Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

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 [...]

In a text on the drawings and prints of José Luis Cuevas written in 1985, the art historian Catalina Banko compares his work to that of the Mexican muralists in order to show the major differences between them. To accomplish this, the Venezuelan [...]

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], [...]

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 an attempt at historical reconstruction, and due to the intense political situation in Venezuela (between 1974 and 1978), art critic Roberto Montero Castro attempts to detect the presence of “the Venezuelan identity” in certain artistic [...]

This article documents an interview between Esaú Quíroz, a participant in the Chicano art movement, and the Mexican artist José Luis Cuevas. Quíroz and Cuevas discuss the present direction of the Chicano art movement, which Quiroz defined as [...]

Antonio Rodríguez begins his text by justifying, to a degree, José Luís Cuevas’ harsh denunciation of the Mexican muralism movement to Marta Traba. The writer states that Cuevas, as a young painter and critic of his time, should be allowed such [...]

Antonio Rodríguez reports that José Luís Cuevas’ statements to Marta Traba concerning the Mexican muralist movement provoked resentful feelings in many painters that consider them to be unpatriotic. He states that Traba repeatedly attacked [...]

Antonio Rodríguez published an open letter sent to him by Marta Traba—the Argentine critic—in response to his article “El muralismo de México: uno de los momentos culminantes del arte de este siglo” [Muralism in Mexico: One of the Climactic [...]

According to Mathias Goeritz , José Luis Cuevas is “one of the greatest artists that Mexico has ever produced.” His talent has, in fact, been widely acknowledged by artists and intellectuals. But Goeritz believes that, in addition to his [...]

Cuban art promoter José Gómez Sicre comments on the graphic notebooks, which he prefers to call “books of graphic experiences,” by Mexican draftsman José Luis Cuevas. Gómez Sicre asserts that Cuevas’s staunchly pessimistic view of the human [...]

In this essay, originally published in 1970, Jorge Alberto Manrique points out that in the 1950s the Mexican School of Painting began to stagnate in terms of both form and motifs. However, official support allowed it to maintain its control of the [...]

In this interview José Luis Cuevas recalls the early days of his professional career and his successes abroad. In passing, the artist mentions having seen Mexican painting selling at very low prices on a recent visit to the United States, “a [...]

In this essay Teresa del Conde analyzes the characteristics of what she calls the “young painting of Mexico,” meaning those national vanguard trends that had arisen in the 1950s and that developed fully during the 1960s. Members of this group [...]

A short article in which the critic Raúl Flores Guerrero tries to mediate a dispute among journalists set off by José Luis Cuevas, who has taken a position against muralism. It is a brouhaha that has been already going on for a few months. Flores [...]

This article by Socorro García is a review of writer Antonio Souza’s tenure as the owner of the gallery that bore his name in Mexico City. After recounting the beginnings of his career, the journalist states the concerns that led him to open the [...]

In this essay, written in 1988, Manuel Felguérez relates the beginnings of what is known as the Ruptura movement in the 1950s. Felguérez points out that the arrival of refugees from the Spanish Civil War and other European nations in the previous [...]

Margarita Nelken describes the Second Biennial for Young Artists, in Paris, and the exhibition of the Los hartos [Fed Up] group in the Galería Antonio Souza in Mexico City as the end of one era and the beginning of another. The Los hartos “ [...]

Art historian Shifra M. Goldman writes with great acuity and depth about the traveling exhibition, Art of the Fantastic: Latin America, 1920–1987, which opened at the Indianapolis Museum of Art in 1987, and subsequently went to the Queens [...]

In this article, the Argentine critic Marta Traba (based in Puerto Rico at the time) declared herself an “admiradora” [admirer] of the Mexican artist, José Luis Cuevas. In her opinion, he was the best draftsman on the continent and one of the [...]

The review by Ida Rodríguez [Prampolini] is one of the most complete ever written about the exhibition by Los Hartos [The Fed-Ups]. With fondness and a nimble style she describes the work and each of the 12 personalities who participated in that [...]

This brief article reports the results of the contest announced in late March by the supplement, México en la culturaFirst prize was awarded to Jorge Alberto Manrique, who wrote an analysis of a painting by Juan Soriano, La madre. Second prize went [...]

According to the Argentine critic Damián Bayón, who lived in Puerto Rico in the 1950s, Paris is the city that every artist dreams of, but he cautions that it is not easy to succeed there. Hundreds of Latin American artists arrive in Paris every day [...]

This foldable brochure summarizes in list form the activities that took place at the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá (MAM) in 1964, when it was directed by the art critic Marta Traba. The text contains seven headings, each of which is followed by a [...]

Art critic Raquel Tibol questions the writer Luis Cardoza y Aragón and four artists from the second generation of the Mexican School of painting–Raúl Anguiano, Alberto Beltrán, Leopoldo Méndez, and José Chávez Morado—about the letter signed [...]

Samuel Cherson, a Cuban living in exile in Puerto Rico, gives a brief account of the history of the Bienal de San Juan del Grabado Latinoamericano y del Caribe [San Juan Biennial of Latin American and Caribbean Graphic Art]. He concludes that the 8th [...]