Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

According to Ceferino Palencia, the Spanish art critic living in exile in Mexico, Frida Kahlo’s pictorial art was an eloquent example of will in service to sensitivity. Palencia speaks of Frida’s lifelong rebellion against her mother’s violent [...]

The writer of this article refers to the exhibition of works by Mariano Rodríguez Orgaz, the Spanish artist living in exile, which was presented at the Palacio de Bellas Artes [Palace of Fine Arts]. The exhibition included the architectural studies [...]

This essay commemorates the first anniversary of the arrival of the Sinaia, the French ship that brought the first wave of Spanish refugees to Veracruz in 1939, and mentions that the date coincides with the shameful Nazi occupation of Paris (June [...]

The article is a review of the Exposición de arte mexicano [Exhibition of Mexican Art] that was held at the Hospital Juárez. It included paintings, sculpture, and engravings by Mexican artists such as Diego Rivera, Roberto Montenegro, Carlos Orozco [...]

This is an important poetic dissertation by León Felipe, who discusses the artist’s invention of his world as an intimate space in his own creative process. That is, the poet reflects upon the synchronicity that exists between the work of art and [...]

Juan Larrea wrote these words while looking at the panel shown by Joan Miró, the famous Spanish painter, in his country’s pavilion at the International Exhibition in Paris in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War. Though it is a product of the [...]

This is a review of an exhibition of paintings by young Spanish artists living in exile in Mexico. It remarks on the group’s preference for depth over variety, in keeping with their vision of pondering deeply all aspects of their lives. Their [...]

This article states the mission of the Junta de Cultura Española [Board of Spanish Culture] (relocated to Mexico), which was to guarantee the continued spiritual aspect of Spanish culture by supporting the work of Spanish intellectuals living in [...]

Best known for his portrait of Andalusian poet Antonio Machado—which hangs in the Ateneo Español de México—Cristóbal Ruiz mostly painted landscapes of Spain. He worked mainly in the region of Castilla, which he portrayed in luminous, vivid [...]

This editorial—published in Romance magazine—addresses the complicated nexus between the goals of an artist and the goals of a human being in terms of individual and group welfare; that is, in terms of material happiness and spiritual wealth. The [...]

This appeal asks Latin American thinkers to attend the Conferencia Panamericana de Ayuda [Pan-American Aid Conference] in support of Spanish Republicans, to be held in Mexico City, February 14–17, 1940. The goal was to express solidarity with those [...]

Following the death of the artist and writer José Moreno Villa, the author of this article recalls the time, many years earlier, when they were both at the famous Residencia de Estudiantes [Students’ Residence] in Madrid. Even in those days, [...]

This article includes a collection of remarks made by a number of Spanish and Mexican critics on the occasion of the exhibition of works by the caricaturist Eduardo Robles “Ras” at the Ateneo Español de México. The critic Margarita Nelken, who [...]

Enrique F. Gual reviews an exhibition at the Galería Prisse at which the artist José Bartolí mainly shows his oil paintings, in spite of being better known for his drawings. To Bartolí, the oil paintings represent a phase in which he is [...]

Laurette Séjourné discusses the work of Ramón Gaya, the Spanish painter and art critic who was living in exile in Mexico at the end of the Spanish Civil War. Séjourné remarks that, on closer inspection, Gaya’s paintings appear to be “alive [...]

In this article, Pere Calders refers to the Catalan sculptor José Giménez Botey—who lives in exile in Mexico—as a Latino, Mediterranean artist who was profoundly influenced by both his native land, Cataluña, and by Mexico, the country where he [...]

The critic, painter and graphic designer Miguel Prieto visits the exhibition of Arturo Souto, with whom he shares the condition of being in exile. He discovers that Souto’s painting has taken elements from Spain’s dark days—visiting the towns, [...]

The anonymous author of this essay discusses landscapes by Enrique Climent, the painter living in exile, referring to the artist’s restraint and sparseness, and exemplifies, as in his painting of a simple track with a clump of trees to one side. [...]

This brief text refers to a 1935 newspaper article by Manuel Abril about the Concurso Nacional de Escultura [National Sculpture Contest] whose theme was “Conmemoración a Lope de Vega” [In Remembrance of Lope de Vega]. Abril reports that the [...]

José Bergamín, the writer in exile and critic, compares poetry with painting as in classical times, and uses the language of poetry to discuss the painting of Antonio Rodríguez Luna. Bergamín refers to Rodríguez Luna’s main theme, which [...]

In this review of the New York exhibition of works by Ángel Botello Barros—the Galician painter living in exile—Manuel Valldeperes discusses the values he perceives in the paintings, referring in particular to the artist’s use of color as “ [...]

In this final part of his lengthy essay, Juan Larrea acknowledges the reality of the Americas as the high point of the Surrealist movement. He states: “as the West flounders in the gloom, the tides of history [have] carried several representative [...]

In this section of his four-part essay, Juan Larrea discusses the creation, development, transcendence, and objectives of Surrealism, referring to a particular case to express the significance of the movement. He mentions Víctor Brauner, the [...]

In this biographical sketch, Loló de la Torriente defines the aspiration of David Alfaro Siqueiros as wanting to be recognized as a leader of socialist fighters rather than as a painter. The text is divided into four parts: Siqueiros, the man; the [...]

This is the Mexican critic Antonio Luna Arroyo’s biographical sketch of the German sculptor Herbert Hofmann-Isenbourg. It spans the latter’s education in philosophy and aesthetics in Berlin, his travels—including three trips around the world— [...]

José Renau discusses the significance of the first Spanish-American Art Biennial, sponsored by Francisco Franco. According to Renau, the goal of the exhibition was to “establish a link between Spain’s robust pictorial tradition and the effete [...]

In this article the Mexican painter Chávez Morado reviews the first group exhibition presented by Mexican and Spanish artists living in Mexico; the event was conceived as a riposte to the Iberian-American Art Biennial proposed by Francisco Franco’ [...]

This valiant text discusses the inauguration of the Exposición Bienal Hispanoamericana (1951) [Hispano-American Biennial Exhibition] in Francisco Franco’s Madrid. It was organized by the Fascist government of the Caudillo por la Gracia de Dios to [...]

This article by Valencian artista Juan [sic, Josep] Renau was published in the Mexican periodical Las Españas: Revista Literaria, no 12, 1949. In it, Renau describes Valencian sculptor Antonio Ballester Villaseca’s sculptural style as having a [...]

In this article Ceferino Palencia, the Spanish art critic and painter living in exile in Mexico, sketches a brief biography of Roberto Fernández Balbuena, portraying him as a well-known architect and painter with a clearly defined vision. He [...]

Manuel Andújar discusses José García Narezo’s work. It has been several years since the former has seen the latter’s paintings, and he remarks that he now finds them more complete, and discerns a new stage in the artist’s process and motives [...]

The subject of this article is the Spanish artist in exile, Aurelio Arteta, who died in a streetcar accident only a year after he arrived in Mexico. The writer of the short article is a compatriot who shared the experience of being exiled in Mexico. [...]

Romance magazine invited the Mexican artist David Alfaro Siqueiros to discuss his theoretical ideas about painting’s essential problems. At the time, he was finishing the mural at the Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas de la Ciudad de México [ [...]

In this article, Lorenzo Varela reviews the work of two of the artists who took part in a Hispanic-American exhibition: the Mexican painter Juan Soriano, and Mariano Rodríguez Orgaz, the Spaniard living in exile in Mexico. Focusing his critical eye [...]

This article provides thoughts on the meaning of land and the mother country. For José Moreno Villa, a Spanish artist exiled in Mexico during the Spanish Civil War, the mother country is made up of “my friendships, my stuff—or small material [...]

José Bergamín, a writer from Madrid living in exile in Mexico, draws up a welcoming speech as a member of the Junta de Cultura Española addressed to all of those who worked in Spain for its cultural life and for his defense. He further addresses [...]

Based on a visit of the exhibition at the Salón de la Junta de Cultura Española [The Salon of the Board of Spanish Culture] (originally established in Paris in 1939, but later, due to the World War II, relocated to Mexico City), the author reviews [...]

This article refers to two exhibitions that were sponsored by the Colegio de México about the exiled artists Enrique Climent and Antonio Rodríguez Luna, citing them as examples of two painters who succeeded in centering their spirit. These are two [...]

Going through the exhibition of the work by Arturo Souto, Spanish painter exiled in Mexico, the author of this article sets down his reflections about the perennial characteristics of Spanish painting, including work that is produced in other [...]

This essay is a continuation of the exiled artist, José Renau’s, reflections on the preeminence of realism over abstraction. He believes that in the years following World War I, the art trends were characterized by an unbridled exaltation of [...]

The author reflects on a comparison between abstraction and realism, presenting it as a grave problem of the era. For José Renau, the main trend of the “bourgeois” culture is based on the abstract and trivial aspect of intellectual creation. He [...]

The author José Renau, exiled in Mexico, summarizes the principal avant-garde art trends of the 20th century, highlighting the contradiction between the works created and their artistic value in light of the few connections among the artists, [...]

Reflections about the generation that has lived through the Spanish Civil War as opposed to the “Generacíón del 98,” also from Spain, the latter faced with the reality of a dark present that dreams of past glories. Instead, the generation “ [...]