Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

Alicia Haber was the curator of the 1991 exhibition Charrúas y montes criollos, presenting the contemporary work of Uruguayan artist Rimer Cardillo, who had been residing in New York since 1984. According to the curatorial text, the exhibition [...]

After seeing the exhibition of works by Juan Manuel Blanes at the Teatro Solís in Montevideo (1941), Joaquín Torres-García noted that there were pictorial qualities in the artist’s sketches that were lost in the final [...]

This article by Sarandy Cabrera, which appeared in Removedor, the journal published by the TTG (Taller Torres-García), is an example of the magazine’s colloquial—and aggressive, “from the trenches”—discourse. This [...]

This brief article by Alberto Methol Ferré, published in 1960, provides the first indications of a specific change in the painter Pedro Figari’s philosophy. For decades his fame as a painter had largely obscured his philosophical thinking. In this [...]

In this essay, Joaquín Torres García explains his concept of the “dehumanization” of art in terms of its mechanisms and its paradoxical spiritualism at the same time in this “lesson.” In this formula, dehumanization meant “removing the [...]

In his 500ª Conferencia (the five hundredth lecture given in the six years since he returned to Montevideo in 1934), Joaquín Torres García (JTG) presents what he calls “a new theory.” This is his final attempt to adapt his universalist model [...]

Upholding the need to theorize his practice—Joaquín Torres García once again explains the basis of his Constructivist art; in his view, all artists should engage in permanent reflection. This text is primarily aimed at pointing out the confusion [...]

This “lesson” given by Joaquín Torres García (JTG) is a manifesto of sorts. It is the first in which the artist formulates the idea of “inverting the map” of South America and asserts the existence of a local cultural identity that should [...]

By means of an overview of modern art and its development, Joaquín Torres García lays out his Constructivist theory as the culmination (or convergence) of various strains of Western art. In his view, the moral value of the artist’s position lies [...]

This essay is about a conference that was presented by Joaquín Torres García a few months after arriving in Montevideo in April 1934. In it, Torres García seeks to characterize the Uruguayan artistic environment while also proposing a path forward [...]

This essay is on another new text about American art by Joaquín Torres García that addresses the distance from Europe after a harsh judgment about the “delay” in aesthetic concepts in Uruguay in which he tries to explain his concept of “ [...]

This [document] is on the thesis of art in America a developed by Joaquín Torres García during 1938 and 1939, when he wrote his Metafísica de la Prehistoria Indoamericana. The book aimed to associate pre-Hispanic tradition with what he called the [...]

This document is a confidential report, perhaps to be sent to the KGB, on the three Uruguayan artists selected to participate in the 1961 São Paulo Biennial. The text addresses other aspects of the art scene in Uruguay as well, among them the group [...]

Written at a moment of intense sociopolitical conflict in Uruguay, this article explains the grounds for the decision of the Unión de Artistas Plásticos Contemporáneos (UAPC) to boycott any and all government organized art events. Its author, [...]

This document is a letter sent by two Uruguayan intellectuals to David Alfaro Siqueiros, who had been held at Lecumberri jail in Mexico City since 1960; the letter was sent through the artist’s wife, Angélica Arenal. It was a message of solidarity [...]

In this letter Guillot Muñoz, the distinguished writer and journalist, tells his friend Pedro Figari about the critiques that his paintings were receiving in Montevideo at that time, and about the unconditional support for Figari there was among a [...]

In his series of four articles, José Cúneo challenges Joaquín Torres García for having submitted to the VIII Salón Nacional de Bellas Artes—where he won the Grand Prize—a painting that, in the author’s view, has nothing to do with his [...]

Other than the intimate details of the communication between Siqueiros and Brum, this letter provides extremely interesting insights into Siqueiros’s public relations in Buenos Aires, as well as his opinions and intentions concerning the local [...]

In this essay, the author, Carlos Herrera Mac Lean outlined a response to the article written by Joaquín Torres García against him, culminating this third section on the brief public controversy between both of them. The response, in a written [...]

The article was motivated by the book published by Michel Seuphor, a year before in 1949, in Paris, the spirit that integrated magazine Cercle et carré two decades prior. The book aimed to formulate a brief history on European abstract art. The [...]

In 1943, an exhibition consisting of twenty-two Argentinean artists organized by the Argentinean art critic Jorge Romero Brest and sponsored by the Comisión Nacional de Bellas Artes de la Argentina [National Commission of Fine Arts of Argentina] [...]

In 1943, an exhibition of one hundred and seven Argentinean artists, consisting of late 19th- century and early 20th-century painters and sculptors, was held in Montevideo under the auspices of the National Commission of Fine Arts of Montevideo and [...]

This essay is on the article written by the psychiatrist Isidro Mas de Ayala in reference to one of his patients, Emilio Mas, the Spanish artist who had arrived in Montevideo towards the end of the nineteenth century. In the 1920s, the artist, who [...]

On the occasion of a tribute to Mexico, Joaquín Torres García gives a talk at the Ateneo de Montevideo about the major Mexican artists. He mentions the group of artists who are commonly referred to as “Los Tres Grandes:” David Alfaro Siqueiros [...]

This document contains information on an exhibition of the Federación de Estudiantes Plásticos del Uruguay (FEPU) held in 1942. A pro-Soviet text is transcribed and a list of participants in the show appears, among them eminent local artists. The [...]

In 1933, Norberto Berdía compared David Alfaro Siqueiros’s visit to Montevideo with the return to Uruguay, in 1934, of artist Joaquín Torres García. In Berdía’s view, the two men represent diametrical positions: Torres García personifies “ [...]

“En la sociedad burguesa ganan los banqueros y pierden los artistas” (In Bourgeois Society, Bankers Win and Artists Lose) is the name of an article by Norberto Berdía on painter Joaquín Torres García. More specifically, the text discusses how [...]

Entitled “La función social del arte,” this article discusses one of the final lectures given by philosopher Carlos Vaz Ferreira. In the lecture, Vaz Ferreira describes the figure of an intellectual not committed to the social and political [...]

This article voices the intentions of the Grupo Toledo Chico and its ideological position on “national art” versus “colonialist art.” The Uruguayan vernacular is, for the group, bound to cultural independence from hegemonic metropolitan [...]

This article published in El Mate journal in 1967 supports the stance embraced by a group of artists in Uruguay who, thirty years earlier, had decided not to submit work to the Primer Salón Nacional de Artes Plásticas during the dictatorship of [...]

An exhibition and sale of works by Uruguayan artists was held in January and February 1938 at the Ateneo de Montevideo as a fundraiser to help the children of Republican Spain, which at the time was battling fascist forces in the Spanish Civil War. A [...]

The report published in 1956 by the CGM (Club de Grabado de Montevideo) provides information on the institution’s objectives. In the group’s opinion, prints can be used to reach a range of different audiences and address a broad spectrum of [...]

In March 1919, after the First World War, Dr. Pedro Figari wrote an open letter to the president of the República Oriental del Uruguay, Dr. Baltasar Brum (who held that office twice, from 1919 to 1923, and from 1931 to 1933, when he committed [...]