Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

The 1859 article by Peruvian painter Francisco Laso on the history of Peruvian architecture, sculpture, and painting is primarily a critique of the lack of support for artists in Peru. Laso contends that the inferiority of Peruvian artistic [...]

In this article, Peruvian artist, photographer, and art critic Teófilo Castillo describes the architecture of Lima as deficient, proposing a structure he calls “el Palacio Posnanski” [sic], a home built by the Austrian engineer, amateur [...]

In “Bellas Artes, Arquitectura, Arqueología y Arquitecturas Mexicanas," published in 1899 in the journal El Arte y la Ciencia, Tepoztecaconetzin Calquetzani (a pseudonym for an anonymous Mexican author) argues against the use of decorative [...]

In "Comentarios sobre el nacimiento de la arquitectura hispano-americana," Argentinean architect, art historian, and writer Martín Noel asserts that colonial architecture represents the foundation of the Latin American architectural styles that [...]

In this letter to Peruvian writer and journalist José Carlos Mariátegui, avant-garde Peruvian writer and poet Alberto Hidalgo thanks Mariátegui for sending him a copy of his recently published book, Seven Interpretative Essays on Peruvian Reality [...]

This review was written for the Mexican minister of public works by Mexican diplomat Pedro Escandón, president of the Mexican commission for the 1855 Universal Exposition of Products of Agriculture, Industry, and Fine Arts in Paris. In this essay, [...]

In "Fantasía y cálculo (sobre el arte decorativo)," Argentinean architects Alberto Prebisch and Ernesto Vautier critique the decorative arts, asserting that rational design should supplant frivolous “artistic” and decorative design elements. [...]

“Fantasy Heritage" by writer, lawyer, and politician Carey McWilliams addresses the disjunction in California and the Southwest of the United States between the treatment of Mexican residents and conceptions of the “Spanish” heritage of the [...]

Peruvian historian and anthropologist Luis E. Valcárcel published “Glosario” in his 1925 book De la vida Inkaica: algunas captaciones del espíritu que la animó. In “Glosario,” Valcárcel reexamines the history of Incan civilization, [...]

This text is an introduction to the 1959 exhibition South American Art Today, presented at the Dallas Museum of Art. It is written by the curator, Cuban art critic and writer José Gómez Sicre. Gómez Sicre explains that the exhibition South [...]

In “La arquitectura colonial en México,” Mexican architect and writer Jesus T. Acevedo casts colonial arts and architecture as the foundation of modern Mexican artistic identity. Acevedo describes the formation of a unique style of colonial [...]

In "Reflexiones acerca de la pintura de Wifredo Lam," written in 1944, Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier portrays the Cuban painter Wifredo Lam as a prodigious artist whose original artistic contribution is his creation of a world inspired by the flora [...]