Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In her essay “Apolonio: un objeto encontrado”—about the painter Luis Luna’s series El libro de Apolonio—the critic and curator Carmen María Jaramillo takes a long look at the work of this Colombian artist. Jaramillo scrutinizes the visual [...]

This document is the text that accompanies the audiovisual production Plástica [arte contemporáneo en Colombia] produced by the Colombian Ministerio de Cultura and El Vicio productions (2005). The presentation of the DVD contains a synopsis in [...]

This text is a section of the catalogue to the exhibition of photography that accompanied the Simposio de Justicia Restaurativa y Paz en Colombia held in Cali in 2005. In it, art critic and curator María Iovino introduces the work of Colombian [...]

This article, “Miguel Ángel Rojas. Rastrear el origen de una mirada indeleble” [Miguel Ángel Rojas: Tracing the Origins of an Indelible Perspective], is the product of an extensive interview with the artist identified in the title. In her [...]

The Colombian curator and art critic Miguel González reviews the work of the photographer Patricia Bonilla in minute detail. The review begins with an interesting sentence: “These days it is not unusual to find interrelationships used in ways that [...]

This essay was written by the artist Rosemberg Sandoval as the introduction to the exhibition catalogue Dibujos sobre lona, video e instalación, Rosemberg Sandoval that was organized by the Galería Casas Riegner in 2009. In his essay, Sandoval [...]

In this essay, Rodrigo Facundo introduced his art project En la punta de la lengua, which took an in-depth look at how countries (for example Colombia) use photographic images in official reports on events, and the role played by memory, both [...]

In “Una cámara registra el 9 de abril” [A Camera Documents the Ninth of April], Guillermo González describes some of the key events in the life of his father, the photojournalist Sady González, who spent several days in 1948 photographing the [...]

In this chapter of Otras Miradas = Other Glances, the critic Carmen María Jaramillo reviews the visual art produced by the Colombian artist Patricia Bravo. Jaramillo devotes part of the chapter and some of her interview to discussing the work Mata [...]

In this brief chapter, the artist and researcher Nicolás Gómez Echeverri explains how the art critic Marta Traba became a cultural icon on television in Colombia. Gómez draws on his research to describe the physical and intellectual [...]

This is the fourth chapter of En blanco y negro: Marta Traba en la televisión colombiana, 1954–1958 [In Black and White: Marta Traba on Colombian Television, 1954–1958], in which the author, the artist and researcher Nicolás Gómez Echeverri, [...]

This is the record of the interview granted by the artist and researcher Rosario López Parra to UN medios (Centro de Medios de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia–Bogotá) [UN Media (Media Center at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia–Bogot [...]

This document discusses Doméstica: una mirada cotidiana [Domestic: A Quotidian Perspective], the name of the latest edition of Nuevos Nombres [New Names], the exhibition of works by young artists that was presented at the Luis Ángel Arango Library [...]

Included in the art history research paper La experimentación en el arte colombiano del siglo XX, written by María Teresa Guerrero and Ivonne Pini, is a chapter entitled “El arte colombiano busca el concepto”. This section refers to the visual [...]

“Los comienzos de la experimentación” is the third chapter of the research paper La experimentación en el arte colombiano del siglo XX, written in 1991 by the art historians María Teresa Guerrero and Ivonne Pini. This fragment presents the [...]

The critic and art historian Álvaro Medina presents an overview and analysis of Colombian sculpture of the 1930s. This is the third chapter of his book El arte colombiano de los años veinte y treinta, which as suggested by its title, provides an [...]

Here Fernando Escobar develops the proposal for his art project De memoria. Nueva fauna y flora. Escobar concretely renders visible the conceptual sphere from which he derives his “participative, collective” research, as he categorizes it, [...]

In 1954, journalist Gloria Valencia de Castaño interviewed sculptor Hena Rodríguez on HJCK, a Bogotá radio station with a cultural orientation. This text is a transcription of a simple conversation in which the artist describes her art education, [...]

This document is the closing chapter of the manuscript “Sujeto es predicado,” Sylvia Juliana Suárez’s master’s thesis in art history. In it, she provides an overview and assessment of José Hernán Aguilar’s work in criticism produced in [...]

Published in the catalogue to the exhibition commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Primer Salón de Arte Moderno, this text by Sylvia Juliana Suárez presents the idea, process and results of a curatorial and editorial project formulated by [...]

This text is the introduction to the master’s thesis “Sujeto es Predicado” by Sylvia Juliana Suárez, defended before the History and Theory of Art and Architecture Department of the Universidad Nacional of Colombia. It consists of a study of [...]

“Fotografía y sociedad” [Photography and Society], is the title of the first chapter of the book by the same name by the Colombian researcher and photographer Edward Goyeneche Gómez. The text includes a well-reasoned [...]

The critic, José Hernán Aguilar, presents Alicia Barney as one of the Colombian artists who developed visual work that brought various kinds of ideas into play in the 1980s. The themes she portrayed included personal, regional, political, national [...]

“Obregón” is the title of the interview included by the arts journalist, Fausto Panesso, in his book, Los intocables [The Untouchables] (1975), which gathers the conversations he had with five of the artists who represented milestones in [...]

This text is in the exhibition catalog presented by the Colombian artist and photographer, María Elvira Escallón, with her project, Nuevas floras [New Flora] (2003). This work was awarded the III Premio Luis Caballero [Third Luis Caballero Prize] [...]

In the article “I Bienal de Bogotá ¿Corriente de aire fresco?” [1st Bogotá Biennial: A Breath of Fresh Air?] the historian and art critic Germán Rubiano discusses the exhibition presented at the Museo de Arte Moderno [Museum of Modern Art] in [...]

“I Bienal de Arte de Bogotá” [1st Bogotá Art Biennial], by the Colombian critic and curator Miguel González, is a newspaper article about the event that took place at the Museo de Arte Moderno [Museum of Modern Art] in Bogotá in 1988. Gonzá [...]

The critic and curator Eduardo Serrano writes the opening essay in the catalogue for the Iª Bienal de Arte de Bogotá [1st Bogotá Art Biennial]. He evokes the commemoration of the 450th anniversary of the founding of the city of Bogotá to [...]

This text by Colombian artist and curator Miguel Rojas Sotelo is the introduction to the book Proyecto Pentágono, investigaciones sobre arte moderno en Colombia (2000). In it, Rojas Sotelo provides a reflection on curatorial practice and its [...]

“Antes de que el mundo fuera” [Before the World Existed] is the essay that María Iovino wrote for the book LUIS ROLDÁN (Segmento I) published in 2007, that presented a retrospective of the artist’s work, which has always been concerned with [...]

As the title suggests, this is a record of the conversation between the Colombian historian Gonzalo Sánchez and the artist María Elvira Escallón (who is also Colombian) that was published in the magazine Análisis Político [Political Analysis] in [...]

The catalogue for the exhibition, Otras miradas = Other Glances (2004) includes the historian Carmen María Jaramillo’s interview of María Elvira Escallón, which focused on the latter’s series Desde adentro [From Within] (2003) that was [...]

This document includes the introductory chapter to the book Cuerpo gramatical: cuerpo, arte y violencia [Grammatical Body: Body, Art, and Violence], in which the Colombian artist José Alejandro Restrepo considers the (human) “body” as an area [...]

“Anexo 1 – Entrevista con José Alejandro Restrepo” is the third and final part of the book Cruces by Colombian art critic Natalia Gutiérrez. The book, published in 2000, was the result of her master’s thesis in history and theory of art and [...]

This text by Eduardo Serrano is the introduction to the book Historia de la fotografía en Colombia (1840-1950). In it, Serrano explains the importance of the publication of this book for the fields of art and history insofar as it recovers the [...]

In this article, Miguel González, director of the Museo de Arte Moderno of Cali (La Tertulia) at the time, discusses what he deems the most important features of the XXXIII Salón Nacional de Artistas in Colombia (1990). González starts off by [...]

In this text, researcher María Iovino reflects on the place of performance in Colombian art. She begins with a discussion of María Teresa Hincapié’s work Una cosa es una cosa [A Thing Is a Thing], a performance that was awarded first prize at [...]

Historian and art critic Germán Rubiano provides an overview of the XXXIII Salón Nacional de Artistas held in Bogotá in 1990. In his presentation of the event, he emphasizes the work of the Instituto Colombiano de Cultura (Colcultura), the [...]

This article by journalist Clara Isabel Rojas de Lora presents the exhibition Arte de los años 80 [Art of the ‘80s]. Specifically, the article reflects on the nature of the art object and the role it plays in the exhibition, which was held at the [...]

In her column in the newpaper El Tiempo, Carolina Ponce de León presents her view of the XXXI Salón Nacional de Artistas. She addresses specifically the event’s organization and the intention, which she supports, to hold regional versions, which [...]

In this text, Colombian art critic José Hernán Aguilar provides a critique of photography in Colombia in the 1980s, discussing specifically the proposals of avant-garde photographers such as Becky Mayer, Beatriz Jaramillo, Jorge Ortiz, and Adolfo [...]

In the book Volverse aire [Become Air], published in 2003, María Iovino describes and analyzes Óscar Muñoz’s work from his early stages as a draftsman to the works produced the year the book was published in Bogotá. Special attention is paid to [...]

The article “Génesis de una idea” [Genesis of an Idea] was published in La Re-vista in the early 1980s. In it, artist Álvaro Barrios explains his interest in French artist Marcel Duchamp, stating that it was through the study of Duchamp’s art [...]

This is the second part of the article “Primeras etapas de la abstracción en Colombia II” [First Stages of Abstraction in Colombia II] that critic María Elvira Iriarte published in issue 23 of the Revista Arte en Colombia. In this text, she [...]

This is the first part of an article published by critic María Elvira Iriarte in 1984 in which she reconstructs the period during which abstract art came to play a central role in the visual arts in Colombia. In a chronological overview, Iriarte [...]

Entitled “En la historia” [In History], this introduction to Después del límite [Beyond the Limit] summarizes critic and researcher María Iovino’s thinking on drawing and painting. Iovino asserts that Paul Cézanne was one of the artists [...]

In this text, Beatriz González recounts the history of the Salón Nacional, including the years during which it was not held (starting in 1980) and the reasons why. She also discusses the two retrospectives of the event: the first, which was held at [...]

Published in Re-vista, this article by José Hernán Aguilar reviews the editions of the Salón Nacional de Artes Visuales (XXVIII) and the Salón Atenas (VI) that took place at the end of 1980. In a text that is more analytical than comparative, [...]

This text, which compiles interviews and conversations that took place between art critic and researcher María Iovino and photographer Fernell Franco between 2001 and 2004, is the introduction to the catalogue, Otro Documento. The catalogue was part [...]

Critic and art researcher María Iovino presents the positions and recent reflections of artist José Alejandro Restrepo in an interview conducted in 2007 on the occasion of his exhibition Contratextos. The conversation addresses some of the artist [...]