Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this essay “El caso Simón Bolívar o el arte como zona de disturbios” (The Simón Bolívar Case, or Art as a Site of Civil Unrest), Nelly Richard addresses the outrage expressed in the Santiago press and by the general [...]

The essay “La puesta en escena internacional del arte latinoamericano: montaje, representaciones” [The International Staging of Latin American Art: Assembly, Presentations], by the French-Chilean cultural critic Nelly Richard, is in the archives [...]

In “Destrucción, reconstrucción y desconstrucciones” (Destruction, Reconstruction, and Deconstructions), Nelly Richard critically reviews the cultural situation in Chile during the military dictatorship (1973–90). It was, in her [...]

The author, Nelly Richard, suggests an analogy between Galería Metropolitana’s location in an outlying area of the city (Comuna Pedro Aguirre Cerda in Santiago) and its editorial approach. She uses symbolic opposites, such as center and [...]

In this article, which appeared in the sixth catalogue for the Festival Franco-Chileno de Video Arte (1986), Nelly Richard discusses how video was used for artistic purposes in Chile. From a theoretical standpoint, she explores the experimental use [...]

Nelly Richard discusses the work of the following Chilean photographers: Gonzalo Díaz, Eduardo Vilches, Alicia Villarreal, Enrique Zamudio, and Alfredo Jaar. Richard explains how each of these artists uses and contextualizes photography, and [...]

Nelly Richard discusses the use of the human body as a support for a work of art. She refers to two art actions beginning in 1975. One of them was El perchero by Carlos Leppe; in the other, Raúl Zurita burned his face, photographed it, and [...]

Nelly Richard focuses on a number of artists as part of her assessment of the status of painting in Chile during the 1970s and 1980s. She discusses a selection of works by a group of artists who take a critical approach to the painting tradition, [...]

In her essay “Trama urbana y fugas utópicas” (Urban Fabric and Utopian Flights), Nelly Richard discusses CADA (Colectivo Acciones de Arte) two decades after the group launched its program of urban actions in Santiago. She describes the [...]

This is Nelly Richard’s “Introduction” to her book Margins and Institutions. Art in Chile Since 1973, in which she outlines the concept of the Escena de Avanzada. The “advanced scene” flourished in an unofficial sector [...]

In this essay Nelly Richard discusses the connection between writing and the reader, the implicit recipient of a text. In this review of the reader, she takes a sociological approach in describing and assessing the target of a text; counter to that [...]

   In her essay “Sobre arte y política(s): contraoficialidad, poder y lenguajes,” written for the exhibition catalogue Cirugía plástica (Plastic Surgery), Nelly Richard reflects on the socio-political and [...]

In this text Nelly Richard identifies some of Walter Benjamin’s ideas that, in her opinion, are relevant to works produced in Chile during the military dictatorship (1973–90) and the start of what was known as the “democratic [...]

Nelly Richard   discusses C.A.D.A. (Colectivo  Acciones de Arte), taking a critical look at the art action group’s relationship to what she called the Escena de Avanzada, a name she coined based on the group’s strategies [...]

Nelly Richard writes about Eugenio Dittborn’s airmail paintings, discussing the folds and marks that are created as they travel through the postal system and what they mean. In her opinion, these “production marks” should be [...]

In her essay Chile en la XII Bienal de París (Chile at the Twelfth Paris Biennial), Nelly Richard compares the history of Latin American art to the history of art (in its most visible European and North American versions) on the occasion of [...]

In her review of Love, a 1988 painting by Juan Domingo Dávila, Nelly Richard refers to ideas she had previously explored in La cita amorosa, jointly published with the artist a few years earlier. Harking back to that publication allows the [...]

Nelly Richard addresses three different points in her review of Carlos Leppe’s work. She begins by noting his embrace of international art referents, highlighting his exclusion on the grounds of “being Latin American.” In her [...]

Nelly Richard discusses the artistic aspects of the genre of works by Eugenio Dittborn known as Pintura aeropostal (Airmail Painting). Rather than focusing on a particular work, Richard contemplates the artist’s process and its effects. While [...]

This text by Nelly Richard is based on a collection of quotes, which trace an argumentative arc that express her ideas about the exhibition she is reviewing. She also discusses certain situations in the art field at the time that show how the first [...]

In this essay, Nelly Richard discusses some of the “art actions” that Lotty Rosenfeld—a member of the art action group known as CADA—created on public roads and highways in Chile. Rosenfeld altered traffic signage and lines on [...]

Nelly Richard ponders the state of contemporary art in Latin American cultures, both in terms of its circulation and regarding its frame of references. She wonders whether international themes and subjects are repeated at a local level or whether new [...]

In this text Nelly Richard offers a diagnostic on feminism in Chile and its connections to social sciences and art. The author refers to a Feminism (with a capital F) that developed in the social sciences, which became the predominant discourse and [...]

This is Nelly Richard’s critical review of La pintura en Chile: desde la Colonia hasta 1981 (Painting in Chile: From the Colonial Period to 1981), the book cowritten by Milán Ivelic and Gaspar Galaz. Richard takes issue with a number of [...]

In this essay, Nelly Richard discusses Carlos Altamirano’s exhibition, Tránsito suspendido. The text includes aphorisms that refer to the organizing structure of the review. It also takes an experimental approach by alternating words in [...]

Nelly Richard discusses Gonzalo Díaz’s painting, which she sees as an example of a revitalizing trend in Chilean visual arts that, in her opinion, had been waning in recent art exhibitions during that time. Richard claims that Dí [...]

In this text the cultural critic Nelly Richard poses two questions: What strategy is being used? And what is the policy as regards to a cultural approach? Richard’s questions inform her analysis of the ideas underpinning the Provincia señ [...]

In the document El arte en Chile: una historia que se recita, otra que se construye (Art in Chile: One Historical Account That Is Recited, Another That Is Constructed), Nelly Richard discusses the historical skullduggery involved in that particular [...]

In this essay Nelly Richard addresses the new approach to painting taken by some artists in response to what she referred to as the Escena de Avanzada. In her review of the BENMAYOR/DIAZ/DITTBORN/DUCLOS/LEPPE exhibition, Richard discusses the [...]

Nelly Richard writes about Juan Domingo Dávila’s paintings, which rely on quotes, referring to the concept of “bodies” in each of the nine sections in the text. Richard explains how quotes can dismantle the whole and, with it [...]

In a series of eight notes, Nelly Richard discusses Chilean artworks and the artists who produced them during the late 1970s. Her use of “notes” indicates that she does not intend to present a uniform view of cultural projects or an all- [...]

Nelly Richard discusses the background that inspired the works that Francisco Brugnoli and Virginia Errázuriz presented at the Paisaje / Brugnoli / Errázuriz exhibition. Richard analyzes the works and notes that, despite the artists& [...]