Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

The magazine Mensaje, devoted to the dissemination of Brazilian culture in Uruguay, dedicated its twenty-fourth issue, published December 1948, to an analysis of work by Candido Portinari, just at the conclusion of the Brazilian artist’s one-year [...]

The magazine Mensaje, dedicated to the dissemination of Brazilian culture in Uruguay, devoted its twenty-fourth publication in December of 1948, to the analysis of the work of Candido Portinari, at a time when the Brazilian artist was at the end of [...]

In this article, Guido Castillo does not launch an all-out attack on Cándido Portinari because he recognizes the Brazilian artist’s “human values” and his compassion for the suffering endured by some people in the world. But [...]

This article aligns itself among the critiques in 1947 on the work by the artist Cândido Portinari during his stay in Uruguay. They were carried out mainly by the TTA [Taller Torres García]. Alfonso Domínguez was opposed to the deformations and [...]

Cipriano Vitureira was one of the main intellectuals who feted Candido Portinari during his visit to Uruguay in 1947. On the whole, the Brazilian painter was well liked by members of the PCU (Partido Comunista Uruguayo) and artists working in the [...]

The Argentinean visual artist Antonio Berni frequently visited the city of Montevideo from 1938, producing various exhibitions; in this article, he expressed his social and political vision of mural art, attributing it with a “constructive” [...]

In his weekly column in the El Comercio newspaper, Luis Miró Quesada Garland discusses the relationship between ethics and art as part of the debate prompted by the survey about “classical” painting and “modern” painting that was sponsored [...]

This document is a short manifesto written in 1959 by the Argentinean collective, Grupo Espartaco. The writers denote the importance of art as revolutionary and state that their mission is to integrate the visual arts with political action and social [...]

The poet from Recife, Manuel Bandeira, was the model for two portraits, one by Cândido Portinari, the other by Frederico Maron, both of which were exhibited at the Salão de 31 de la Escola Nacional de Belas Artes (Rio de Janeiro). He [Bandeira] [...]

In this text, Mário Pedrosa offers a critique of the Tiradentes mural by Candido Portinari, commenting on the event represented and the monumental nature of the work. He analyzes the form and composition of the mural, concluding that it lacks unity [...]

In order to introduce the Brazilian painter, Candido Portinari, whose exhibition at MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) in New York had just been announced, the writer of this article looks back to the painter’s childhood. The exhibition is a significant [...]

In this article, Milton Brown claims that North American interest in and awareness of the work of Brazilian painter Candido Portinari is largely due to the impact of Portinari of Brazil, his solo exhibition at MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) in New York [...]

This text records comments on the success of Cândido Portinari’s exhibition opening in New York at the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art), achievemnent reinforced with his exhibition in Detroit and with the murals displayed at the World’s Fair in New [...]

The Brazilian intellectual Afonso Arinos discusses the artist Candido Portinari’s popular sensibility that emanates from his works on easel or on his murals. Refuting an argument first made by Mário de Andrade, Arinos believes that Portinari is a [...]

In this magazine article, Katharine Sater introduces the Brazilian painter Candido Portinari to the North American public as “a real bombshell.” She is referring to the works presented at the Riverside Museum at an exhibition during the 1939 New [...]

In this text critic Mário Pedrosa discusses the Tiradentes mural by Candido Portinari, commissioned by the Colégio dos Cataguases (in the state of Minas Gerais) to be created in a building by architect Oscar Niemeyer. The mural represents the key [...]

This essay is about the proposal of the author Gilberto Freyre about the need for teaching the sociology of art within a planned fine art curriculum, highlighting the importance of this and anthropology. In his opinion, one must try to understand a [...]

The author identifies the different phases in the evolution of Candido Portinari’s work; he establishes them between the artist of the 1930s, who condemns social injustice in Brazil—in works such as Café and also in representations of migrant [...]

This is a critique by Mário Pedrosa’s of the Primeira Missa no Brasil by Candido Portinari. Pedrosa compares this work to one by Victor Meirelles painted nearly one century earlier on the same topic. He writes that Portinari opts for a visual [...]

In this newspaper article, Gilberto Freyre reviews the work of Candido Portinari, whom he considers to be a “genuine representative of Brazilian culture.” According to Freyre, Portinari’s painting expresses a true image of Brazil that should be [...]

In response to the article “Sociólogos versus Pintores” written by the art critic Mário Pedrosa, the Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre speaks up in defense of the painter Candido Portinari. Freyre believes that this painter was treated [...]

With this essay, American artist Rockwell Kent introduced Cândido Portinari to U.S. audiences in the context of cultural diplomacy efforts by the United States to establish closer and friendlier relations among countries of the Western Hemisphere [...]

In this essay, the well-known Argentinean critic Jorge Romero Brest attempts to assess national problems as they were understood by the most famous Brazilian artists, touching on a raw nerve concerning the differences between the art produced in [...]

This document is the response from a group of intellectuals who wrote a letter in support of a call by the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral—the pseudonym of the educator and diplomat Lucila Godoy Alcayaga—for a Continental Conference on Culture in [...]

The Puerto Rican critic Efraín Barradas writes about the full schedule of exhibitions in the United States, where he lives; according to him very few include Latin American art, since little is known about Latin American artists and their work. Be [...]

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 article is about the Salão Nacional de Belas Artes that was organized by the architect Lúcio Costa; it explains that the organizing committee decided that no submission would be rejected. This prompted the “old guard” artists to boycott [...]

This is a speech given by writer Aníbal Machado at the close of the Exposição de Arte Social, which he jointly organized with poet Álvaro Moreyra and artist Tomás Santa Rosa at the Clube de Cultura Moderna in Rio de Janeiro in 1935. Machado [...]

Gilberto Freyre, the sociologist from Pernambuco, discusses the I Congresso Afro-Brasileiro, held in Recife in 1934. Freyre briefly refers to comments and discussions concerning the viability of the meeting and the informality of the event, among [...]

This essay was included in the catalogue for the Exposição de Pintura Brasileira held in London in 1944. Organized by the critic Rubén Navarra, the show presented a broad selection of Brazilian paintings that covered the transition from the 1930s [...]

The noted Brazilian intellectual, Mário de Andrade presents Candido Portinari’s drawings for the Ministério da Educação e Saúde building in Rio de Janeiro, the signature project of Brazilian modern architecture. De Andrade explains that the [...]

In April 1942, in celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Semana de Arte Moderna [Modern Art Week] at the Teatro Municipal in São Paulo in 1922, Mário de Andrade gave a talk at the library of the Ministério das Relações [...]

After criticizing the selection made in the United States to represent Brazil at the Latin American Exhibition of Visual Arts that was held in New York during the 1939 World’s Fair, the great Brazilian polymath, Mário de Andrade continues by [...]

Aracy Amaral presents the art of the Mexican muralists as the first manifestation of contemporary artists in the Americas which drew on the artists’ own local realities. She notes particularly the interest in muralist art by Brazilian artists such [...]

Luis Felipe Noé analizes the work of Argentinian set designer Gastón Breyer as the manifestation of the contemporary visual arts experience. Regarding the work of Kantor, Noé affirms that it possesses classical rigor and freedom of line, similar [...]