Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this leaflet Nelbia Romero expresses her goal of recognizing the identity and ethnicity of the indigenous race that once lived on the land that is now Uruguay. That race was, in fact, exterminated during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. [...]

In this letter, David Alfaro Siqueiros tells Blanca Luz Brum that the Troubadour—the ship on which he sailed from Buenos Aires in December 1933—had arrived in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. Siqueiros talks about the book he wrote on the trip [...]

This letter from the Asociación Estímulo de Bellas Artes (AEBA) in Argentina to the Federación de Estudiantes Plásticos del Uruguay (FEPU) invited the Uruguayan students to attend the opening of the exhibition Arte argentino del pasado y del [...]

This essay is on the letter from Antonio Berni (Buenos Aires) to Leonilda González (president of the Club de Grabado de Montevideo [Engravers Club of Montevideo], CGM) on occasion of the twenty-year anniversary of the CGM and on having requested [...]

This document is a letter from Leonilda González, former secretary general of the Club de Grabado de Montevideo (CGM), to Óscar Ferrando, who took charge of the institution when González left the country in exile. The letter is a confidential [...]

While stating his unflinching loyalty to the communist cause, David Alfaro Siqueiros also provides some important autobiographical information in this letter to the Uruguayan Communist Party Central Committee. He talks about being under house arrest [...]

There are basically three sections in the catalogue for the Primer Salón Independiente de Artes Plásticas: (1) Statement of principles; (2) List of participating artists; and (3) The text of the tribute to the painter Milo Beretta, mentor to young [...]

This essay is on the work of Victor Varsarely that in 1958 was exhibited for the first time in Montevideo, giving rise to glowing journalistic commentaries. A commentary was also written on the TTG (Taller Torres García [Torres Garcia Workshop]) [...]

After spending four years in prison in Mexico for an obscure “crime of social dissolution,” Siqueiros was released in July 1964. He then wrote this letter to all the friends in various parts of the world who had demanded his freedom. In [...]

This interview with Uruguayan artist Jorge Damiani addresses the Primer Encuentro de Artistas Plásticos del Cono Sur held in Santiago, Chile. As the Uruguayan delegate, Damiani took part in debates on art in Latin America, specifically in relation [...]

In this text, Alicia Haber analyzes how a large and complex installation by Nelbia Romero shows the toponymic-linguistic legacy of Guarani culture in a country as European as Uruguay. From the mid-eighties to the mid-nineties, there was a social [...]

This is the public statement made by Uruguayan artists who rejected the invitation to submit their works to the Primer Salón Nacional de Bellas Artes and called for an exhibition that had nothing to do with the government. Their main argument was [...]

In this text, Uruguayan artist Luis Camnitzer—resident of New York since 1964 who was a correspondent from there for the Montevideo-based weekly Marcha—discusses the rising importance of “Latin American” art in New York art galleries and in [...]

In this essay, Joaquín Torres García attempts to link this sociopolitical doctrine with that of modern art after presenting a succinct historical review starting from “primitive communism” up through the Marxist doctrine. He does so by [...]

The Boletín de TESEO is the newsletter published by the AAEU (Agrupación de Artistas y Escritores Uruguayos), the association of Uruguayan artists and writers whose memorandum of association appears in this Boletín Nº 1, Year 1, August 25, 1923. [...]

In this lecture, Joaquín Torres García (JTG) asserts that groups of artists that are not joined by theoretical ideas or stand behind a distinct ethical platform are pointless. He therefore repudiates the schools and groups in Uruguay, supporting [...]

In this article, a New York art critic whose signature is the initials H. R. discusses the first version of Uruguayan artist Luis Camnitzer’s work Leftovers on exhibition in a new gallery in Manhattan. The work consists of a neat arrangement of [...]

In this article, Guido Castillo does not launch an all-out attack on Cándido Portinari because he recognizes the Brazilian artist’s “human values” and his compassion for the suffering endured by some people in the world. But [...]

The communiqué signed by Carlos Fossatti (an active member of the Club de Grabado de Montevideo) outlines several suggestions for arriving at a consensus as regards the objectives of the group’s artistic activities, which he describes as being [...]

In his famous “Manifiesto 1,” Joaquín Torres García repudiates the article published in the Confederación de Trabajadores Intelectuales del Uruguay’s journal Movimiento. Torres García’s text, in turn, occasioned “Contestando a Torres [...]

His extensive preaching in favor of spiritual rectitude led Joaquin Torres García to reject the “superfluous” in art and keep the fundamental elements that make up the concept and structure of Constructivist art. The resulting logic of this [...]

In this opinion piece, Ana Tiscornia addresses the second Bienal de La Habana. Rather than describe specific works or artists, she assesses the objective of the event in relation to the political framework of the eighties. The notion of the “Third [...]

In this essay, Joaquín Torres García speaks about “Lesson 50,” which was later published in his book Universalismo Constructivo (1944). In it there are some comments referencing selected paragraphs from another conference under the same title [...]

This article was written around the time Joaquín Torres García was giving his lecture on “Mística de la Pintura” and reviewing the main points supporting his conception of “art,” that is, immanentism [God or an abstract mind or spirit [...]

Issued on October 2, 1936, during the dictatorship of Gabriel Terra (1933–38), this decree created the Uruguayan Comisión Nacional de Bellas Artes, which was charged with, among other things, organizing the Salones Nacionales de Bellas Artes, the [...]

Joaquín Torres García argues in defense of geometric thought, which in his opinion should dominate our art and our lives,” by leaning to a great extent on the pre-Hispanic tradition of America. He does this to counter language regarding the [...]

While art critic Jorge Romero Brest’s influence was international in scope, it was particularly great in Latin America and the Río de la Plata region. His regional prestige as a lecturer was also considerable and, in 1940, he was invited to give a [...]

In response to the article published in the newspaper El Día by Carlos Herrera Mac-Lean (October 13, 1944), Joaquín Torres García published in the weekly magazine Marcha a particularly harsh response, especially, if one considered that the emitted [...]

José María Podestá, the writer, art critic, and movie buff, reviews the artists who were part of the Primer Salón Independiente de Artes Plásticas that took place in August 1937 at the Ateneo de Montevideo. This event was, in fact, represented [...]

In this article, the author speculates on the criteria adopted for judging artistic competitions and the difficulties encountered in having to provide critical judgement on the diverse and “contradictory” work presented by Joaquín Torres García [...]

The exhibition of works by Pedro Figari—a tribute to the artist held in Montevideo in 1945, seven years after he died—was curated by the architect Carlos Herrera Mac Lean and was well-attended by the public and by members of the [...]

This leaflet presents the work done in Madrid in 1933 by Joaquín Torres García and the Grupo de Arte Constructivo during JTG’s visit to Spain prior to returning to Uruguay for good. Three similar documents are known to exist, each one containing [...]

This leaflet presents the work done in Madrid in 1933 by Joaquín Torres García and the Grupo de Arte Constructivo during JTG’s visit to Spain prior to returning to Uruguay for good. Three similar documents are known to exist, each one containing [...]

This leaflet presents the work done in Madrid in 1933 by Joaquín Torres García and the Grupo de Arte Constructivo during JTG’s visit to Spain prior to returning to Uruguay for good. Three similar documents are known to exist, each one containing [...]

This article advocates “social art” in Uruguay in the framework of the ideological battle between capitalist society and the Soviet Communist regime. The author clearly supports the latter position when he asserts that not even the members of the [...]

This essay by Guido Castillo, a student of Joaquin Torres Garcia, and partner in ideology, was written for the magazine ASIR on the exhibition on the works by Joaquín Torres García organized in Montevideo in 1951, two years after his death. The [...]

“The liberation of the artist” is the title of one of Joaquín Torres García’s “lessons.” In it, he discusses the geometric foundations of Constructivist Art and calls for “setting oneself free” from what has been learned about the “ [...]

After a number of years of inactivity, the Comisión Nacional de Bellas Artes (CNBA) was restructured in 1967. While the commission was largely supportive of the Uruguayan government, it included a wide range of representatives of the artistic and [...]

The magazine Mensaje, dedicated to the dissemination of Brazilian culture in Uruguay, devoted its twenty-fourth publication in December of 1948, to the analysis of the work of Candido Portinari, at a time when the Brazilian artist was at the end of [...]

This article aligns itself among the critiques in 1947 on the work by the artist Cândido Portinari during his stay in Uruguay. They were carried out mainly by the TTA [Taller Torres García]. Alfonso Domínguez was opposed to the deformations and [...]

In this text, Joaquín Torres García (JTG) briefly clarifies his statement that “the abstract” is the same as “the concrete.” On the basis of his Platonic notion that the material object and its “Idea” as transcendental essence [...]

The same year Joaquín Torres García meets Rafael Barradas in Barcelona, he sends to Montevideo an article praising the young Uruguayan who had just started living in Spain. He valued his work from the perspective of new visual artistic conceptions [...]

This is a typewritten copy of the lecture given by David Alfaro Siqueiros at the John Reed Club in Hollywood on September 2, 1932. Siqueiros talks about the creation of what he called the Los Angeles “Mural Painters’ Block” [BPM: Bloque de [...]

In this second manifesto, Joaquín Torres García attempts to define the limits of constructivism’s philosophical field in relation to how much society does or does not heed it. He establishes “superior” and “inferior” categories of the [...]

Towards the end of 1944, the first core group of artistic engravers was created publishing its manifesto on the eve of the inauguration of the Primer Salón de Grabadores del Uruguay [The Fist Hall of Engravers of Montevideo on November 6th of that [...]

This manifesto formed part of the exhibition catalogue of the exhibition by the Primer Salón del Movimiento Libre de Artistas Plásticos of Montevideo. It also included the list of the participants and the written bylaws. This manifesto was claimed [...]

In this text and newly arriving to his native country, Joaquín Torres García responds to the ostensive critique made by N.B. in the Issue No. 7, June−July 1934 publication of the magazine Movimiento.  Since number 7 of the magazine Movimiento ( [...]

Following harsh criticism of positivism (and eclecticism) of the intellectual environment of Montevideo, Joaquín Torres García presented his ideas about metaphysics, ethics, and religiosity in art. This text makes several important points about the [...]

This document is an interview with Peruvian critic and theorist Juan Acha, who lived in Mexico. It sheds light on the uncertainties and concerns facing “art in Latin America” from the perspective of Uruguay and the countries of the Southern Cone [...]

Víctor Bacchetta was part of the board of directors of the magazine CLINAMEN up through its third publication along with Manuel Claps, Ángel Rama and Ida Vitale. The second issue of the magazine published a brief notification on the appearance of [...]