Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

Art critic Rodrigo Naves bases his analysis of Sérgio Sister’s work on the lessons that Italian painter Giorgio Morandi has to offer contemporary art. Naves argues that it is necessary to look back to seemingly outdated aesthetic [...]

Journalist Leonor Amarante wrote this article on the artistic career of Dudi Maia Rosa on the occasion of a group show in Germany, the first one in which the artist participated (1988), at the age of forty. Amarante places emphasis on the “balance [...]

In this essay about Cassio Michalany’s painting, the critic Rodrigo Naves initially confines his remarks to the “template” that the artist has used over the course of two decades to structure his paintings with interrelated bands of color. In [...]

This manifesto is a call for (cultural) independence and was written from “a high Amazonian plateau,” in the state of Pará (where the author hailed from). The proclamation uses typical expressions and references the myths, customs, and [...]

In this text, art critic Lisette Lagnado develops the concept “instauração” formulated by Tunga as a means to go beyond terms such as “instalação” and/or “performance,” which he deemed inapplicable. In Lagnado’s view, the word “ [...]

This text by art critic Alberto Tassinari provides an overview of Laura Vinci’s art, from her early paintings produced in the late eighties to her participation, in 1997, in the Projeto Arte/Cidade—that is, a decade of work. Tassinari sees Vinci [...]

Interview with artist Nelson Felix conducted by art critic Rodrigo Naves and three artists: Lygia Pape, José Resende and Nuno Ramos (São Paulo, May 24, 1997). Felix comments on his education as an architect; his love of music; his first drawings, [...]

In this text, literary critic Flora Süssekind discusses the work of sculptor Ângelo Venosa from the time of his first solo show (1985) to his recent productions (1990). She points out the recurrence in his art of carcasses, vertebrae, teeth, skulls [...]

In this text, art critic Alberto Tassinari analyzes works by José Resende exhibited at the Gabinete de Arte Raquel Arnaud in São Paulo in March 1983. In Tassinari’s view, these sculptures “formulate the problem of the past”; they partake of [...]

Fernando Lemos discusses the “vignettes”—ornamental motifs derived from “classic styles” (Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, etc.)—in the decorations painted on some of the trucks he sees driving around the city of São Paulo. In this brief [...]

The art critic José Geraldo Vieira reviews the history of Surrealism and mentions Hieronymus Bosch, Albrecht Dürer, and William Hogarth, among others. In the critic’s opinion, these artists created a “cosmogony of the absurd” centuries ahead [...]

In this text, writer and film critic Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes analyzes the underdeveloped state of Brazilian film, the sociopolitical and economic reasons for it, and what it implies on a cultural level. In Salles Gomes’s view, this problem is [...]

In this text, art critic Paulo Herkenhoff identifies and describes some of the characteristics of drawing as an autonomous form of expression in contemporary art from South America. He formulates ten categories in relation to the production in the [...]

In this report, the writer and journalist Salim Miguel describes (almost ten years after the fact) the movement formed by young artists and intellectuals in the state of Santa Catarina who started the magazine Sul in the late 1940s. The publication [...]

This article by the art critic Mário Baratta is about the Exposição Cearense dos Pintores: Antonio Bandeira, Inimá, Raimundo Feitosa, Jean-Pierre Chabloz e Francisco da Silva, the exhibition presented at the Askanasy gallery in Rio de Janeiro in [...]

In 1988 the art critic Mário Baratta described the origins and performance of the group of artists and writers who produced Clã [Clan] magazine and founded the SCAP (Sociedade Cearense de Artes Plásticas) in the mid-1940s in the state of Ceará. [...]

Art critic Lorenzo Mammì gives his reading of the exhibition of the work of sculptor José Resende, which was held at the Galeria Subdistrito in São Paulo (1988). Here, he explains the coherence of the artist’s method in terms of elements of [...]

Roberto Pontual wrote this text for the catalogue to the show of work by Marcos Coelho Benjamim held in the context of the XX São Paulo Biennial (October 14 to December 10, 1989). According to the critic, the materials and objects in the works on [...]

This essay is an article written by the Brazilian art critic Mário Baratta on his visit to the interior of the state of Ceará in 1951 with artist Antonio Bandeira. The article analyzes Bandeira’s work before and after he first resided in Paris [...]

Nelson Brissac Peixoto’s introduction to the book Intervenções Urbanas, which he coordinated, presents the Arte/Cidade project, taking stock of the first three editions of the event held in São Paulo in 1994, 1995, and 1997. On the basis of a [...]

In 1979 the writer and actor Luiz Sérgio Raghy agreed to be interviewed by the alternative newspaper Oras, Pombas! about the Brazilian group Viajou Sem Passaporte. Raghy talks about the origins of the group and its earliest theatrical productions, [...]

In this article the art critic Stella Teixeira de Barros outlines the history of the various visual arts associations that were founded in the city of São Paulo between the Brazilian modernist period and the 1980s. Teixeira de Barros uses the term [...]

This 1982 article draws attention to an innovative cultural process⸺the first one since the imposition of the military dictatorship (1964–85) that drove the writer into exile and would last for another three years⸺and was created through an [...]

This article by the art critic Stella Teixeira de Barros provides a general overview of Brazilian urban art presentations and performances since the 1960s. It also classifies the production of “street art” in three basic categories: 1. Anonymous [...]

This document outlines the development of the approach of the art group 3NÓS3 [a pun: both “Three Knots” and “We Three”] made up of Hudinilson Jr., Mário Ramiro, and Rafael França, that was in existence between 1979 and 1981. The writers [...]

Looking through the prism of her philosophical education, Otília Arantes explores the different approaches taken as a result of the Brazilian political situation⸺following the military coup d’etat that installed an iron-fisted [...]

In this article the writer and art critic Walmir Ayala reports on a “festive communication event” created by artists from Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo who organized “an evening for the exposure and sale” of flags at the General Osório [...]

The art critic Frederico Morais begins this article by drawing the reader’s attention to the work of “avant-garde artists” in São Paulo (“active, agitated, and/or agitators”) in the late 1960s. Among other things, he mentions the “ [...]

The artist Rubens Gerchman discusses Pare, the exhibition he jointly presented with Roberto Magalhães, Antonio Dias, Carlos Vergara, and Pedro Escosteguy at the G-4 gallery in Rio de Janeiro in April 1966. Gerchman explains that the exhibition [...]

This essay on the subject of 111 the work by Nuno Ramos is divided into three parts. The art critic Alberto Tassinari begins by describing the sociopolitical, cultural, and ideological conditions in Brazil on October 2, 1992, when military police put [...]

In this text, Brazilian artist Cildo Meireles recalls the late sixties when he and other artists “first came into contact with what was truly of interest,” mainly acting directly on real “situations” rather than creating representations of [...]

This is a description of Sermão da Montanha: Fiat Lux, the work by Cildo Meireles that consists of a pile of 160 thousand match boxes. The exhibition was installed at the Centro Cultural Cândido Mendes, in Rio de Janeiro, on April 25, 1979. There [...]

The fall of the Berlin Wall, the spread of social democracy and liberalism as political, economic, and ideological models, the “westernizing” of Asia, and other facets of the process of globalization are mentioned here, among the many changes [...]

The artist Antonio Manuel describes two works that were conceived for an exhibition at the MAM-RJ (Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro) in 1973, an event that the museum canceled on the eve of its opening in an attempt to avoid “difficult [...]

In the middle of 1968—a critical year in the 20th century—Lygia Clark wrote this brief essay on the position that the artist should pursue in society; in the wake of the student protests that began in Paris in May of that year, demands [...]

The author identifies the different phases in the evolution of Candido Portinari’s work; he establishes them between the artist of the 1930s, who condemns social injustice in Brazil—in works such as Café and also in representations of migrant [...]

This interview with Hélio Oiticica was conducted by the anthropologist Carlos Alberto Pereira and the literary critic Heloísa Buarque de Hollanda in Rio de Janeiro on October 15, 1979. Here the artist makes a clear distinction between political [...]

In this article, the art critic Sheila Leirner avoids mentioning any particular case while discussing the “discouragement” caused by the news of the imprisonment of an artist accused of the crime of “free expression.” She muses on the role of [...]

This essay analyzes images of Brazil created by song writers who compose in the Tropicália style, expressing aspects of the country’s cultural past from a modern perspective. Like surrealist works—as in the case of the “Jeu du cadavre exquis [...]

This essay examines the “proletarian” ambiguities to be found in questions of aesthetics and, more precisely, the risk involved in the production of arbitrary dogmatic statements concerning the connection between art and politics. The author [...]

This article contains a survey carried out on the occasion of the exhibition Depoimento de uma geração [Statement of a Generation] curated by critic Frederico Morais. The show, which took place at the Galeria de Arte Banerj in 1986, intended to [...]

This article is about the painter from Minas Gerais, Alberto da Veiga Guignard’s early years as an art professor in the city of Belo Horizonte. He taught a free course on painting and drawing, originally at the Parque Municipal and later at the [...]

In this lecture, Luis Martins discusses various aspects of modern Brazilian painting from the 1920s through the mid-1930s. He describes Brazil as a “country of reflections” that passively echoes the challenges faced by the visual arts in the rest [...]

Author Mário Pedrosa comments on the open letter of painter Emiliano Di Cavalcanti to the president of the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, Francisco “Ciccillo” Matarazzo, after the former withdrew from his trip to Italy to represent Brazil at [...]

This article describes Tropicalism as an enigmatic and ambiguous movement. It emerged from a fusion of a number of cultural expressions and forms in the wake of the rivalry that pitted the Jovem Guarda (who were fans of British Yeah-Yeah-Yeah and [...]

This text argues that Iberê Camargo’s prints are fundamental to his art and to understanding the specificity of his technique. The artist’s energetic experimentation with variations in materiality is evident in his prints. The text underscores [...]

In this review, Iberê Camargo affirms that his painting never ceased to be “figurative,” and that it was governed by reality (either of movement or of gesture). Regarding engraving, the artist underscores the resistance that the materials used [...]

This article by Décio Bar is an interview with singer-songwriter Caetano Veloso; it includes a biography, as well as reflections on the turn that Brazilian culture took in the 1950s and 1960s. This was the peak of “the extremely optimistic [...]

The artist Iberê Camargo is interviewed a trois by the art critic Fernando Cocchiarale and the artist Anna Bella Geiger. In response to their questions, Camargo reviews his art career and discusses what was going on in Brazil during the 1950s and [...]

This essay sets out to analyze the evolution of Brazilian intellectual thought from the 1930s to the mid-1970s in order to identify the distinguishing traits of the transition from an aristocratic view of culture (the target of Mário de Andrade’s [...]