this interview, David Alfaro Siqueiros expressed his views on the Biennial. He began by critiquing the paintings exhibited by the United States, and warned Latin American painters against imitating hybrid ideas that made no sense, such as Tachisme [...]

The art critic Juan Climent thought that Rufino Tamayo’s painting was caught in the crossfire of conflicting opinions. Some thought that his œuvre represented the decadent formalism of the School of Paris, but others saw it as the dawn of a new [...]

In this article, Roger Plá refers to Contrapunto magazine’s strategy of inviting artists to discuss the future of painting. The survey asked the following questions: 1. In your opinion, what is the material future of painting (as regards its [...]

Response given by Manuel Espinosa in the survey presented by the Contrapunto [Counterpoint] journal. In it he confronts the defenders of figuration by explaining that realist work is not that which copies, but that which asserts the material reality [...]

This is Tomás Maldonado’s response to the survey conducted by Contrapunto magazine. He is sanguine, not only about the future of the visual arts — “one of the most effective lubricants for revolutionary tension” — but about the future of [...]

In 1952, Daniel Mont invited Mathias Goeritz to construct “whatever he wanted.” Given such freedom, the sculptor developed the idea of Arquitectura Emocional [Emotional Architecture]: a structure that would contain the arts with the purpose of [...]

This document relates the response of Uruguayan artist Vicente Martín to the survey regarding abstract or non-figurative art, in which he states that abstract values also exist in representational painting. With regard to the future of painting, [...]

This document relates the response of artist Tomás Maldonado to the survey regarding abstract or non-figurative art, in which he considers the term “abstract” to be both appropriate and inappropriate; it is appropriate when it is used to [...]

Manuel Mujica Láinez replies to the survey on abstract and nonfigurative art, noting his inclination to use the terms “abstract” and “concrete” interchangeably, insofar as the trend does not cease to be what it is because of the label it [...]

This document relates the response of critic Córdova Iturburu to the survey regarding abstract art or non-figurative art, in which he leans toward the expression “non-figurative art” because it permits the inclusion of not only the geometric [...]

This document relates the response of Spanish critic Eduardo Westerdahl to the survey regarding abstract art or non-figurative art, in which he considers it opportune to carry out a revision of terms used in these cases. Westerdahl also proposes to [...]

This document relates the response of Spanish sculptor Ángel Ferrant to the survey with regard to abstract, or non-figurative art, in which he indicates that the word “abstract” is inappropriate when it does not acknowledge a visual model. [...]

This document relates the response of artist Mathias Goeritz to the survey regarding abstract, or non-figurative art, in which he indicates that he prefers “abstract art” as the general and popular term, although he agrees with the possibility [...]

This is Hans Platschek’s answer to a survey on abstract and nonfigurative art, in which he suggests that signs could be used for didactic goals. But he doesn’t agree with the terms “abstract” and “nonfigurative” because the former is art [...]

This document relates the response of artist Gyula Kosice (1924-2016), to the survey regarding abstract or non-figurative art, in which he states that Madí adopted, in principle, the name "non-figurative" because it corresponded to the nature of [...]

This document relates the response of painter and sculptor Juan Del Prete to the survey regarding abstract or non-figurative art, in which he considers all such nomenclature conventional. In addition, Del Prete believes that this type of discussion [...]

This document is an open letter in which Julio E. Payró declares his difference of opinion with Guillermo de Torre regarding the application of the term “abstract.” This letter responds to the concepts discussed by Torre in the catalog for the [...]

The text, “¿Arte joven?” [Young Art?] by art critic Eduardo Serrano Rueda introduces the exhibition Nombres nuevos en el arte de Colombia [New Names in Colombian Art] held at the Museo de Arte Moderno [Museum of Modern Art] in Bogotá in March [...]

In this article, journalist Rodolfo Gerschman responds to the questions raised in a press release against an award given to altarpiece maker Joaquín López Antay issued by the Asociación Profesional de Artistas Plásticos (ASPAP) that upholds a [...]

In this text, Alfonso Castrillón argues that the conflict between “high art” and “folk art” is a reflection of class division, where the dominant class sets limits for low art by means of notions such as “individual creation” and “ [...]

This article was published in El País, a newspaper run by sectors of the Partido Nacional, one of Uruguay’s two traditional political parties. It reports on the occupation of the Subte exhibition space in Montevideo by a group of visual artists [...]

The exhibition at Perls Gallery in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, presented Rufino Tamayo as one of the four great Mexican artists. His works were part of the great modernism and, unlike those of his colleagues, no Communist symbols could be found in [...]

The author of this article, Francisco Abril de Vivero, claims that the decision to send arts and crafts instead of “fine arts” to represent Peru at the 1977 Bienal de São Paulo was an act of “infra-Marxist populism.” In his opinion it was a [...]

This article by army general and historian Felipe de la Barra tries to describe the true appearance of José Gabriel Condorcanqui [Túpac Amaru II]. The article justifies the depiction of the forefather of Peruvian independence in a hat—the image [...]

José Clemente Orozco believed that opposition to political painting was nothing new in Mexico; it had been around since the start of the mural movement. Some painters tried to stamp out all forms of figurative or representative expression. When [...]

This interview consists of fourteen questions regarding the reception that the Mexican art exhibition experienced from the Parisian public. Fernando Gamboa believed that the event was a great opportunity for the Mexican people, and also was a great [...]

In this essay—a historical reflection on the Cuban landscape over the centuries—Cuban critic and historian Adelaida de Juan asserts that, starting in the second half of the nineteenth century, Cuban painters began to envision the natural [...]

In the Survey Section, the journalist Ortega decided to go to the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria to ask the painters there the following question: Who is the greatest painter in Mexico? The caricaturist Ernesto García Cabral ironically responds that [...]

In artistic circles in those days, according to Rufino Tamayo, anything that was not purely Mexican was roundly rejected, and works that reflected our own experience and personal expression were lavishly praised. This had its positive aspects, but it [...]

Argentine critic Marta Traba considers Puerto Rican artist Julio Rosado del Valle a key figure in Puerto Rican art because he was among those who paved the way for innovative approaches and experimentation in painting. She asserts that in the work of [...]

In this essay, the critic Roberto Guevara discusses the Cuban-born Venezuelan painter Rolando Dorrego’s career and latest work. Guevara begins with a review of the art movement of the early 1970s (in which Dorrego was an active participant), which [...]

In this document, Eduardo Ospina, a Jesuit priest, humanist, aesthete and director of the art pages section of the Revista Javeriana (Bogotá), wrote a review discussing the authorship of St. Jerome, [presumed to be] painted by the German painter, [...]

In this short article by Antonio Rodríguez, the art critic shows his support for an article published in the previous issue of the journal Espacios by the artist Roberto Berdecio, in defense of “social painting.” Rodríguez believes that “ [...]

In this essay, Gustavo Buntinx analyzes emerging Peruvian art, seeing it as part of a process that began twenty or twenty-five years earlier. He speculates on “what were or claimed to be alternatives in Peruvian high art during Fernando Belaúnde [...]

In response to the question in the survey published by the Lima newspaper El Comercio as to whether “modern” painting is an improvement on “classical” painting or a step back, the various respondents agreed that different styles from [...]