Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this article the writer Mariano Picón Salas provides a concise summary of what he believes to be the most distinctive aspects of Latin America in the first half of the twentieth century as viewed, in particular, from the perspective of a cultural [...]

In this text, Mariano Picón-Salas weighs the benefits of the dominance of ritual in Mexican society versus that of economics in the United States. He begins by arguing that the protestant emphasis on the individual has shaped a modern society North [...]

In this text, Mariano Picón-Salas praises the greatness of Diego Rivera’s art and recounts the outsized presence of his persona in public life. He begins by recounting how, like the great masters of the Italian Renaissance, the figure of Rivera [...]

In this text, Mariano Picón-Salas describes how a series of murals by José Clemente Orozco presents a powerful myth about Mexican culture. Picón-Salas begins by praising Orozco as among the most significant artists of his era, and by tracing the [...]

Mariano Picón Salas produced this biographical sketch of Lola Cueto on the occasion of her visit to Venezuela for the exhibition of her collection of prints and a program of puppet shows. He discusses the artist’s life and work from three separate [...]

Critic Mariano Picón-Salas interprets the model proposed by José Enrique Rodó in Ariel (1900) as a symbol of the antagonism between Latin America and the United States. This opposition, caused by the imperialist thirst of the United States and [...]

Mariano Picón-Salas discusses the processes and reasons for the “integration” and the “disintegration” of the Latin American peoples during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, starting with their struggles for independence through the [...]

The writer Mariano Picón Salas’ begins his essay on the artist Armando Reverón by affirming the powerful influence the artist has in Venezuela at the time; he then examines the myth of the “Illustrious Robinson,” a myth fostered by the people [...]