Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

Puerto Rican art historian and curator Petra Barreras describes Rafael Montañez Ortiz’s work as startling and demanding of responses from viewers. She calls Ortiz “a shaman” who has continually looked for ways to heal society through art. [...]

In this curators’s statement, Regina A. Corritore and Miriam Hernández, the cofounders of the Latina artist collective, Vistas Latinas, explain that their mission is to validate the work of Latina artists and advocate for better representation of [...]

In this essay, curator and art historian Susana Torruella Leval provides an overview of the development of Puerto Rican art institutions and artist activism in New York, from the 1950s to the 1990s. She argues that Puerto Rican artists have played [...]

In the first half of this essay, American curator Dan Cameron considers the unexplored relationship between Puerto Rican-born artist Rigoberto Torres and American sculptor John Ahearn. In the past, the author declares, Torres’s artistry had been [...]

This essay, written by Lehman College Art Gallery director Susan Hoeltzel, was done on the occasion of the first mid-career retrospective of New York-based artist Rigoberto Torres. Well known to the public for his collaboration with artist John [...]

On the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Caribbean Cultural Center, the executive director, Melody Capote, asserts the relevance of concluding the first quarter of a century of the institution with an exhibition of the work of visual [...]

In this essay, art historian Marimar Benitez applies Walter Benjamins’s concept of the “aura” of the work of art, and its reduction in the age of mechanical reproduction to the assumed role of the museum as a religious temple of art. Comparing [...]

This essay by curator Jeannette Ingberman analyzes ten years of work by Papo Colo in painting, sculpture, drawing, and performance. According to the author, Colo’s work explores the metaphysical and the spiritual, incorporating organic forms and [...]

In this conversation between Nuyorican artist Papo Colo, and feminist performance artist Martha Wilson, Colo describes his performances from 1976 to 1986 in chronological order. The conversation with her provides succinct descriptions of the [...]

Renowned art critic Lucy Lippard compares Papo Colo’s artistry to an island like his native Puerto Rico that is also striving for independence. Trying to relate Colo’s painting style to what had become the shadow term of “expressionism,” she [...]

In this essay, curator and scholar Henry C. Estrada argues that despite the fact that Latinos are a heterogeneous cultural group, they share a history of colonialism, geographic displacement, internal exile, and racial discrimination. The experience [...]

Written by Syeus Mottel, a theater and film director, and a photographer, this essay describes how the community action group, called CHARAS, originated, and how its members worked together to build the first geodesic domes in the Lower East Side of [...]

In this “Author’s Note,” Syeus Mottel, a theater and film director, and a photographer, describes his experience after he was recruited to make a book adaptation of a unique project already in development by Buckminster Fuller and Michael Ben [...]

This essay, written by curator Susana Torruella Leval, provides a biographical overview of the careers of mural artist, Nitza Tufiño, and her father, Rafael Tufiño—a renowned Puerto Rican painter and printmaker. Leval describes the relationship [...]

In this essay, Yasmin Ramírez argues that among the parallel conditions of Chicanos and Puerto Ricans in the United States was a solidarity that took shape during the era of World War II, when floods of new arrivals—coming from Mexico, under the [...]

In this essay, Yasmin Ramírez argues that among the parallel conditions of Chicanos and Puerto Ricans in the United States was a solidarity that took shape during the era of World War II, when floods of new arrivals—coming from Mexico, under the [...]

In this essay, curator and scholar Henry C. Estrada argues that despite the fact that Latinos are a heterogeneous cultural group, they share a history of colonialism, geographic displacement, internal exile, and racial discrimination. The experience [...]

In this essay, art historian Marimar Benitez applies Walter Benjamins’s concept of the “aura” of the work of art, and its reduction in the age of mechanical reproduction to the assumed role of the museum as a religious temple of art. Comparing [...]

This open statement written by New York-born Puerto Rican poet, Jesús Papoleto Meléndez, is addressed to writers, painters, musicians, and artists saying that although they have dedicated their lives to the creation of art forms that sustain [...]

Puerto Rican artist Antonio Martorell offers a poetic essay that starts by explaining the use of the “Y” in the spelling of Islands: Art in Transit/Yslas: Arte en tránsito, an exhibition held in 1994. Y translates in Spanish as “and,” which [...]

In this introductory essay to the exhibition catalogue of Islands: Art in Transit/Yslas: Arte en tránsito, the main question artist Domingo García asks and tries to decipher is how successfully Puerto Rican art has adapted to metropolitan art forms [...]

The author, Joshua Kind, contends that Ferrer may be included in the category of contemporary artists interested in naïve style forms. In assemblage art, which is often deliberately amorphous, such qualities as the artist’s qualms are hidden from [...]

“The Artists Respond: Art, Culture, Politics” is a transcript of artists’ responses to questions posed by Juan Sánchez, curator of the exhibition The Puerto Rican Equation: Puerto Rican Artists Ponder 100 Years Since the 1898 Invasion. Among [...]

In this essay, Nuyorican artist Juan Sánchez explains that The Puerto Rican Equation commemorates the centennial of the United States invasion of Puerto Rico in 1898. Sánchez writes that the work of the artists in the exhibition demonstrates that [...]

In this essay, Hugo Martinez chronicles the formation of United Graffiti Artists, a collective of New York City graffiti artists. Analyzing the graffiti scene from a sociological perspective, Martinez reports that the majority of graffiti artists in [...]

This interview between fellow Puerto Ricans Félix Joaquín Rivera and Pepón Osorio was conducted while walking through the street markets of Bayamon’s historical center, one of the metropolitan municipalities of Puerto Rico close to San Juan. [...]

Writer and artist Nicholasa Mohr gives an overview of the development of popular art by Puerto Ricans in New York City, and ties these artistic manifestations to political struggles. She observes how graffiti and murals produced by Puerto Rican youth [...]

Poet Miguel Algarin maintains that rather than a sign of ignorance the mixing of Spanish and English words by Puerto Ricans in New York expresses linguistic creativity. He argues that Puerto Ricans in New York are forging a new language and culture [...]

In this wide-ranging interview conducted by Michael Flanagan and Joshua Kind with Rafael Ferrer, the artist starts by discussing how he made the transition from being a percussionist to exploring the visual arts. Ferrer purposefully did not seek any [...]

This essay, written by curator Deborah Cullen, offers an account of how El Museo del Barrio was founded out of the drive to establish a creative nexus for Puerto Rican artists who exist between the mainland United States and the Caribbean island. [...]

Joseph Jacobs, curator of painting and sculpture at the Newark Museum in New Jersey, gives an account of the opening day of Badge of Honor, an installation by Puerto Rican artist Pepon Osorio, in June 1995, by giving a description of the types of [...]

This essay, written by curator Deborah Cullen, offers an account of how El Museo del Barrio was founded out of the drive to establish a creative nexus for Puerto Rican artists who exist between the mainland United States and the Caribbean island. [...]

In this 1972 essay, R. Buckminster Fuller presciently describes a new era of communication systems in which all humanity can learn enough about productivity as well as the generalized principles of nature that render abject poverty, and the have-nots [...]

Architect and urban planner, Luis Aponte-Pares, discusses the trends of cities across the nation that have become contested terrains due to the transformation of the urban landscape: from suburbanization to the class and ethnic segregation of [...]

In this issue of Caribe, dedicated to the New York-based activist group, the Young Lords Party, Dr. Marta Moreno Vega justifies their relevance to the mission of the Caribbean Cultural Center of improving the living conditions of Hispanics and people [...]

In this essay, New York-based Puerto Rican artist Marcos Dimas discusses how participating in an exhibition of Puerto Rican artists at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1969 led to his involvement in forming the Puerto Rican Art Workers Coalition (PRAWC [...]

Artist Rafael Montañez Ortiz describes the assemblages of Marcos Dimas, Puerto Rican artist based in New York City, as an extension of his childhood experience of digging up bits of pre-Columbian Taino artifacts in the fields of Puerto Rico. He [...]

Art historian and curator Susana Torruella Leval provides an overview of the development of Puerto Rican art institutions and artist activism in New York from the 1950s to the 1990s. She argues that Puerto Rican artists have played key roles in [...]

In this brief statement, Nuyorican artist Jorge Soto provides an historical overview of El Museo del Barrio. The author contends that the institution emphasized the educational value of Puerto Rican culture, but did not attend to the needs of Puerto [...]

Artist Rafael Colon Morales criticizes the selections for the exhibition of recent acquisitions of El Museo del Barrio for lacking consistent coherent criteria. He observes that there are few high-quality works on display, and therefore he does not [...]

In this brief artist statement, Puerto Rican-born artist José Caraballo posits that El Museo del Barrio’s exhibition of recent acquisitions serves as a reminder of the existence of Puerto Rican artists, and their struggle for recognition in the [...]

Art historian Mario Cesar Romero asserts that Puerto Rican-born artist Rafael Colón Morales draws from “irrationalist” schools of Western art—such as the romantics, the Surrealists, and the Abstract Expressionists. The author compares Colón [...]

In her brief introduction to the exhibition catalogue, Children of Darkness: Rafael Colón Morales, curator Gladys Peña asserts that Colón Morales broke away from the traditional painting of Puerto Rico by experimenting with both surrealist and [...]

Art critic Lucy Lippard gives an overview of issues that have galvanized Latino artists in the United States to take action; the most notable causes being migrant workers rights in the 1960s and ‘70s, protests against United States interventions in [...]

In this essay, art historian Kristine Stiles provides the most comprehensive essay written to date on the work of Rafael Montañez Ortiz, who is recognized as an innovator in the destruction art movement of the 1960s. Stiles’s essay chronicles [...]

Betty Wilde-Biasiny recounts the emergence of the photography collective, En Foco [Focused], to the rise of alternative artist-run spaces and collectives in New York City during the 1970s. Wilde-Biasiny states that En Foco’s promotion of cultural [...]

Photographer Charles Biasiny-Rivera recounts the history of En Foco [Focused], the first Puerto Rican photographers collective in New York City. Founded in 1973, En Foco’s community-based programs in the Bronx included operating a street gallery, a [...]

En Foco founding director, Charles Biasiny-Rivera, and Nuyorican artist Adal Maldonado discuss the latter’s transition from documentary projects in the 1970s, to the employment of photography in conceptual installations in the 1990s. Adal relates [...]

In this essay, Carmen Bardeguez-Brown weighs the influence of the Berlin Dadaists (1918–22) on photomontage artist Catalina Parra. Of Chilean descent, Parra went to college in Germany where she was exposed to Dada art in 1968. She was drawn to the [...]

In this essay, Carmen Bardeguez-Brown weighs the influence of the Berlin Dadaists (1918–22) on photomontage artist Catalina Parra. Of Chilean descent, Parra went to college in Germany where she was exposed to Dada art in 1968. She was drawn to the [...]