Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this essay, the well-known Argentinean critic Jorge Romero Brest attempts to assess national problems as they were understood by the most famous Brazilian artists, touching on a raw nerve concerning the differences between the art produced in [...]

As President of the Artistic Solidarity Committee with Chile, Mário Pedrosa addresses then President Salvador Allende Gossens during the reception ceremony for the works that would make up the collection of the Museo de la Solidaridad in Santiago. [...]

In this essay, Nelson Aguilar expresses his conviction that the question of “origin” has become a crucial issue for Latin American nations. The organization of an actual art exhibition—as in the 2003 Bienal do Mercosul in Porto Alegre, for [...]

This essay by the Uruguayan architect and researcher Gabriel Peluffo Linari seeks to explain how aesthetic spaces (understood as symbolic construction zones) and political power spaces are connected in Latin American societies. The author sees a need [...]

This article considers the work produced by the Lithuanian-born painter Lasar Segall as it explores the question of how “Africanism” became part of the local identity in Latin America following the emergence of modernism. Jorge Schwartz [...]

Through comparative analysis, Silviano Santiago examines the “place” of literary discourse in Latin America. He describes a process of “acculturation” that began in the colonial era and has left the trace of “defamiliarization.” [...]

This text by British critic Guy Brett analyzes Latin American art movements of the fifties and sixties, specifically Kinetic art, Op art, and Concretism. Brett argues that those movements formulated a radical change on the level of theory and of [...]

Pedrosa offers a proposal for future art biennials in Latin America, affirming that the continent’s unity is manifest through the misery of its peoples, in the mixture of cultures, and in oppression. In light of the dynamism of contemporary times, [...]