Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

Arteología: serie de eventos informacionales [Artology: A Series of Informational Events], is a dossier of six texts by Marco Antonio Ettedgui, the Venezuelan performance artist, that provides information on the purpose and structure of his series [...]

In this essay, Rafael Romero D. analyzes the significance of the self-portraits rendered by the Venezuelan artist Armando Reverón between 1910 and 1954. He states that it is Reverón who raises the genre of self-portrait to the “stature of an [...]

In this review, Roberto Guevara discusses the exhibition Más duquesas y majas de la calle Carabobo, pinturas, dibujos, collages y acuarelas de Diego Barboza (Caracas: Galería Félix, 1987). Guevara explains that Barboza has returned to painting and [...]

In the first part of his text for the catalogue to the Primera Bienal del Paisaje de la Tabacalera Nacional held in Caracas in 1986, curator Adolfo Wilson provides a historical overview of the landscape genre in the history of Western art. In the [...]

This is the first issue of Buzón de Arte/Arte de Buzón, the Venezuelan bilingual (Spanish-English) (tabloid) magazine managed and edited by Diego Barboza as a vehicle for mail art. It includes reproductions of works by artists from several [...]

This is the second issue (Year 1, nº 2, March 1976) of the Venezuelan bilingual magazine Buzón de Arte/Arte de Buzón, managed and edited by Diego Barboza, whose goal is to send mail art everywhere. It includes pictures of works from a number of [...]

In this text, whose two brief paragraphs are separated by a line and illustrated with three sketches, the Venezuelan Kinetic artist Carlos Cruz-Diez explains the traditional way in which a viewer experiences a direct “reading” of a color [...]

In her essay “Arte-idea-geografía,” María Elena Ramos discusses Claudio Perna’s conceptual pieces seen in “conventional” photographs with no “artistic pretensions.” She then turns to Marcel Duchamp and conceptual art. She presents [...]

This essay by the curator Lourdes Blanco was published in the catalogue for Autocopias, the exhibition of works by Claudio Perna. In her essay, Blanco explains that details about the conceptual artist’s life and work were hard to find, so she [...]

This essay by Roberto Guevara was published in the catalogue for Re-presentaciones: foto-grafías y acupinturas (Caracas: Fundación Eugenio Mendoza, 1981), the exhibition of works by the Venezuelan geographer and conceptual artist Claudio Perna. [...]

In this essay the curator Zuleiva Vivas writes about Claudio Perna. She mentions the difficulties involved in studying a body of (conceptual) work that is as vast and as varied as Perna’s. She lists the media this artist used and the series of [...]

In this article, published in the magazine Buzón de Arte/Arte de Buzón nº 1 (Caracas, January 1976), the Uruguayan artist Clemente Padín describes his work/action project, “El artista está al servicio de la comunidad,” which could be seen at [...]

This was the first issue (Year 1, No. 1) of the Venezuelan visual arts journal Cobalto, published in June 1969 in Caracas by a group of seven young artists (painters, poets, filmmakers). The publication opens with an editorial: “Our opinion: On the [...]

In this article, Alejandro Otero [Rodríguez] discusses the accusations that the realist painter Pedro León Castro made in 1949 against young artists living in Paris, himself included. Among other things, León Castro accuses them of having “weak [...]

In this article, the critic Roberto Guevara discusses the origins and emergence of new languages in contemporary art, which he groups under the heading of “conceptual art.” He mentions a number of examples, such as happenings, installations, and [...]

This essay about the Venezuelan painter and printmaker Mercedes Pardo describes the kind of aesthetic experience her work tends to produce in the viewer. According to the curator and critic Freddy Carreño, Pardo’s work transmits a “skillfully [...]

After an epigraph taken from Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, María Luz Cárdenas interviews Venezuelan poet Alfredo Silva Estrada on the occasion of the publication of the book Variaciones sobre Reticuláreas [Variations on [...]

In her weekly newspaper column, “Criticandito,” published on June 17, 1979 (in La Verdad, Caracas), Sofía Imber discusses four cultural events, two of which were at the Galería Mendoza, in Caracas: Guaches de la aldea de la India Madhubani [ [...]

This essay by historian Frank Popper is written within the framework of the thirty-fifth Venice Biennale. The author’s thesis stems from the idea that an artist such as Carlos Cruz-Diez creates “situations,” which cause a series of effects that [...]

Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza interviews Carlos Cruz-Diez in Paris. After providing a physical description of the Venezuelan Kinetic artist and a brief summary of his career, the Colombian author asks him for his opinions about art in general, and Latin [...]

The Cuban historian Adelaida de Juan discusses the changes and accomplishments in art and in the politics of art that were forged by the Cuban Revolution and that have been in place since 1959. She mentions famous artists whose work has changed; [...]

In her lecture, the Mexican art historian Ida Rodríguez Prampolini warns about the dangerous influence of Dadaist ideas in Latin America. She thus sharply criticizes the art movement that began in Europe in the early twentieth century, and goes on [...]

This biography of the Venezuelan painter Armando Reverón (which he is said to have written) consists of memories recorded in the third person. According to Alfredo Boulton, Reverón dictated it to “Raquel, the secretary at the Escuela” [de Artes [...]

This article by the painter Pedro León Castro was written in response to the article by Alejandro Otero entitled “Cómo trabajamos los pintores venezolanos en París,” in which the latter mentions the negative comments about the Venezuelan [...]

In this essay Pedro Emilio Coll replies to Latin American critics who, “in the name of tradition and good sense” deplore what they describe as decadent representatives of the new movements that took root in the Americas in the early twentieth [...]

In twelve aphorisms, the Venezuelan artist Javier Téllez lists his thoughts about the qualities and possible states of objects—either autonomous or in groups, virgin or used—and makes a number of suggestions concerning how people should behave [...]

In this article—published in the catalogue for La nave de los locos, the exhibition of works by Javier Téllez (b. 1969) at the Sala Mendoza in Caracas—the Mexican critic Rubén Gallo discusses each of the four installations involved, which he [...]

In this essay, Glenn D. Lowry discusses his reaction when in Venezuela in 2000, he discovered Gego’s work, having only ever seen a few of her sculptures and prints. He claims that he would have liked to meet her, and lists the questions he would [...]

Venezuelan journalist Teresa Alvarenga interviews fellow Venezuelan contemporary dancer Sonia Sanoja on the occasion of the solo performance Coreogegos to be held in the context of the Gego exhibition at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo of Caracas on [...]

In her essay “Diego Barboza: El festín de la nostalgia,” published in the catalogue for the eponymous exhibition, curator Katherine Chacón, after providing information on the artist’s youth, studies, and his start in painting and drawing in [...]

In this interview, José Napoleón Oropeza talks to Claudio Perna, described here as a talkative artist who has taught art and geography to several generations of students. Oropeza includes a description of Perna’s home-studio in Caracas, where [...]

Performance artist Marco Antonio Ettedgui interviews Austrian artist Alfred Wenemoser (who has been residing in Venezuela since 1980). After introducing him in a brief summary, he asks him to explain “his own way of conceptualizing art.” Both [...]

This interview with Carlos Cruz-Diez by historian José María Salvador focuses on the way the artist’s work intengrates architecture, either as a general subject matter or regarding his urban productions. The interview addresses questions like the [...]

In this essay, Luis Enrique Pérez-Oramas analyzes the work Autocurrículum by the Venezuelan conceptual artist Claudio Perna. Pérez-Oramas defines this work from several different angles: as a physical object, as a written work and as conceptual [...]

In her criticism, Gloria Carnevali states that her approach to the work of the Venezuelan painter and printmaker Mercedes Pardo sets a priority on assessing “the spatial problems.” She believes this focus enables “a greater enjoyment and [...]

In this text, the Venezuelan artist Antonieta Sosa describes the contents of her installation Cas(A)nto (Caracas: Museo de Bellas Artes, 2000). She takes two of her obsessions, “the internal and the external” and uses these opposites to work [...]

In this essay, Ariel Jiménez discusses the curatorial subject in the exhibition El espíritu de los tiempos (Caracas, 1991) and the work by the Venezuelan artist José Gabriel Fernández, selected by the writer for the event. The curator points out [...]

In this essay, Guillermo Barrios describes the exhibition El espíritu de los tiempos (Caracas: Ateneo de Caracas / Galería Los Espacios Cálidos, 1991) as a confluence of five different points of view, expressed by the participating curators who, [...]

This essay by the curator María Elena Ramos was published on the occasion of El espíritu de los tiempos (Ateneo de Caracas, 1991), the retrospective exhibition (in six parts) of the work of the Venezuelan artist José Antonio Hernández-Diez. The [...]

Ángel Rosenblat studies the changes that have occurred in the Spanish language over the last two hundred years, supported by his historical and linguistic research into various cultures. The philologist analyzes the place of that language in 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 [...]

This essay by the novelist Rómulo Gallegos, about the life and career of the painter Manuel Cabré, was published on the occasion of the artist’s solo exhibition in 1920. The young writer describes the character, style, and originality of the work [...]

Curator and art critic Élida Román divides her presentation into two parts. She first tries to define not only the objective of art criticism but also to identify the craft and reach of art critics.  Román then presents a diagnosis on the [...]

This is the Venezuelan critic Roberto Montero Castro’s review of the exhibition Once Tipos de 1977 (Sala Mendoza, Caracas). He discusses the evolution of the Venezuelan visual arts, suggesting that it was interrupted in the 1950s. He analyzes [...]

This essay on Armando Reverón by the Venezuelan painter Pascual Navarro states that the majority of writings about him have stressed his “eccentric habits” and his “Robinsonian lifestyle” in detriment to the overall analysis of his work and [...]

In her presentation, the Mexican art critic Berta Taracena aims to provide the elements consistent with Latin American art previously observed and documented by art history, as well as by art critics. The author points out that the indigenous element [...]

In 1949, the journalist José Ratto-Ciarlo outlined the exhibition of [work] by Alejandro Otero at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas. The beginning of the outline and the two first subtitles (“Comprensión de Otero” and “La parte por el todo [...]

In this essay about the Venezuelan communicator, dramatist, and performance artist Marco Antonio Ettedgui, Elsa Flores discusses his work as a body artist. Flores explains that, in Ettedgui’s events, the act of communicating and educating is just [...]

In her essay, “Escultura I: Más sobre Gego” [Sculpture I: More on Gego], Marta Traba writes an overview of twentieth-century sculpture, paying special attention to modern sculpture. She states that the history of modern sculpture [...]

In this essay the curator Lourdes Blanco provides a detailed review of Eugenio Espinoza’s gouaches at his exhibition, Karakana (Caracas: Museo La Rinconada, 1985). The gouaches share the event with a collection of canvases which Blanco briefly [...]