Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In these two chapters of text from the book ¿Existe América Latina?, Luis Alberto Sánchez discusses the idea of “Latin America” as both a political bloc and a cultural value, ultimately arguing for a dynamic concept of Latin America that is [...]

In this chapter from América Latina en sus artes Jorge Alberto Manrique begins by describing the artistic movements of the 1920s and comparing this period to a giant hinge that moved backward to the nineteenth century and forward to the twentieth [...]

Brazilian literary critic and essayist Afrânio Coutinho wrote this article in the late- 1960s. His article states since inception that to him the term “Latin American,” is at odds with the historical, social, cultural, literary, and artistic [...]

In this text, Marta Traba argues that there is not really a unified [Latin] American aesthetic in the visual arts and calls for an honest investigation of the question of such an aesthetic approach, even at the risk of affirming that no common spirit [...]

The prologue to Forjando patria: pro nacionalismo, published in 1916 by leading Mexican anthropologist and archaeologist Manuel Gamio, compares the forging of metal out of an amalgam of bronze and steel to the ideal societal intermixing of Mexicans [...]

In this letter dated June 20, 1988, the English critic and curator Guy Brett expresses his gratitude to the Brazilian collector Adolpho Leirner and his wife, Fulvia Leirner, for the time they spent together in São Paolo. Brett is especially [...]

In September 15, 1998, graphic artist Antônio Maluf writes to art historian Aracy Amaral regarding her book Arte Construtiva no Brasil Coleção Adolpho Leirner. Even before its release, in his view, the book was considered an [...]

This text was written by Peruvian artist Fernando de Szyszlo to accompany his series of paintings inspired by “Apu Inka Atawallpaman,” an elegiac Quechua poem by an anonymous author. The poem describes the death of the Inca Atahualpa, and the [...]

In this article, art historian Robert Goldwater analyzes the life and work of Mexican painter Rufino Tamayo. Goldwater explains that although Tamayo is thought to have an individual style, when his works are assembled, it is apparent that his work is [...]

This flier announces the first Salão Paulista de Arte Moderna, held at the Galeria Prestes Maia. The event was organized by the Secretaria do Governo do Estado de São Paulo during the same year it launched the Bienal de São Paulo [...]

The country was awash in optimism that year, when Brasília was officially declared the new capital city. The tenth edition of the salão paulista de arte moderna was held at the Galería Prestes Maia, organized on this occasion by [...]

The flier’s cover is illustrated with a work of geometric abstraction (with no mention of the painter’s name), but includes no title for the event. The eleventh edition of the salão paulista de arte moderna, organized by the state [...]

This is the official flier for the third edition of the Salão Paulista de Arte Moderna, held in 1954 at the Galeria Prestes Maia under the auspices of the Secretaria do Governo do Estado de São Paulo. Mário Zanini was responsible [...]

This is the official flier for the fourth edition of the Salão Paulista de Arte Moderna, organized by the Secretaria do Governo do Estado de São Paulo at the Galeria Prestes Maia in 1955. The organizing committee was headed by two well- [...]

In 1956, what proved to be a critical year in Brazilian art circles, the first Concrete art exhibitions were organized at a national level. But this development had no impact at all in terms of the participants or the type of works presented at the [...]

After President Getúlio Vargas committed suicide in August 1954, Brazil embarked on a program of renewal focused on two basic areas: industrialization and development. The democratically elected government of Juscelino Kubitschek (1956-1960) [...]

This flier, which announces the seventh edition of the Salão Paulista de Arte Moderna, has an excellent minimalist design on the cover. The (ordinal) “ o ” becomes one of the squares in the black and yellow composition, which uses [...]

In this text, Jacinto Quirarte interviews artists who led Chicano art movements in San Antonio and the California Bay area during the late 1960s and early 1970s, asking them questions about what motivated their efforts and about, more generally, what [...]

The flier for the eighth edition of the salão paulista de arte moderna has been redesigned and relies mainly on lowercase letters, double-page spreads, and a simple cover design. Willys de Castro is a member of the jury responsible for the [...]

The ninth edition of the salão paulista de arte moderna (still written in lowercase letters) was held in June 1960 at the usual venue, the Galeria Prestes Maia de São Paulo. The flier carries over many elements from the previous year& [...]

This text includes a few excerpts from the six lectures that Jorge Romero Brest gave in São Paulo in 1948. At that time, Romero Brest held an academic position at the Universidad de Montevideo and was the director of the magazine Ver y estimar [...]

This landmark manifesto by architect and intellectual Ricardo Severo da Fonseca e Costa (1869–1940) was delivered in São Paolo, Brazil, at the 1914 conference, A Arte Tradicional no Brasil: a Casa e o Templo [Traditional Art in Brazil—The House [...]

This is the program for Amilcar de Castro, the exhibition of the artist’s metal sculptures that ran from October 14 to November 14, 1982, at the Galeria Raquel Arnaud (Babenco). The essay written by Ferreira Gullar is illustrated with Sin t& [...]

In this introductory essay, “La huelga del color” (The Color Strike), Glória Ferreira includes an article that had appeared in the newspaper Correio da Manhã on May 16, 1954. The article described the third Salão [...]

In this excerpt of his master’s dissertation at the USP (São Paulo), Oswald de Andrade reassesses the history since the Renaissance of how the concept of utopia has been constructed by Europeans as a means to justify a set of values that support [...]

This suite of documents includes Charles (Carlos) Calvo’s (1824–1906) letter to Napoleon III, the response from M. Thouvenel, Minister of the French Foreign Office, and the introduction to Calvo’s book, Recueil complet des traités, conventions [...]

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 [...]

The author’s nationalist approach takes into account the imbalances created by slavery in a developing nation with no homogenous social structure of its own. In his essay, the painter Porto-Alegre challenges colonial impositions on fashion, [...]

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 this brochure produced for the exhibition of works by prizewinners at the 1958 Prêmio Leirner de Arte Contemporânea, José Geraldo Vieira describes Anatol Wladyslaw’s work as a “painting of separations.” Having [...]

In this brochure produced for the exhibition of works by prizewinners at the 1960 Prêmio Leirner de Arte Contemporânea, Gerardo Ferraz discusses how Anatol Wladyslaw’s work transitioned from the “mathematics and geometry&rdquo [...]

In this text, José Enrique Rodó outlines his vision for a future Latin American civilization based on the pursuit of idealism. He stages this description as a lecture being delivered by an elderly teacher named Prospero to his young students. Rod [...]

The 1932 article "Armando Reverón,” written by Venezuelan journalist, writer, and lawyer Julián Padrón is a short biography of Venezuelan artist Armando Reverón, and a description of his working method. Reverón was a Modernist painter who [...]

This 1976 flowchart depicts Chicano artist Melesio Casas’s formula for the integration of Chicano art into a national aesthetic of American art. The diagram is divided into five sections: a general overview of Chicano art; “Value of Chicano Art [...]

Argentinean writer, publisher, curator, and professor, Jorge Glusberg presented this article in 1978 at the Latin American symposium Arte Argentino 78. In the article, he explains that the study of semiotics has led to a new understanding of the [...]

Written by César Augusto Martínez, one of the most active members of the Chicano art movement of the 1970s, “Arte Chicano” discusses the implications of the term “Chicano” (in Part One) and the status of Chicano art in the mainstream art [...]

In this essay, Ferreira Gullar challenges the position taken by Rio de Janeiro’s so-called neo-Concrete artists in his account of the two movements’ shared history and disagreements. In his opinion, the genesis of Brazilian Concrete art [...]

In this book, Marta Traba examines how the growing influence of art of the United States has shaped the art of Latin America during the 1950s and ‘60s, and how Latin American artists have both succumbed and resisted the effects of this influence. [...]

In this essay, Ferreira Gullar describes the context in which the Neo-Concrete art movement was created by artists in Rio de Janeiro. He outlines the movement’s evolution as he identifies key developments in its history, such as the series [...]

In her introductory essay for As Bienais e a Abstração. A Década de ’50 (1978), the exhibition organized by the Museu Lasar Segall in 1978, Lisbeth Gonçalves explains that the goal of the event was to review [...]

In this essay Ronaldo Brito discusses Brazilian Constructivism as an integral part of an “organized cultural strategy” that was in effect from the 1940s to the 1960s and was closely aligned with “the country’s social and [...]

These documents are the invitation to and the program of the Third Exhibition of the Atelier-Abstração, held in São Paulo in June 1956. The Atelier-Abstração was a studio set up by the Brazilian artist Samson Flexor [...]

These passages by Alaine Rouquié, a French political scientist, are excerpted from his book, Amérique latine. Introduction à l’Extrême-Occident (1989). Rouquié considers the lack of unity in Latin America and the problems encountered when [...]

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 "Bits and Pieces: The Mexican American Folk Aesthetic," authors Suzanne Seriff and José Limón argue that a common aesthetic pervades all aspects of Mexican American culture including folk art, food, music, games, and rituals. Seriff and Limón [...]

In this text, Guillermo Gómez-Peña declares the new dominant U.S. culture “border culture,” and assesses how Latino culture has infiltrated U.S. culture writ large. U.S. culture has, he argues, become fundamentally multicultural, and the “ [...]

“Brown Paper Report” is the manifesto of the Tejano [Texan-Chicano] San Antonio-based art collective Con Safo, written by artist Mel Casas in 1971. This short text presents the concepts of Chicano and “Brown Vision,” as well as the etymology [...]

This is the catalogue published to accompany Camargo, the exhibition organized by the Gimpel Fils gallery in London. The Brazilian artist Sérgio Camargo’s works were exhibited there from November 17 through December 5, 1970. The [...]

In this text, André Salmon considers the paintings of the young Guatemalan artist, Carlos Mérida, and their appeal to Parisian audiences, while also expressing nationalist sentiments specific to Guatemala. Salmon begins by recounting how young [...]

In this essay, Shifra Goldman defines Chicano art as the expression of the historical conditions of what she calls the “double-mestizaje” [double-intermingling] of Chicano experience. Beginning with a consideration of the unresolved question of [...]