Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This is an example of the Mail Art correspondence delivered by Octaedro, a group that emerged in late 1978 in Montevideo. In this case,  Juan Carlos Iglesias, one of the members of the Uruguayan group, is the author. It consists  [...]

Fernando Álvarez Cozzi, a member of the Octaedro group, created this text as a piece of mail art. In the text, the Uruguayan artist reflects on artistic freedom and the challenges involved in exercising it at difficult time in Uruguayan history [...]

This essay is on the second exhibition presented by the Octaedro group in Montevideo in the Cultural Alliance of Uruguay and the United States. The exhibition and its catalogue were considered defiant of the political circumstances the people of [...]

The researcher May Puchet interviews Fernando Álvarez Cozzi, who had been a member of the Octaedro group ever since it was founded in late 1978. The artist explains the political and cultural situation in Uruguay at the time that Octaedro was [...]

This is the catalogue for the V Exposición de Arte (painting, drawing, and sculpture) held at the Círculo de Fomento de Bellas Artes de Montevideo in 1912. It was the second time that foreign artists, in this case from Argentina and Brazil, were [...]

Alberto Zum Felde discusses what is referred to as “nativism” in Uruguayan art (especially in the literary field). The writer and critic considers the movement to be epigonal and obsolete at a time when the presence of a new, cosmopolitan society [...]

This text is an analysis of the lecture given by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, a theorist of the Italian Futurist movement. His topic was French-Uruguayan poet Jules Laforgue, who was born in Montevideo. The event took place in 1926, during Marinetti’ [...]

In this article, Orestes Baroffio discusses audience reaction to the lecture given by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the creator of the Italian Futurist movement and the author of its manifestos, at the Teatro Artigas in Montevideo. Baroffio also [...]

In this interview, painter and educator Domingo Bazzurro assesses Uruguayan painting and the role of the Círculo de Bellas Artes (CBA), which was founded in 1905 for art education and for activating the local art scene. That center of teaching and [...]

This article analyzes the immediate repercussions of the victory of the Uruguayan soccer team, which won a gold medal at the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris. The team’s feat is compared to artistic accomplishments and the aspirations of artists; in a [...]

The title of the article published in Marcha, the weekly Montevideo newspaper, refers to the Bienal de Córdoba. But the artist Germán Cabrera and his interviewer actually discuss aspects that are common to all contemporary biennials anywhere in the [...]

In this text, Sergio Benvenuto, director of Artes journal, describes and analyzes the visual arts in Uruguay and its connections to the rest of Latin America; he points out cultural differences from Anglo-Saxon America. Benvenuto asserts that [...]

This essay is on the advanced investigative paper written by the researcher May Puchet, on the emergence of group artistic strategies, in character of a group, during the seventies and eighties in Uruguay, looking to reconstruct an artistic narrative [...]

Los Otros was a group active in Uruguay from 1979 to 1982, at the end of the military dictatorship (1973–84). It formulated innovative and ephemeral projects for alternative spaces. This text, written by the group, levels harsh and ironic criticism [...]

The catalogue for the 1981 exhibition held at the Galería del Notariado by the group Axioma, expresses concerns about the critical view of the new artistic trends and their connection to the local environment. The group chose, by way of [...]

This essay is about a document that pertains to the exhibition and catalogue on the group Axioma that was held at the Galería del Notariado in 1982; it mentions the members of the group without a description or analysis of their exhibition concept. [...]

This is an essay on the exhibition presented by Nelbia Romero in conjunction with collaborators belonging to different artistic disciplines. This short 1983 publication relates an historical event that occurred in Uruguay in the nineteenth century of [...]

This document is a presentation and description of the performance organized by Mercedes Sayagués Areco, along with Eduardo Kepekian and Hugo Cardozo, on the esplanade of the Museo Nacional de Artes Plásticas in Montevideo on September 12, 1982. [...]

This document refers to the artistic conflicts that, in Pablo Mañé Garzón’s opinion, are no longer relevant in the Uruguayan visual arts of the 1960s. The author explains that, in the years since the dispute that flared up between abstract and [...]

In this essay, the journalist Mercedes Sayagués analyzed the feasibility of new artistic ideas being formulated during the last dictatorial years in Uruguay. The projects being considered tried to abolish the traditional boundaries established [...]

The Uruguayan artist Carlos Capelán created a fictitious entity he called “Post Colonial Liberation Army” which he used to issue personal, though supposedly anonymous, manifestos in which he discussed various things related to art practices, the [...]

Luis Camnitzer reflects on the subject of an artist’s “signature” as he discusses the biographical statements that are encouraged by the institutions that control monetary values in the art field and cater to the market of the individual “ [...]

In a volume entitled Arte, Estado y no he estado, published in 2012, Luis Camnitzer compiles a series of essays he wrote between 1968 and 2006. In them, he explains his focus on Conceptual Art and the socioeconomic roots of his political thinking. [...]

The article by Yamandú Canosa was published in the catalogue of his exhibition when he obtained the Premio Pedro Figari 2007, awarded by the Central Bank of Uruguay for the distinction of his artistic development. In this essay, the Uruguayan [...]

Carlos Capelán’s installations include texts expressed as proclamations presented under the acronym PCLA (r): Post Colonial Liberation Army (re materialización). The Uruguayan artist’s work alludes to and emulates manifestos produced by [...]

The synopsis and annotations in English are coming soon [...]

This is an interview by the art critic Rosa Queralt with Yamandú Canosa in regard to his 2003 exhibition held in Spain, named La línea h (iceberg), at the Art Center of Salamanca. It was published in the catalogue Premio Pedro Figari (2007–08 [...]

Clever Lara’s work is reviewed by the critic Ángel Kalenberg, who was also in charge of Uruguay’s contribution to the XLII Venice Biennial (1986). In Kalenberg’s opinion, Lara’s work is representative of the kind of painting that was [...]

In this essay, the art critic Alicia Haber analyzed the 1995 exhibition Bye Bye Yaugurú by Nelbia Romero at the Centro Municipal de Exposiciones, Subte de Montevideo. The exhibition linked the conceptual aspects of the artistic ideas and concerns of [...]

In this text, art historian Gabriel Peluffo interviews artist Antonio Frasconi, who was a resident of the United States since the forties, during the artist’s visit to Montevideo. Frasconi studied printmaking in Uruguay as a member of the Club de [...]

Through an open letter to the president of the Comisión Nacional de Artes Plásticas published in the weekly journal Marcha, the Uruguayan printmaker Antonio Frasconi, who was residing in New York, expressed his solidarity with the Visual Arts Guild [...]

In this essay, the Uruguayan poet and writer Ida Vitale interviews the Polish art critic Ryszard Stanilawski about his Latin American tour, during which he promoted contacts and artistic exchange with the People’s Republic of Poland. The article [...]

In this essay, Nelson DiMaggio reflects on the international changes in Latin America, especially in Brazil, that had taken place up until 1969. The art critic goes through several likely topics, from the severe censure of various artistic works by [...]

This essay is on an interview [conducted] by Gabriel Peluffo with the sculptor Germán Cabrera, the artist and performer Teresa Vila, and the painter and engraver Anhelo Hernández. He questions them on the role of the visual arts within the social [...]

In the Montevidean press, the controversy between the writer Juan Carlos Somma and the art critic Fernando García Esteban developed and was published in installments. It revolved around the governmental and private decisions that were made in [...]

The synopsis and annotations in English are coming soon [...]

This unsigned interview with Argentinean critic Jorge Romero Brest published in the weekly Jaque is somewhat alarmist. The main topics addressed—the decline of easel painting in the world over, the avant-garde experience at the Instituto Di Tella [...]

This essay is about the interview of the Uruguayan artist Luis Camnitzer by the critic Nelson Di Maggio, who at the time had been living in the United States since 1964. In the interview, Camnitzer conveyed his concept of “social transformation” [...]

The Spanish author and art critic Manuel Abril was widely known as an admirer of the work of Uruguayan artist Rafael Barradas. This essay, originally written for the Catalan magazine Vell I Nou, outlines the artist’s predisposition for modernism. [...]

The essay by Vicente Basso Maglio was intended for the catalogue for the exhibition Rafael Barradas, organized by the Comisión Nacional del Centenario in Montevideo in 1930, a year after the death of the Uruguayan artist. [The artist was seen as] a [...]

The catalogue of the exhibition Exposición Barradas, organized by the Comisión Nacional del Centenario in Uruguay in 1930, included an essay on Artur Perucho that had already been published before by the Barcelona-based magazine Joia. The article [...]

This article is called a “lesson” (as are all the chapters in the book Universalismo Constructivo, which is a collection of lectures), a reference to Joaquín Torres García’s didactic style throughout the lengthy volume. The project is the [...]

The introduction to Joaquín Torres García’s book, Universalismo Constructivo (published in Buenos Aires in 1944), was written two years earlier, and touches on many of the maestro’s fundamental ideas. It explains that his views are the result [...]

This article includes the text of a section that appeared before the introduction in Joaquín Torres García’s book, Universalismo Constructivo (published in Buenos Aires in 1944). Here the maestro refers to “the modernity” of current art, an [...]

The writer Mario Benedetti, representing the Montevideo weekly Marcha, reviews the seventh edition of the Exposición de La Habana (1968), an event that was organized by the Casa de las Américas, a Cuban institution founded in 1959. The Uruguayan [...]

In the Montevideo-based weekly Marcha, writer Juan Carlos Somma condemns a series of confused decisions the Uruguayan government made about the preservation and restoration of murals by Joaquín Torres García and members of his workshop at the [...]

The article by the art critic and columnist of the weekly journal Marcha, Fernando García Esteban, was written in immediate response to the published complaint made by Juan Carlos Somma regarding the imminent restoration and transfer of the murals [...]

In this article in the weekly Marcha, critic Daniel Heide discusses the growing interest in drawing as visual modality in Uruguay in the sixties. Heide explains that he will address the fantastic and realist connotations of this new strain of drawing [...]

Artist Nelbia Romero wrote this document on her exhibition project Bye, Bye, Yaugurú, curated by critic Alicia Haber. Written on a loose page, the text explains the aims of an exhibition that set out to reaffirm the need to engage the cultural [...]

The Primera Bienal de Escultura was held in Uruguay in 1969. The controversial French critic Pierre Restany was one of the guests at the event. Nelson Di Maggio interviewed Restany, and this document reports on some of the latter’s thoughts [...]