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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 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 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. [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 text, Jorge Romero Brest responds to an article by Damián Bayón about what qualities make art produced by Latin American artists Latin American, and to four related questions about the nature of Latin American art which were sent to him by [...]

The Brazilian writer and art critic Luis Gonzaga Duque Estrada presents a strong critique of the notion of an escola brazileira, [Brazilian school] promoted by the Academia Imperial de Belas Artes.  Since its origins, he argues, the escola [...]

In this text, Grace L. McCann Morley reviews recent developments in Latin American art, and makes a number of suggestions about how the appreciation of Latin American art can be furthered in the United States. McCann Morley begins by reminding us of [...]

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 [...]

Despite the title “Del patrioterismo en el arte,” in this article the Argentinean painter Martín Malharro rejects the idea of a narrowly prescribed and defined national art school. He partially does so in opposition to the influence of the [...]

Puerto Rican painter Francisco Oller delivered this speech to students and fellow professors around 1902 while teaching at the Normal School in Río Piedras. Oller explains that in order to impart anything meaningful to his audience, he must first [...]

This address was given by the Spanish-born, Chilean-based scholar José Victorino Lastarria in 1842 during a meeting of the recently formed Sociedad Literaria, a literary society of important Chilean scholars and politicians. In his speech to the [...]

In two chapters from his book Indología, José Vasconcelos outlines his concept of a culturally and politically unified Latin America, discussing how Latin America’s internal conflicts and its disagreements with the United States could be resolved [...]

This article records a polemical debate over Argentinean national artistic and literary practices that took place in 1894 between three Argentinean artistic figures: poet and playwright Rafael Obligado; painter, critic, and scholar Eduardo Schiaffino [...]

In this lecture, Gustavo Buntinx looks to convince his listeners that the current idea of “Latin American art” is an imperialist construct, and argues that the only solution is for them to reinvent it in its entirety. He begins by declaring that [...]

In "El momento," Juan Marinello announces the existence of a new avant-garde movement in Cuban literature and the arts. Marinello prophesizes a coming “battle” between the new Cuban intellectual scene and the outmoded literary establishment who, [...]

“El pabellón de Mexico en Sevilla,” by architect Manuel Amábilis, describes the Mexican pavilion at the 1930 Universal Exposition in Seville. In the prologue, Enrique González Martínez, the Mexican ambassador to Spain, explains that the [...]

In “The Pachuco and Other Extremes,” the Mexican poet, writer, and diplomat Octavio Paz grapples with the issues related to the search for the national identity in post-revolutionary Mexico and, more broadly, the existential relationship of [...]

In these three extracts from the first chapter of his book Última Tule, Alfonso Reyes considers the history of conquest and how it has fostered mythic notions of the Americas. In the text “Colón y Américo Vespucio,” he corrects the historical [...]

In this text, Marta Traba considers the problem of how Latin American artists can produce art “continental” in character at a moment when realism is not the contemporary mode of expression. She introduces the problem by observing how European [...]

The text “Entrance” serves as the introduction to the book, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity, by Mexico-based Argentinean academic and anthropologist Néstor García Canclini. Written in 1995, the work rapidly became [...]

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 this text, María Luisa Torrens responds to Aracy Amaral’s article arguing that the installation entitled Etsedrón, which appeared at the 1975 (XIII) São Paulo Biennial, constituted a promising new direction for Latin American art. Torrens [...]

In this text, Aracy Amaral considers the strong negative responses provoked by a work entitled Etsedrón in the 1975 (XIII) São Paulo Biennial. She argues that this work provoked such responses because of its visceral power and because it is [...]

El Nuevo Indio by the Cuzco-born historian and sociologist José Uriel García (1894–1965) outlines an astute proposal for the Peruvian national project. Rejecting forcefully any nationalist framework based solely on race or “blood,” Uriel Garc [...]

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 [...]