Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

On November 8, 1950, Rufino Tamayo opened an exhibition at the Galerie Beaux-Arts in Paris. This anonymous short article, published in Mexico one week later, says that a “modest and educated” Mexican painter had stirred up an “art storm.” [...]

To Fernando Gamboa, the contemporary Mexican painters are not imitators of ancient art; rather their intention is to recreate the past in modern terms. In the Mexican past, they found formal inspiration for creating their own language that resulted [...]

This document reports that a Soviet spy gained entry [into Mexico] and that this person came to work with the organizers of the Congreso de la Paz [Peace Conference]. The mural Pesadilla de guerra y sueño de paz [The Nightmare of War and the Dream [...]

This article records important comments made by the Frente Nacional de Artes Plásticas (FNAP) [National Front for the Visual Arts] about Arte mexicano desde el precolombino hasta nuestros días [Mexican Art from the Pre-Columbian Era Until the [...]

Margarita Nelken believed that the exhibition of Mexican art presented in Paris, Stockholm and London committed great injustices. One of these was its failure to show any work done by young Mexican artists. By way of example, she mentioned the [...]

In this article, art critic Jorge Juan Crespo de la Serna wrote about mural painting and its importance in the evolution of Mexican art. He believed the murals should be intimately connected to the life of the country that produces them given their [...]

Here, Fernando Gamboa made some interesting statements about the worldwide significance of Mexican art. Arte Mexicano en París [Mexican Art in Paris], an exhibition of modern and ancient art presented in Paris in 1952, will offer the world Mexico’ [...]

When no agreement could be reached to present the exhibition of Mexican art at the Petit-Palais in Paris, Fernando Gamboa was forced to find an alternative space. In this letter to Carlos Chávez, Gamboa informs him of the results of attempts to hold [...]

Alejandro Núñez Alonso addresses the significant impact of Mexican art abroad. Both European critics and the public had been pleased with this great exhibition—Arte Mexicano en Paris [Mexican Art in Paris], 1952—with a full panorama of Mexican [...]

Because of Mexico’s participation in the XXV Venice Biennale, the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (INBA) received invitations from other European countries to mount an exhibition of Mexican art in 1950. Fernando Gamboa, INBA’s deputy director [...]

This document is Carlos Chávez’s response to the letter that Rufino Tamayo had written to Fernando Gamboa on August 20, 1951. In it, Tamayo asks to know the government’s point of view on the Mexican Art Exhibition that would take place in Europe [...]

To the critic Antonio Rodríguez, the decadence of Mexican painting was based on an abandoning of ideological stances and a distancing from the social problems of humanity. The blame could mainly be laid at the door of the abstract painters who had [...]

The art critic José Gómez Sicre, chief of the Pan-American Union Visual Arts Unit (Washington, D.C.), presented a lecture on the painter Rufino Tamayo, whom he hailed as the artist to revive Mexican painting. Gómez Sicre’s belief that Mexican [...]

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 [...]

Jorge González Camarena did not believe that Mexican painting was in decline as Rufino Tamayo had stated, rather it was in a searching period. Nevertheless, it should not lose sight of its local and national character, which should be examined and [...]

Fernando Gamboa, assistant director of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, was in charge of organizing the Mexican pavilion for the Venice Biennial. Working with the Biennial director (the well-known composer Carlos Chávez), Gamboa carried out [...]

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], [...]

Rufino Tamayo wrote this letter to the demagogue painters, reminding them that two years earlier he had refused to take part in the Hispanic-American Biennial, and had declared himself to be openly anti-Franco. When he was invited to take part in the [...]

José Clemente Orozco affirmed that he did not oppose any pictorial innovation because he believed that every new contribution should be well received. Nevertheless, scientific research was important for obtaining better results. Orozco did not agree [...]

Peruvian painter Joel Marroquín believed that Mexican mural painting was a movement of extreme relevance on the international aesthetic arena. Its artists were able to avail themselves of the thousand year old technique of the Mayans and yet give it [...]

Raúl Anguiano believes that mechanical procedures can be used to produce art more quickly and easily, but that the value of the results does not stem from the use of these procedures. Like Diego Rivera, Anguiano believed that some of Siqueiros’ [...]

Diego Rivera responds to Siqueiros in a confrontational tone, because he believed Siqueiros had in reality accomplished nothing new. Duco materials had already been used before, and the Futurists had already worked with movement effects, the [...]

Carlos Mérida was one of the first artists to reply to Antonio Rodríguez’s questionnaire. The Guatemalan painter, a naturalized citizen of Mexico, agreed with David Alfaro Siqueiros regarding the use of new materials. Nevertheless, he doubted [...]

Antonio Rodríguez portrayed painter David Alfaro Siqueiros as an avant-garde artist because of his approach to using new pictorial materials. In this interview, Siqueiros declared that contemporary painters remained “impassive before the progress [...]

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 [...]

In an interview with Antonio Rodríguez, the painter José Chávez Morado expressed his approval of the Comisión Nacional de Pintura Mural [National Commission for Mural Painting] on the grounds that a standard must be established for decorating [...]

The Comisión Nacional de Pintura Mural [National Commission for Mural Painting], which consisted of Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, was founded in late August 1947. The Commission’s goal was to stimulate and [...]