Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

The synopsis and the annotations in English are coming soon. However, our bilingual readers can click on “Español” to access this information in Spanish [...]

Walter Engel wrote the review “David Manzur. En la Biblioteca Luis-Ángel Arango”, which was published on October 1, 1961, in the daily newspaper El Espectador. This article analyzes important aspects of the visual arts in Colombia in the 1960s. [...]

In her essay “Apolonio: un objeto encontrado”—about the painter Luis Luna’s series El libro de Apolonio—the critic and curator Carmen María Jaramillo takes a long look at the work of this Colombian artist. Jaramillo scrutinizes the visual [...]

“Declaración de los intelectuales colombianosdurante el paro general” is an open letter dated May 8, 1957 published in issue No. 13 of the magazine Mito. It is signed by twenty-five people, among them politicians, writers, poets, and artists. [...]

The article “¡Que viva Manrique!” [Hooray for Manrique!], written by the editorial team at the Bogotá newspaper El Espectador and published on April 16, 1996, referred to Pedro Manrique Figueroa. Precursor del Collage en Colombia [Pedro [...]

This article was written by “Eleuterio de Castro,” the pseudonym of the Colombian conservative politician who later became president of Colombia, Laureano Gómez Castro (1950?53) about an exhibition of painting by Ricardo Gómez Campuzano. The [...]

The text, “Joaquín Sorolla: la vida” [Joaquín Sorolla: A Life] is a biographical sketch that sets forth the merits of the painter from Valencia, Joaquín Sorolla. In this article, the Colombian painter and art critic, Roberto Pizano, tells [...]

The article “La pintura francesa en el Pabellón de Bellas Artes”[French Painting at the Fine Arts Pavilion] by Baldomero Sanín Cano describes the Exposición de arte francés [Exhibition of French Art] (1928) held at the Parque de Bolívar in [...]

In the text “Invitación al sacrificio” [An Invitation to Sacrifice], commentator Alejandro Torres discusses the poetic quality of the staging and production in the work of the Mapa Teatro collective directed by Colombian artist Rolf Abderhalden [...]

José Ignacio Roca reviews Cimientos [Foundations], a work by Miler Lagos, for the international magazine Art on Paper that focuses exclusively on works on paper. His first observation is that, in Lagos’ work, the materials contradict their [...]

Jaime Franco, who graduated with degrees in Engineering and Computer Science, went to Paris where he gradually started producing sculpture. His study of different types of surfaces later influenced his paintings that included juxtapositions of layers [...]

In her article “2 Contrasting Exhibits Here,” the North American critic Leslie Judd Portner mentions two exhibitions that were held simultaneously at the Pan-American Union in Washington, featuring the works of the Swiss artist Hans Erni (b. 1909 [...]

Five continents and one city: The Tercer Salón Internacional de Pintura [3rd International Painting Salon], held in Mexico City in 2000, was based on the selections made by five curators, each of whom chose three contemporary artists from their [...]

This document consists of a personal invitation printed on a sheet of paper, in which “a group of people who are residents of the city” invite those who are interested in “any authentic form of culture” to attend a meeting to be held at 6 p.m [...]

The art critic for the New York Times, Holland Cotter, introduces the artist Beatriz González—who is also an art critic—as an artist who defies the conventions imposed by the North American and European art markets and sets her own rules as [...]

In this article, the British critic Rod Mengham reviews Doris Salcedo’s installation Neither (2004) in terms of the Colombian artist’s career, identifying significant changes in her work since 2002. Up until that point, Salcedo had produced [...]

The chapter “Espacios ambientales: la ilusión óptica” in the book Verdades sobre arte, mentiras sobre papel. Encuentros con Santiago Cárdenas y su obra, is an interview done by Jaime Ardila and Camilo Lleras with the painter Santiago Cárdenas [...]

This document is the material that presented the objectives and purposes of the Taller Escuela de Artes Gráficas 4 Rojo, as well as the subjects taught there. This school was founded in 1973 by the members of the group Taller 4 Rojo: Diego Arango, [...]

In the text “Espacios paralelos de recepción,” Jaime Iregui, project director at the gallery Espacio Vacío, writes about the dissemination of two contemporary art projects. He leads off with the Proyecto Tándem (1990−91) as “a space for [...]

In 1947, the Colombian Jesuit Eduardo Ospina wrote a text entitled “Orientaciones: el desnudo en el arte y en la vida” for the Revista Javeriana of Bogotá. In this article, Ospina investigates the origins of the nude, going back to its [...]

The book Conferencias sobre perspectiva y otros asuntos de dibujo, dictadas en el Colegio de San Bartolomé was published in 1881 by the artist and arts promoter Alberto Urdaneta. The publication begins with a quotation from Leonardo Da Vinci on [...]

In this document, Eduardo Ospina, a Jesuit priest, humanist, aesthete and director of the art pages section of the Revista Javeriana (Bogotá), wrote a review discussing the authorship of St. Jerome, [presumed to be] painted by the German painter, [...]

In his book El largo instante de la percepción, Miguel Huertas included a chapter entitled “La pintura de Cárdenas y el ámbito arquitectónico.” One of the specific statements the author makes about the paintings Santiago Cárdenas created in [...]

This article documents a $20,000 prize awarded to the Colombian artist Ana Mercedes Hoyos for her work in the exhibition Espacios ambientales, held by the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá (1968). The work awarded the prize was Blanco sobre blanco, [...]

This text by Eduardo Serrano introduces the work Tres Pizarrones by Santiago Cárdenas, exhibited at the XIV Bienal de São Paulo in September 1977. The catalogue [in which the text was published] provides an overview of the artwork created by Cá [...]

When a posthumous biography of Santiago Martínez Delgado was published, Álvaro Orduz León, whose field was advertising, wrote this article describing the artist’s training and activities in the fields of art and advertising in Colombia. He tells [...]

This article in the Revista Semana discusses the research and sketches being done by Santiago Martínez Delgado in order to portray the congressional session in Cúcuta when the Liberator, Simón Bolívar, and General Francisco Santander took office [...]

In 1978, the poet Mario Rivero, who was the art critic for the Revista Diners for many years, wrote an article on the recent work of Umberto Giangrandi. In his text, Rivero interprets the work of the printmaker born in Italy—residing in Colombia [...]

The first version of the text “Umberto Giangrandi: espacios y espejos de la carrera 12”, by the art theoretician Armando Silva Téllez, was published in the catalogue Sobre el paisaje urbano: La doce. Monotipos y litografías (1979) from the [...]

The brochure Trastorno: diálogo entre Jaime Iregui y Carlos Salas records a conversation held between the two Colombian artists in May 1999, days before their joint exhibition at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Pereira. The Pereira exhibition would [...]

Omar Rayo wrote a series of aphorisms about his Abstract/Geometric artwork Análisis de la suma. They were published in the catalogue for the exhibition “Omar Rayo: Pintura, grabado, dibujo” at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Chapultepec, in Mexico [...]

The Colombian curator and art critic Eduardo Serrano introduced the retrospective exhibition Manolo Vellojín. Dos décadas (1987) at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Bogotá. In this exhibition, the writer points out three “sources” of Abstract art [...]

In “La crítica de arte en el Salón de 1899: una aproximación a los procesos de configuración del campo artístico en Colombia,”historian and museologist William Alfonso López Rosas analyzes the criticism published on the Sección de Bellas [...]

This document is the text that accompanies the audiovisual production Plástica [arte contemporáneo en Colombia] produced by the Colombian Ministerio de Cultura and El Vicio productions (2005). The presentation of the DVD contains a synopsis in [...]

In Eugenio Barney Cabrera: Una posición ante la vida (1980), psychiatrist Álvaro Villar Gaviria analyzes the work of Colombian art historian Eugenio Barney Cabrera on the occasion of his recent death. Villar Gaviria provides a detailed overview of [...]

The text “‘Biogenesis’ (…)” by critic Carolina Ponce de León was featured in the catalogue to the exhibition BIO*. *As in ‘Biography’, ‘Biology’, ‘Biogenesis,’ held at the Colombian Center in New York (1996). In it, Ponce de Le [...]

“Potencias in potencias” is one of the texts that make up the catalogue for the first Experimenta Colombia, Festival Latinoamericano de Artes Electrónicas, held at the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango in Bogotá and the Centro Colombo-Americano of [...]

In 1975, Colombian writer Fausto Panesso published Los Intocables, a book featuring interviews with six major Colombian artists from the 20th century. The interview with sculptor Édgar Negret addresses the artist’s private life, touching on topics [...]

In this short essay, critic Walter Engel attempts to demonstrate that, due to the maturity, breadth, and social content of its painting, Latin America will become a new center for art on a par with Paris. Engel—an Austrian critic who lived in [...]

In this article, the art critic Walter Engel, an Austrian based in Colombia, wrote an overview of how various contemporary artists represent the human figure. To Engel, regarding this genre, in concept “no period or country may claim [it] for [...]

In this letter to Gonzalo Ariza published in Bogotá-based newspaper El Tiempo, Austrian-born critic Walter Engel responds to statements by Ariza, a Colombian artist, published in the same newspaper a few days earlier. Engel asserts that the fact [...]

Colombian artist Gonzalo Ariza addresses three issues in this article. First, the fifth edition of the Salón Nacional de Artistas, which he describes as a “success” in terms of attendance, the participating artists, and the quality of the works [...]

In the article “Pintando con números” published in Bogotá-based newspaper El Tiempo on October 13, 1991, art critic José Hernán Aguilar reviews a solo exhibition of work by Carlos Salas Silva. The exhibition was held at Gaula, a venue that [...]

The article “50 kilómetros de arte ‘computado’. La obra de Manzur” by journalist Alegre Levy was published in Bogotá-based newspaper El Tiempo on November 20, 1972. It is a review of the exhibition Manzur that would open the [...]

This text is a section of the catalogue to the exhibition of photography that accompanied the Simposio de Justicia Restaurativa y Paz en Colombia held in Cali in 2005. In it, art critic and curator María Iovino introduces the work of Colombian [...]

“Un sueño de ti” is the title of the curatorial text written by English critic Tom Morton for the exhibition Diva’s Life (2007) featuring work by Colombian artist Juan Pablo Echeverri. The show was held at Site Gallery in the [...]

Susan Best, the North American researcher and art critic, suggests that Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological reflections on perception and aesthetic experience are especially well suited to interpreting (non-representational) contemporary works [...]

The article “Once antioqueños en el M.A.M.” by Eduardo Serrano Rueda discusses the exhibition of the same name held at the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá in 1975. That show featured eleven artists from the city of Medellín, capital of the [...]

In a critical overview of the work of Colombian printmaker Augusto Rendón, Colombian art historian Álvaro Medina divides Rendón’s production into four periods. During the first period (1962-1964), Rendón’s work veered away from abstraction. [...]

In this article, published in the Vida Cultural-Exposiciones [Cultural Life – Exhibitions] section of the Bogotá newspaper El Tiempo, the caricaturist and critic Jorge Moreno Clavijo reviews the exhibition of Álvaro Herrán’s “informalist [...]