Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This article tells the story of the first exhibition of women’s art held under the name, Frida Kahlo Salon, at the gallery directed by Lola Álvarez Bravo. The show brought together the works of 40 artists as dissimilar as Remedios Varo, Machila [...]

The way Crespo de la Serna sees Leonora Carrington is that, in spite of being English-born, her artistic temperament is not of a kind to be circumscribed or limited by a specific geographic environment. Hence, “the world in which she breathes has [...]

The poet and art critic Xavier Villaurrutia believes José Clemente Orozco’s murals were his best works; then his drawings, lithographs, and engravings and, lastly, his oil paintings. Villaurrutia believes that oil painting was not the most [...]

On the fifteenth anniversary of the Galería de Arte Mexicano [GAM, Mexican Art Gallery], Margarita de Ponce reviews its activities and discusses what she considers to be its greatest contributions toward the distribution and promotion of Mexican art [...]

José Juan Tablada believes that art has become the “most powerful and effective” force, and is capable of finally securing Mexico’s well-being because it has been the single most influential factor in terms of strengthening political, cultural [...]

On the occasion of the Exposición de Artistas Independientes [Exhibition by Independent Artists] in New York, José Juan Tablada responded—with a spirited defense of the Mexican artists whose work was on display—to rumors he had heard [...]

The Mexican Pavilion in the International Exhibition in Brussels in 1958 was designed by the architects Pedro Ramírez Vázquez and Rafael Mijares. The pavilion contained exhibition spaces and an auditorium and occupied 22,000 square feet. Upon entry [...]

The Taller de Gráfica Popular [TGP, People’s Print Workshop], with Leopoldo Méndez, Pablo O’Higgins, and Luis Arenal as founding fathers, had always intended to work together as a group on various types of printmaking and painting in the studio [...]

Emma McCall adapted Adolfo Best Maugard’s Método de Dibujo [Method of Drawing] to the U.S. cultural and educational milieu in order to take advantage of this art instruction system with U.S. children and young adults. As in the method proposed by [...]

Wolfgang Paalen claimed that Surrealism helped him to experience a total synthesis that denied any arbitrary separation between the visual arts and poetry, as well as between poetry and life. In his opinion, this movement offered the only working [...]

In this article, divided into eight sections, Wolfgang Paalen identifies the most representative image from a number of different periods, reviewing the Middle-Ages period, the Renaissance, and Modern times. He notes that, when faced with a radical [...]

Luis Lara Pardo interviews the painter Adolfo Best Maugard about the work the latter is doing in the United States. Lara Pardo claims that Best Maugard’s proposal illustrates that he has found a new horizon in Mexican art—one that is rooted in [...]

In this interview, the Minister of Public Education points out some of the aspects he considers fundamental in the promotion of art and culture, aside from the fact that this campaign is of the utmost importance for the Mexican people. José [...]

Adolfo Best Maugard describes the nature of “authentic” Mexican art in order to define the essential features of the aesthetic idea based on a “grammar of drawing” that he proposes as the formula for what he sees as “current national art [...]

In accordance with the report, the most important work achieved by the Dirección de Dibujo y Trabajos Manuales [Department of Drawing and Crafts] of the Secretaría de Educación Pública [SEP, Ministry of Public Education], within the stated period [...]

Poet and critic José Juan Tablada points out that for the first time contemporary art from Mexico had been fully recognized in the United States through the œuvre of José Clemente Orozco, an artist “whose psychological power and highly tragic [...]

Tablada discusses the work of Miguel Covarrubias, the young cartoonist who was almost totally unknown in Mexico at the time but was making a name for himself as a magazine illustrator in the United States. Like Tablada, Covarrubias lived in New York [...]

This article analyzes artistic education as a fundamental aspect of the work developed within the Secretaría de Educación Pública [SEP, Ministry of Public Education], with special emphasis on educational programs destined for the working class. It [...]

According to Max Aub, by the time Remedios Varo died she had become one of the most surprising painters of her time, whose work was distinguished by a timeless quality. In Aub’s opinion, Varo’s painting expressed a struggle between good and evil [...]

Best Pontones assesses the system of art instruction that was being used at that time in schools under the aegis of the Departamento de Dibujo y Trabajos Manuales [Ministry of Drawing and Manual Exercises]. An artist and a teacher, he thought that [...]

A number of art critics were surprised by the small exhibition of works by Remedios Varo at the Galería Diana in 1956. This was the first time that many of them heard that the Spanish émigré was a painter. Crespo de la Serna was surprised to find [...]

The poet José Juan Tablada thought it was immensely important—politically, socially, and culturally—that Mexican painters should be gaining visibility in the United States. He reasoned that once the doors were open to Mexican art, Mexican [...]

The article mentions several of the traits that make Frida Kahlo quite unique, even today, and combines some of them with certain elements that gave her production its distinct quality. Kahlo’s work, according to Cardona Peña is distinguished by a [...]

In the writer’s view, Leonora Carrington’s work expresses different parts of a whole that complement each other perfectly: life and death, wakefulness and sleep, reality and imagination. These all express an alternate side of reality; which is [...]

The critic Antonio Rodríguez sings praise for the life and work of Frida Kahlo in this posthumous tribute. He reviews the salient events of her career, stressing the martyrdom that haunted her work with a mood of constant struggle. Rodríguez refers [...]

On the occasion of Frances Toor’s death, Diego Rivera, who was a friend and collaborator of Toor’s, dedicated an article in remembrance of the fundamental role that the American writer and editor played in the dissemination of Mexican art, in [...]

The reviewer discusses the efforts of the Galería de Arte Mexicano (GAM) to promote the work of promising young talent like Jesús Guerrero Galván as well as paintings by famous artists such as Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros. The writer insists that [...]