Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This lengthy article discusses the main doctrinaire questions that concerned Joaquín Torres García, stressing his personal view of the “American race” as a transplant with no roots, for which he proposes the development of a collective, “ [...]

In this essay, the visual artist Manuel Quintana Castillo suggests that early twentieth century art represents the demise of the art that preceded it. He explains that modern art promotes communication, encourages personal choice as the basis of [...]

For the author, Carlos Reygada, the works exhibited exemplify a presumptuous attitude that merely imitates the “penultimate” European trends, although without first grounding them in a serious study of the pictorial material. In his judgment, [...]

In this article, the Peruvian poet César Vallejo reflects on the genre of portrayal, referring specifically to a bust of himself that was produced by the Spanish sculptor José de Creeft and exhibited at the 1925 International Exhibition in Paris. [...]

This text is the editorial published in the first issue of Espacio, the journal launched by the Lima-based group of the same name in 1947. In it, the collective takes a radical stance in favor of the association of artistic and social avant-gardes. [...]

This text is the message delivered by painter Sérvulo Gutiérrez to the first convention organized by the Asociación Nacional de Escritores y Artistas (ANEA); the event was held in Lima in September 1955. In his statement, Gutiérrez asserts that, [...]

In this essay Jorge Falcón discusses the exhibition of works by Lajos d’Ebneth, the Hungarian artist who lived in Peru, at the Galería de Lima in August 1950. Falcón states objectively that art is, above all, a product in search of “its client [...]

In this article César Moro discusses De Manet a nuestros días, the exhibition of French painting organized by the Municipalidad de Lima. The poet and artist describes French painting as “the best” in the world because of the fusion that [...]

In this text, Luis Miró Quesada Garland enumerates the main formal virtues of the works in the exhibition of Surrealism held at the Galería de Lima in July 1954. In his view, the show reflects none of the movement’s initial aggressiveness in [...]

In this article Jorge Falcón reviews De Manet a nuestros días, the exhibition of French painting that opened at the Municipalidad de Lima on March 15, 1950. According to the writer and militant communist, the exhibition’s local reception—which [...]

Contrary to the arguments put forth by opponents of “non-figurative” painting, this article maintains that a country’s degree of cultural evolution is in no way tied to its adherence or lack of adherence to a given artistic tendency. While, the [...]

In response to the aesthetic opinions expressed by the architect Luis Miró Quesada Garland, who vehemently denied any influence between society and art, the author states that it is obvious that “the great art movements have had an influence on [...]

This is the general introduction to the survey about “classical” painting and “modern” painting that was published over the course of several weeks in the “Cátedra Libre” section of the Sunday supplement of El Comercio, a Lima newspaper [...]

The author argues that the confusion between the terms “universal” and “cosmopolitan” was caused by “the disagreeable and audacious accusation of the ‘made in Paris’ [artists],” who oppose the idea of a national art. In his opinion, [...]

This is an essay by Luis Hernando Giraldo that was published in the catalogue for La sensación del tiempo humano. Homenaje a Giorgione, the exhibition presented in March 1999 at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Bogotá. Giraldo mentions anecdotes and [...]

In the book Problemas sociales en las artes plásticas [Social Problems in the Visual Arts], the critic Walter Engel reviews different periods in the universal history of art, discussing how some cultures and artists depict social issues?such as [...]

This article, published in 1940 by the young painter Fernando Botero, offers us a sample of the intellectual interests pursued by the young adults of Medellín during that period. Full of enthusiasm and a basic knowledge obtained from trade books, [...]

In this article published in Revista Espiral in 1945, critic Luis Vidales Jaramillo responds to the missive that Basque sculptor Jorge de Oteiza addressed to artists from the Americas, published a few months earlier in Revista de la Universidad del [...]

In this extensive article, Spanish sculptor Jorge de Oteiza examines the connections between art from the Americas and art from Europe, urging American artists not to fall into a fanatical independence and eschew the essential influence of European [...]

In this article, the Colombian writer and critic Luis Vidales evaluates aesthetic methods based on spiritual causality, as distinct from positivist doctrines that seek causality in external phenomena. He suggests that style—that is, the technical [...]

This article provides a sociological assessment of Cubism on the basis of the idea that all art reflects the needs of its times. It questions those who have condemned Cubism because it changed the rules of classical representation formulated in the [...]

In this article César Rengifo explains why the art world is disappointed in abstract formalism, and notes a resurgence of the realist movement. He refers to statements made or positions taken by artists such as Salvador Dalí, Giorgio de Chirico, [...]

In Alejandro Lora Risco’s opinion the exhibition of contemporary Italian paintings deserves to be discussed in extremely positive terms because it provides the residents of Lima with an opportunity to get to know—and therefore promote—non- [...]

In the final article in his series “Conceptos concretos sobre la pintura abstracta,” the Venezuelan journalist and writer Miguel Otero Silva refers to a poll conducted by the French magazine Preuves [Proofs], in which the forty-eight young [...]

The article in which Choque [Shock] stated its basic principles included a promise to use more graphics to promote the visual arts. However, the four large pages in the first issue contained a mere couple of boxes with a drawing by Jesús [...]

Choque [Shock], the publication of the Alianza de Trabajadores del Arte Plásticas (ATAP) [Alliance of Visual Arts Workers] sets forth the opinions of Diego Rivera regarding art for art’s sake, which he considers “sandez sentimental [...]

In this long, interesting article, José Revueltas ponders the nature of words, how they are used and how, over time, their meaning changes. As an example, he mentions the expression “épater le bourgeois” [to frighten the bourgeois] that was in [...]

Juan Larrea wrote these words while looking at the panel shown by Joan Miró, the famous Spanish painter, in his country’s pavilion at the International Exhibition in Paris in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War. Though it is a product of the [...]

This article was written by Alejando Otero, on behalf of the Los Disidentes group (Paris, 1950); in the first paragraphs, it challenges the show De Manet a nuestros dias, which had been presented in various countries in South America; the French [...]

The statements by Pablo Picasso are a highlight of the catalog assembled for a late exhibition held in Picasso’s honor in Mexico City in 1944. The texts for the catalog were assigned to four other artists: Carlos Mérida, the painter and muralist [...]

After receiving a Guggenheim fellowship to travel to the United States in 1943, Buenos Aires-born Mauricio Lasansky spent eight months working at Stanley William Hayter’s Atelier 17 in New York City. In this essay, Creighton Gilbert examines how [...]

Antonio Berni writes about developments in modern art and of formalism in art. He analyzes the artists who adhere to Nuevo Realismo [New Realism] and discusses the meaning of that movement [...]

Damián Bayón provides a far-reaching reading of Cubism on the basis of an exhibition held at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris that ran from February to April 1953. Before delving into specific concerns, he explains the overall perspective of his [...]

In this article, Mário de Andrade discusses Cândido Portinari’s painting, and explains that his heterogeneity of styles, aesthetic and technical concepts and, of course, virtuosity are integral components of the drama of being a contemporary [...]

This is a review of an exhibition of paintings by young Spanish artists living in exile in Mexico. It remarks on the group’s preference for depth over variety, in keeping with their vision of pondering deeply all aspects of their lives. Their [...]

SPAM (Sociedade Pró-Arte Moderna) was founded in December 1932 in São Paulo. Its stated goals were to create closer artistic ties, and relationships between artists and the public. The catalogue for the SPAM 1ª Exposição de Arte Moderna includes [...]

This essay by the painter Lasar Segall, which was published in the book entitled A comunidade judaica no Brasil, includes excerpts from two of his earlier essays about Jewish artists and their work, written in 1939 and 1940. Segall’s use of the [...]

This is a review of the exhibition of drawings and watercolors by Franz Weissmann at the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes. Bonfanti detects the influence of Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and Pablo Picasso in these pieces, and sees in Weissmann’s work [...]

On these scant three sheets of paper, Diego Rivera explores a wide range of ideas on the subject of art. This document is important because of the depth of Rivera’s ruminations on aesthetic emotions, color, form, texture, touch, feelings, and [...]

Justino Fernández provides a roundup of the exhibitions going on in Paris at the same time as the Mexican exhibition in France. Comparing European painting with Mexican, he argues that from the beginning, Mexican painting developed its own language [...]

This article reports on the success of the exhibition of ancient and modern Mexican art that was presented in Paris and then shipped to Stockholm. In Fernando Gamboa’s opinion, the exhibition was a revelation. The Parisian press described it as the [...]

This analysis of the meaning of the Cubist rupture—that was published in Frente a Frente [Face to Face], the journal of the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR) [League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists]—considers the fact that [...]

Germán Quiroga Galdo believes that modern Latin American painting could well be considered “the finest and most complete” example of art that was influenced by the works of Pablo Picasso. Galdo thinks that Picasso showed the Indian-American [...]

This is a review of the exhibition Diego Rivera. 50 años de su labor artística [Diego Rivera: 50 Years of Artistry], held at the Museo de Artes Plásticas in the Palacio de Bellas Artes, and which analyzed the aesthetic “influences” of his [...]

This is a collection of articles by David Alfaro Siqueiros in which he restates the principles of an art about war, linking it to the great artistic traditions expressed in the work of artists such as Dr. Atl, José Clemente Orozco, and Diego Rivera [...]

Letras de México, the magazine directed by Octavio G. Barreda, devoted its May 1938 issue to André Breton and Surrealism. It published several of his essays: an excerpt of “Les vases communicantes” [Communicating Vessels], “Le merveilleux [...]

According to Rafael Heliodoro Valle, the distinguishing feature of the Surrealist movement is that it has “old roots” that set it apart from the rest of the avant-garde. And that, “Mexico, [which] is not a myth,” but has a mythical past has [...]

This valiant text discusses the inauguration of the Exposición Bienal Hispanoamericana (1951) [Hispano-American Biennial Exhibition] in Francisco Franco’s Madrid. It was organized by the Fascist government of the Caudillo por la Gracia de Dios to [...]

In this article, divided into eight sections, Wolfgang Paalen identifies the most representative image from a number of different periods, reviewing the Middle-Ages period, the Renaissance, and Modern times. He notes that, when faced with a radical [...]

During the 1940s, Carlos Mérida’s reflections tend toward abstract art and its protagonists. In this article, the painter states that for those who are not familiar with abstract painting, a symbolic form of interpretation is the most logical. [...]