Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this brochure produced for the exhibition of works by prizewinners at the 1960 Prêmio Leirner de Arte Contemporânea, Gerardo Ferraz discusses how Anatol Wladyslaw’s work transitioned from the “mathematics and geometry&rdquo [...]

In this brochure produced for the exhibition of works by prizewinners at the 1958 Prêmio Leirner de Arte Contemporânea, José Geraldo Vieira describes Anatol Wladyslaw’s work as a “painting of separations.” Having [...]

This is Ferreira Gullar’s eulogy for his friend, the sculptor Franz Weissmann, whom he calls “one of the [Brazilian] inventors of the imagined universe.” The author remembers having met Weissmann in 1952 at Mário Pedrosa& [...]

In this brochure essay produced for Artistas de Campinas, the exhibition presented at the Galeria de Arte das Folhas in 1959, Waldemar Cordeiro discusses the non-figurative “trends” and “contents” he detects in the works shown [...]

In this newspaper article dated June 20, 1954, professor Walter Zanini reviews the exhibition of works by artists representing the Atelier Abstração at the MAM-SP (Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo). Despite the fact that, as a [...]

In this essay, which appeared in the brochure for an exhibition of the 1948–58 work of Samson Flexor, Luis Martins claims that the painter experienced a transitional phase in his career when he stopped producing figurative art. In fact, as the [...]

This brochure was designed in 1996 for the exhibition Desexp(l)os(ign)ição (a compound word meaning something like ignited-signs-that-do-not-explode-in-the-non-exhibition). This event was a historical celebration of the Exposiç& [...]

In this essay Luiz Antônio de Figueiredo discusses some of the parallel developments in the fields of Concrete poetry and Concrete art. In the 1950s “they both started to map out the routes of non-figurative art, which was exploring [...]

In this essay, written for the paradigmatic exhibition Projeto Construtivo Brasileiro na Arte, Júlio Katinsky discusses the relationship between the Concrete art movement in São Paulo and industrial design. He points out that, in both [...]

In this essay, written for the paradigmatic exhibition Projeto Construtivo Brasileiro na Arte, Roberto Pontual discusses the survival of the Neo-Concrete art movement that existed “officially” for “a little less than two years, from [...]

In this introductory essay, which appeared in the catalogue for the paradigmatic exhibition Projeto Construtivo Brasileiro na Arte, Aracy Amaral describes the “revelation” she experienced as she researched the period in question: “ [...]

In this essay Ronaldo Brito discusses Brazilian Constructivism as an integral part of an “organized cultural strategy” that was in effect from the 1940s to the 1960s and was closely aligned with “the country’s social and [...]

Frederico Morais uses an extremely long title to provide a précis of his essay. But it only complicates the simplified narratives of a movement—whose embrace of doctrinaire Constructivism was followed by a critical rift between Concrete [...]

Ferreira Gullar uses his newspaper column to reply to an article that appeared in the Correio da Manhã in which Waldemar Cordeiro challenged his review of an exhibition of works by Concrete artists from São Paulo at the MAM-RJ (Museu de [...]

In this essay, Ferreira Gullar critiques the exhibition of works by São Paulo Concrete artists at the MAM-RJ (Museu de Arte Moderna de Rio de Janeiro, 1957). He also critiques Waldemar Cordeiro’s introductory essay and its assertion that [...]

In this essay, Tomás Maldonado discusses modern art—and modern life—and claims that both offer an “institutionalized” kind of art education. His definition therefore includes “the education of the artist,” & [...]

In this essay, Ferreira Gullar challenges the position taken by Rio de Janeiro’s so-called neo-Concrete artists in his account of the two movements’ shared history and disagreements. In his opinion, the genesis of Brazilian Concrete art [...]

This text includes a few excerpts from the six lectures that Jorge Romero Brest gave in São Paulo in 1948. At that time, Romero Brest held an academic position at the Universidad de Montevideo and was the director of the magazine Ver y estimar [...]

In this brief essay, which was published in the brochure for the 1960 Prêmio Leirner de Arte Contemporânea, Wolfgang Pfeiffer discusses the spontaneity and imagination he sees in the work of Niobe Xandó. A self-taught painter, Xand [...]

In this brief essay, which was published in the brochure for the 1960 Prêmio Leirner de Arte Contemporânea, Wolfgang Pfeiffer writes about a drawing of a fish on the sand by Moacyr Rocha that appears at the beginning of the essay. The [...]

In this rare essay about “realist” artist Thomaz Perina, the Brazilian Concrete art theorist Waldemar Cordeiro discusses the importance of this kind of work, describing it as “an art medium that still [in the early 1960s] harbors [...]

In this brief essay, which appeared in the brochure produced for the 1960 Prêmio Leirner de Arte Contemporânea (Leirner Prize for Contemporary Art), Oswald de Andrade Filho—the son of the famous writer—describes Murillo [...]

In this poetic essay, which was included in the brochure produced for the Prêmio Leirner de Arte Contemporânea (Leirner Prize for Contemporary Art) in 1960, Décio Pignatari discusses the concept of “avant-garde” and [...]

Luiza Interlenghi, in her role as curator, interviews the artist Ubi Bava, asking him about his involvement in what came to be known as the Salão Preto e Branco (Black-and-White Salon) in Rio de Janeiro in 1954. He explains that, with so few [...]

The curator Luiza Intermenghi interviews the Brazilian artist Sérgio Camargo, asking him about his involvement in what came to be known as the Salão Preto e Branco (Black-and-White Salon) (1954) in Rio de Janeiro. Camargo explains that [...]

The curator Glória Ferreira interviews the painter and art critic Quirino Campofiorito, asking him about the circumstances that led to what came to be known as the Salão Preto e Branco (Black-and-White Salon) in 1954 in Rio de Janeiro. [...]

In this text, Ione Saldanha recalls how the third Salão Nacional de Arte Moderna, known as the Salão Preto e Branco (Black-and-White Salon), influenced both her work and Brazilian modernism more broadly. She remembers having works in [...]

In this statement, Iberê Camargo recalls how the third Salão Nacional de Arte Moderna, also known as the Salão Preto e Branco (Black-and-White Salon), was planned as a protest against the Brazilian Finance Minister Osvaldo Aranha& [...]

In his testimony the critic Ferreira Gullar describes his involvement in the third Salão Nacional de Arte Moderna, also called the Salón Blanco y Negro (Black-and-White Salon), in 1954. At that point in time he was not a professional [...]

This testimony records Décio Vieira’s recollections of taking part in the third Salão Nacional de Arte Moderna, also called the Salón Blanco y Negro (Black-and-White Salon) as a member of the Grupo Frente. Challenging & [...]

In this text, Aluísio Carvão recalls taking part in the third Salão Nacional de Arte Moderna, which was also known as the Salón Blanco y Negro (Black-and-White Salon) “mainly because of the political statement it [...]

This is the transcript of an interview—broadcast during a radio program, Clube da Crítica—in which the host, Pascoal Longo, discusses the third Salão Nacional de Arte Moderna with the Brazilian painter Djanira. Speaking as [...]

This memorandum, addressed to Antônio Balbino, the Brazilian Minister of Education and Culture, was signed by hundreds of artists who demanded radical changes in the political decisions that restricted the import of ink, pigments, paper, and [...]

In this introductory essay, “La huelga del color” (The Color Strike), Glória Ferreira includes an article that had appeared in the newspaper Correio da Manhã on May 16, 1954. The article described the third Salão [...]

In his introductory essay, Paulo Herkenhoff describes the 1954 Salão Nacional de Arte Moderna —also known as the Black-and-White Salon—as a political statement that was expressed in an official exhibition space. In protest against [...]