Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

The National War Propaganda Department, on behalf of Cuba’s Ministry of National Defense, published the script of the lecture to be delivered by David Alfaro Siqueiros on May 8, 1943, in Havana. The script provides a summary of his life from 1909 [...]

Juan B. Climent interviews Manuel Rodríguez Lozano, who leaves no doubt about his position regarding the figures of Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros in Mexican art. Lozano talks about the need to vindicate the native figure stemming from [...]

In this interview, David Alfaro Siqueiros expressed his views on the Biennial. He began by critiquing the paintings exhibited by the United States, and warned Latin American painters against imitating hybrid ideas that made no sense, such as Tachisme [...]

The exhibition at Perls Gallery in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, presented Rufino Tamayo as one of the four great Mexican artists. His works were part of the great modernism and, unlike those of his colleagues, no Communist symbols could be found in [...]

In this short article by Antonio Rodríguez, the art critic shows his support for an article published in the previous issue of the journal Espacios by the artist Roberto Berdecio, in defense of “social painting.” Rodríguez believes that “ [...]

Antonio Rodríguez portrayed painter David Alfaro Siqueiros as an avant-garde artist because of his approach to using new pictorial materials. In this interview, Siqueiros declared that contemporary painters remained “impassive before the progress [...]

Juan Grela speaks about painting in the city of Rosario at his lecture, beginning with the Mutualidad [Society]. He refers to his respect for the university and his long-standing relationship with Amigos del Arte [Friends of Art]. The author tells [...]

In this book, Margarita Nelken, a Spanish critic based in Mexico, discusses the development of Expressionism in Mexican art. She argues that Mexican Expressionism has a native origin that, with the passage of time, has been enriched by the different [...]

After discussing how busy Germán List Arzubide—the Estridentista from old times—kept in New York’s workers’ media, Ben Ossa mentions the ideas suggested to LEAR by the “Congreso de Artistas Americanos (de Estados Unidos)” [American [...]

David Alfaro Siqueiros writes a letter to Teresa León from a military command post in Spain during the Civil War, telling her of his combat experiences at the front and comparing procedures there with artistic work. He sees that in both there are [...]

A letter dated June 10, 1958, from Maria Luisa Mendoza to Fernando Gamboa (who was in Brussels at the time) took the form of a progress report. Mendoza, a consultant on the art integration project Centro Médico Nacional [National Medical Center], [...]

In 1964, journalist Julio Scherer García received the manuscript of David Alfaro Siqueiros’s autobiography. Three years earlier, in 1961, Scherer García had gone to Lecumberri Prison and managed to obtain some 387 pages. Siqueiros asked him to [...]

This document is a letter sent by two Uruguayan intellectuals to David Alfaro Siqueiros, who had been held at Lecumberri jail in Mexico City since 1960; the letter was sent through the artist’s wife, Angélica Arenal. It was a message of solidarity [...]

With his manifesto, David Alfaro Siqueiros sought to position the avant-garde project anew, doing away with belated modernism and impressionism, in favor of Cubo-Futurist expressions and the incipient eruption of Dadaism. This eagerness for [...]

This printed poster is divided into two parts. In the upper left-hand corner, a black-and-white photograph shows a close-up of a man behind bars looking straight ahead. In the background there is a two-story structure with white walls. To the right [...]

This is a newspaper review of “El arte para la victoria y la pintura mexicana moderna,” the lecture given by David Alfaro Siqueiros at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes de Lima in March 1943. The painter and political activist informed his [...]

This document is the first section of Margarita Nelken’s book Pintores de México [Painters of Mexico], which she wrote by commission of the Secretaría de Educación Pública [SEP, Ministry of Public Education]. Nevertheless, it was never [...]

Author Dorothy Chaplik provides an overview of the life and art of Alejandro Romero, a recognized Chicago-based Mexican painter and muralist. She traces his artistic career from his childhood in Tabasco and youth and Mexico City, when he first [...]

In 1950, David Alfaro Siqueiros gave a lecture at the Palacio de Bellas Artes [Palace of Fine Arts] in which he analyzed [the work of] Mexican painters such as Diego Rivera and Rufino Tamayo. Siqueiros concluded that they do not belong to the Mexican [...]

According to this article, David Alfaro Siqueiros had just founded the Centro de Arte Realista [Center for Realist Art] that was intended to function as a “school” or “institute” in which research into techniques, pedagogical theory, geometry [...]

In the symposium entitled Hacia otra ruta hacia Siqueiros [Towards Another Route Towards Siqueiros] and organized by Curare, Esther Acevedo presented a paper in which she dealt with landscapes in the work of David Alfaro Siqueiros. This facet of the [...]

This essay by Tomás Ybarra-Frausto is included in the 1981 catalogue of selected works from the Mexican Museum in San Francisco, California. Ybarra-Frausto presents a historiography documenting the trajectory of Mexican American artistic traditions [...]

María Izquierdo describes the customs of the inhabitants of the small mining village of Chillán, Chile, which was damaged by a strong earthquake in January 1939. Mexico declared its support for Chile, presenting Chillán with the construction of [...]

Painter Pascual Navarro refutes the views of anthropologist and artist Gilberto Antolínez regarding the proposed reforms in the Academia de Artes Plásticas y Aplicadas in Venezuela in 1945. He objects to Antolínez’s prejudice against foreign [...]

In this essay, Joaquín Torres García attempts to link this sociopolitical doctrine with that of modern art after presenting a succinct historical review starting from “primitive communism” up through the Marxist doctrine. He does so by [...]

Amaro Martínez presents an aesthetic and political critique of David Alfaro Siqueiros’s work and political agenda. The author defends art as an expression of man; he considers proletariat art absurd. At the same time that he defends the concept of [...]

The Nazi-affiliated nationalist newspaper Crisol [Melting pot] writes about the exhibition of Mexican artist David Alfaro Siqueiros that took place at Amigos del Arte [Friends of Art], a liberal institution that promotes the modernization of the [...]

Oswald de Andrade was invited by the American Contemporary Arts to give this lecture in São Paulo in 1944, in which he discusses the two characters he created for a series of novels (that was never completed) entitled Marco Zero. He used these [...]

The text praises the exhibition organized by Francisco Llobet at Amigos del Arte [Friends of Art] with works by Jean-Louis Forain lend from Argentinean collections. Forain’s works are considered as real art, in comparison with those previously [...]

Art critic Ceferino Palencia identified the advantages of contests such as the one held within the context of the Inter-American Biennial of Painting and Printmaking. In the first place, he said, such contests gave painters the possibility of [...]

In this essay, Ricardo Romo discusses the vibrant tradition of Chicano muralism, proposing as his goals both an examination of the historical evolution of murals painted in borderland states across the United States (California, Arizona, New Mexico, [...]

The painter and engraver Fanny Rabel directs an ironic, open letter to Diego Rivera because of the declarations he had made four months earlier in the same publication. [See 794985] In the name of the young generations, Rabel asks Rivera if a change [...]

In 1944, David Alfaro Siqueiros wrote an open letter to José Clemente Orozco in which he admitted that he could identify the different stages of his work. Siqueiros begins by saying that an artist’s work is not an individual creation but the [...]

This is an open letter written by David Alfaro Siqueiros to the Minister of Education Jaime Torres Bodet that explains the discrepancy between his humanistic, revolutionary discourse on the one hand, and the function of the Dirección de Educación [...]

The journalist Luis Suárez complains about the selection of paintings made by the “International committee of experts designated by the general commissioners of the Pavilions of certain number of countries with some importance in modern art,” [...]

In the Coloquio III [Symposium III], titled “Mexicanismo y Universalidad” [Mexicanism and Universality], Rufino Tamayo criticizes the “patriotism” of some of his contemporaries, explaining that Mexican art should not be limited to recognition [...]

This article discusses a plan by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City to purchase works by José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, Rufino Tamayo, Jesús Guerrero Galván, and Juan Soriano. The chosen artists’ formal and artistic qualities are [...]

In this interview, David Alfaro Siqueiros states that in the exhibition Arte mexicano: desde tiempos precolombinos hasta nuestros días [Mexican Art: From Pre-Colombian Times to Our Days], contemporary Mexican painting had generated both supportive [...]

The Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (INBA) and the Organizing Committee of the III Congreso Latinoamericano de Ginecología y Obstetricia [3rd Latin American Obstetrics and Gynecology Conference] organized an art contest as one of the cultural [...]

In his famous “Manifiesto 1,” Joaquín Torres García repudiates the article published in the Confederación de Trabajadores Intelectuales del Uruguay’s journal Movimiento. Torres García’s text, in turn, occasioned “Contestando a Torres [...]

The Comisión Nacional de Pintura Mural [National Commission for Mural Painting], which consisted of Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, was founded in late August 1947. The Commission’s goal was to stimulate and [...]

In this biographical sketch, Loló de la Torriente defines the aspiration of David Alfaro Siqueiros as wanting to be recognized as a leader of socialist fighters rather than as a painter. The text is divided into four parts: Siqueiros, the man; the [...]

The questionnaire consists of six questions concerning the importance of social art in Mexico. The questions are as follows: Do you believe that the function of art in our time is to deliver an eloquent message of social content to the people? Do you [...]

Carlos Mérida was one of the first artists to reply to Antonio Rodríguez’s questionnaire. The Guatemalan painter, a naturalized citizen of Mexico, agreed with David Alfaro Siqueiros regarding the use of new materials. Nevertheless, he doubted [...]

The Argentine poet and journalist, Raúl González Tuñón, mounts a defense of the work of the Mexican artist, David Alfaro Siqueiros, supporting his position of taking artwork to the street. The writer comments on Siqueiros’s lectures at the [...]

This article calls attention to the agitation produced by the work of Mexican painter David Alfaro Siqueiros among Argentinean artists. It warns about the possibility of an attempt against his works by reactionary painters, although it does not name [...]

Juan Pérez [John Doe], pseudonym of an unknown author, writes about the political content in David Alfaro Siqueiros’s work, emphasizing that muralism is a tool of the proletarian revolution. The anonymous author expresses the local Communist [...]

This article suggests that the paintings David Alfaro Siqueiros produced after 1936—that is, the ones he painted after traveling through South America and the United States—should be classified as being from a “third period.” Most of the [...]

This one-and-a-half column article written in 1944 by Colombian artist Ignacio Gómez Jaramillo precedes Mexican artist David Alfaro Siqueiros’s text, “Finalidad técnico-social del nuevo arte mural en América.” Together they comprise two [...]

The author tells humorous anecdotes about the life of David Alfaro Siqueiros, beginning with an early one when his followers went to meet him at the train station upon his arrival in Europe. They were mighty surprised when—thinking they were to [...]