Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In 1978, the poet Mario Rivero, who was the art critic for the Revista Diners for many years, wrote an article on the recent work of Umberto Giangrandi. In his text, Rivero interprets the work of the printmaker born in Italy—residing in Colombia [...]

The first version of the text “Umberto Giangrandi: espacios y espejos de la carrera 12”, by the art theoretician Armando Silva Téllez, was published in the catalogue Sobre el paisaje urbano: La doce. Monotipos y litografías (1979) from the [...]

Omar Rayo wrote a series of aphorisms about his Abstract/Geometric artwork Análisis de la suma. They were published in the catalogue for the exhibition “Omar Rayo: Pintura, grabado, dibujo” at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Chapultepec, in Mexico [...]

The Colombian curator and art critic Eduardo Serrano introduced the retrospective exhibition Manolo Vellojín. Dos décadas (1987) at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Bogotá. In this exhibition, the writer points out three “sources” of Abstract art [...]

The article “Once antioqueños en el M.A.M.” by Eduardo Serrano Rueda discusses the exhibition of the same name held at the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá in 1975. That show featured eleven artists from the city of Medellín, capital of the [...]

In a critical overview of the work of Colombian printmaker Augusto Rendón, Colombian art historian Álvaro Medina divides Rendón’s production into four periods. During the first period (1962-1964), Rendón’s work veered away from abstraction. [...]

In this article, published in the Vida Cultural-Exposiciones [Cultural Life – Exhibitions] section of the Bogotá newspaper El Tiempo, the caricaturist and critic Jorge Moreno Clavijo reviews the exhibition of Álvaro Herrán’s “informalist [...]

This article by Colombian cultural journalist José Hernández reports the unexpected death of Colombian painter Antonio Barrera. It includes sections of an unpublished interview with Barrera that Hernández had written after visiting his apartment [...]

The Colombian writer Álvaro Cepeda Samudio published an article that included a “brief biography” of the painter Noé León, in which he writes about the time when the art critic José Gómez Sicre paid León a surprise visit at his “humble [...]

The Colombian publicist and photographer Carlos Duque interviews Karen Lamassonne, the versatile young artist who has worked in the fields of painting, printmaking, the movies, and video art. During the course of the interview, Duque enquires about [...]

Beatriz González reviews eight miniature drawings by José Antonio Suárez Londoño. Based on formal descriptions, she links each little drawing to specific moments in European art or science and to biographical facts about the Colombian artist. Su [...]

The first chapter of the article “Rodrigo Callejas o el paisaje como obsesión” [Rodrigo Callejas or Landscape as Obsession] by the Colombian painter and printmaker Alberto González Rodríguez discusses the distinction he makes between [...]

Raquel Tibol, an Argentinean critic and art historian who has lived in Mexico City since in 1953, and artist Leonel Góngora discuss work by Góngora considered erotic because it provides a sensual interpretation of reality. Tibol invites the [...]

La poetisa, galerista y crítica de arte Gloria Inés Daza conversa con Leonel Góngora sobre las motivaciones artísticas que desencadenaron su “obra erótica”; la muerte que azota a una sociedad “convencional y pacata” como la colombiana; y [...]

From Paris, cultural journalist José Hernández announces an exhibition of textile art being held at the Musée d’Art Moderne (MAM). The show, which featured work by Colombian artist Olga de Amaral, opened on April 29, 1981. It exhibited modern [...]

With this text, Colombian poet and essayist Juan Gustavo Cobo Borda introduces the exhibition of works by painter Manolo Vellojín held at Galería Garcés Velásquez in Bogotá in 1978. In Cobo Borda’s view, Holy Week (a Spanish religious [...]

In this exhaustive interview, Luz Adriana Hoyos, the journalist from Mundo magazine, talks to the Italian painter Umberto Giangrandi (who had lived in Colombia since 1966), discussing his work as a printmaker and promoter of the graphic arts in [...]

In 1973, the Colombian printmaker Luis Ángel Rengifo published the book Caminos, paisajes y museos, an account of his forty-five-day journey through Europe. The book traces his steps from the time he boarded a plane in Bogotá on April 26, 1970, [...]

These remarks by the printmaker Luis Ángel Rengifo, who was interviewed by the journalist Dolly Mejía, were published on the occasion of his exhibition at the Salón Gregorio Vásquez at the Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia in September 1953. [...]

Ivonne Pini published a monograph on the work of the printmaker Luis Ángel Rengifo in which she provided a comprehensive overview of all his artwork, placing it in the context of both Latin America and Colombia. In the first section, she gives [...]

The artist and arts manager Leonel Estrada wrote an art criticism piece for the daily newspaper El Colombiano about the most recent exhibition of work by the sculptor John Castles at the Galería de la Oficina in the city of Medellín. The writer [...]

Critic and curator Alberto Sierra presents the work of Colombian sculptor John Castles in the catalogue to the exhibition Esculturas de John Castles/Pinturas de Marta Elena Vélez/ Serigrafías de Hugo Zapata held in April and May of 1979. The text [...]

In this text on the retrospective exhibition of Oscar Jaramillo at the Museo de Arte Moderno of Medellín, poet Elkin Restrepo describes the emergence of a generation of young local artists in the early seventies whose work dealt with the city slums [...]

Commentator Ana María Reyes argues that one of the most complex problems faced by Colombian artists in the second half of the 20th century is how to represent violence, a daily reality in the country during that period. The challenge lies in [...]

In the catalogue text for the exhibition Fanny Sanín: Obras de 1960 a 1986 held at the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá, John Stringer, the Australian curator of the show, analyzes the work produced by Fanny Sanín, a Colombian artist who lives in [...]

In the prologue to the book Anotaciones políticas sobre la pintura colombiana (1975), artist Clemencia Lucena questions the culture of a country like Colombia, a culture that, in her view, is imposed by the landowning and bourgeois classes. She [...]

The art critic Marta Traba wrote the introductory essay in the catalogue for the exhibition of works by the artist Hernando del Villar that opened at the Galería Belarca April 29, 1975. Traba describes the paintings as festive, decorative, and [...]

Marta Traba wrote an exhaustive chronicle on “the high and low points” of the Festival de Arte de Cali (1964). She highlighted the performance of the actress Fanny Mikey, the enthusiastic organizer of the event, who became “Califanny” for the [...]

The synopsis and the annotations in English are coming soon.    However, our bilingual readers can click on “Español” to access this information in Spanish [...]

Art critic Miguel González wrote the text “Sobre Marta Elena Vélez” for the exhibition Marta Elena Vélez [1980-1986] held at the Museo de Arte Moderno of Medellín (MAMM). González compares Vélez’s first exhibition, which took place in [...]

Colombian writer and journalist Alfonso Fuenmayor dedicates a chapter of his book Crónicas sobre el Grupo de Barranquilla to his friend, the artist Orlando Rivera. A biographical piece, this text is rich in anecdotes about a man who, along with [...]

In the text published in the foldout poster for the show El dibujo colombiano década del sesenta (1981), Miguel González argues that, in the sixties, drawing—whether produced by young artists or by well established figures from [...]

In this essay the critic and curator Eduardo Serrano introduces the exhibition of works by the Colombian artist Álvaro Barrios at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Bogotá in March 1977. Serrano begins his essay with the most conventional of all [...]

The pamphlet for the solo show of works by Álvaro Barrios at the Galería Marta Traba includes a photo of the artist as a cutout figure; the document signed by the artist and the painter-witness Norman Mejía granting power to the art critic Marta [...]

This article by the art critic Miguel González describes in great detail Hernando Tejada’s series of wooden sculptures of women. Tejada became interested in working with wood in 1963 when, at Marta Traba’s invitation, he was exploring the [...]

“Ketty” is the name (or pseudonym) of the journalist who wrote this report about the mural that Hernando Tejada was at the time painting at the Ferrocarril del Pacífico railway station in Cali. Before divulging the particular events in the [...]

Gloria Pachón Castro, the journalist from the Bogotá newspaper El Tiempo, interviews the painter Luciano Jaramillo following the jury’s decision at the XVII Salón de Artistas Nacionales [17th National Artists Salon] (1965).  This article quotes [...]

Marta Traba’s review of Insectos [Insects]—the exhibition of works by the painter Luciano Jaramillo at the Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia [Colombian National Library]—appeared in the Art Criticism section of La Nueva Prensa magazine. [...]

Darío Ruiz Gómez introduces the exhibition Darío Jiménez: Obras 1942-1979 [Darío Jiménez: Works 1942-1979] at the Galería Belarca in Bogotá. In this essay Ruiz Gómez states that Colombian art lives off “institutionalized aesthetic truths [...]

The text, ¡Al Fin Pintura! (1976) [Painting, at Last!] was an introduction to the exhibition with the same name at the Galería Belarca in Bogotá, organized by Eduardo Serrano. This art critic emphasizes the acceptance of the drawing and the print [...]

The artist, Ignacio Gómez Jaramillo, presented an exhibition of the Colombian painters, Darío Jiménez Villegas and Jorge Elías Triana, at the Biblioteca Benjamín Franklin [Benjamin Franklin Library] in Mexico City. In his essay, Gómez Jaramillo [...]

In a letter dated April 23, 1972, the Colombian painter Darío Jiménez Villegas tells his friend Alberto Suárez Casas, in eloquent terms that he is quite satisfied with the latter’s portrait which he had recently painted. Jiménez describes it as [...]

In this essay, Carolina Ponce de León, the curator of the exhibition Darío Jiménez: Exposición antológica 1938-1980 [Darío Jiménez: Retrospective Exhibition 1938-1980], provides a biographical and critical view of the work of the Colombian [...]

Walter Engel, the Austrian art critic living in Colombia, wrote this manuscript on the occasion of the exhibition of paintings by the Spanish artist Juan Antonio Roda, at the Sociedad Colombiana de Arquitectos in Bogotá (November 1956). To Engel, [...]

The Colombian artist Félix Ángel wrote the introduction to the book Nosotros: un trabajo sobre los artistas antioqueños (1976), a publishing project of the Museo El Castillo. The purpose of the book was to show the scope of the work of artists [...]

The Colombian artist and critic Luis Fernando Valencia wrote an article in response to the first prize awarded to Juan Camilo Uribe for the work Llamarada (1976), at the I Salón Regional de Artes Visuales of the northwestern region of Colombia ( [...]

In the first and only issue of the magazine Caligari: cine y fotografía [Caligari: Cinema and Photography], the Colombian filmmaker Carlos Mayolo Velasco published an article on the role of the Colombian provinces in the development of a local [...]

In this article Galaor Carbonell, the Cuban art critic living in Colombia, discusses the prints produced by the Spanish-born Colombian artist Juan Antonio Roda, paying particular attention to his transition from painter to draftsman and printmaker. [...]

In this interview by the Colombian journalist Mauricio Vargas Linares, the Spanish-born Colombian artist Juan Antonio Roda discusses aspects of his career as a painter and printmaker. He refers in particular to the rising popularity of graphic arts, [...]

This text by Marta Traba—a well known Argentine critic who lived in Venezuela at the time—introduces the exhibition Los novísimos colombianos held at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Caracas in 1977. Traba analyzes the overall development of [...]