Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This was the headline of the supplement—dedicated to the muralist on the centenary of his birth—that published a document dated December 19, 1929 in which Diego Rivera explained “My Expulsion from the PCM.” The text discusses [...]

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 [...]

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 the Survey Section, the journalist Ortega decided to go to the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria to ask the painters there the following question: Who is the greatest painter in Mexico? The caricaturist Ernesto García Cabral ironically responds that [...]

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 “ [...]

In this chapter from América Latina en sus artes Jorge Alberto Manrique begins by describing the artistic movements of the 1920s and comparing this period to a giant hinge that moved backward to the nineteenth century and forward to the twentieth [...]

The critic Antonio Rodríguez uses this article to defend the murals painted by Jorge González Camarena in the main hall of the Edificio Guardiola, in the center of Mexico City. The author believes that the short newspaper article calling for these [...]

André Salmon introduces Lola Cueto’s work by referring to certain moments that he considers important. He suggests that Edouard Manet’s painting, La Muerte de Maximiliano [The Death of Maximilian], was Mexico’s debut in the visual arts. [...]

This print by Leopoldo Méndez was used for the cover of the first issue of Frente a Frente [Face to Face], in which the inauguration of the Palacio de Bellas Artes was satirized as an act of cultural exclusion. At the bottom of the page, a policeman [...]

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 [...]

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. [...]

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 this issue of the magazine Helios—the official publication of the Asociación de Fotógrafos de México—an editorial expresses disagreement with the results of the photographic competition sponsored by the cement company La Tolteca. This [...]

This is a summary of Gilberto Freyre’s thoughts on the subject of Latin America, with a focus on the cultural anthropological aspects of a hybrid civilization based on a blend of black, American Indian, and European traditions. The author discusses [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

María Elena Sodi de Pallares discusses the inconsistency shown by the INBA (Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes) while sponsoring a mural by Diego Rivera to be displayed at the Paris exhibition, but then decided not to submit it after all when the [...]

In this article written for The Architectural Forum, a New York City publication, in January 1934, the muralist Diego Rivera made public his point of view about the necessary link between architecture and painting. The purpose of the link was to [...]

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 lecture, Martí Casanovas distinguishes the activities of the group of artists in the exhibition 1927 from those of other contemporary progressives by arguing that their art seeks to convey humanistic and collective meanings to a broad and [...]

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 [...]

In the 1990s, the magazine Memoria reported on a controversy that led to the great 1936 exhibition organized by the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR) [League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists]. The article explains that the [...]

This is the first of two articles by Sebastián Salazar Bondy, published under the pseudonym “Juan Eye,” on the Mexican art exhibition organized in Lima by La Crónica newspaper. The author believes the show is exceptional for its positive [...]

In this 1925 letter, Ángel Zárraga acknowledges Manuel Rodríguez Lozano as a painter and a friend. After a brief introduction of indeterminate tone, Zárraga points to his discovery that “Race” and “People” are grandiose concepts that lead [...]

Carlos Chávez tells the press that he had received an order not to exhibit the painting Pesadilla de guerra y sueño de paz [Nightmare of War and Dream of Peace]. As such he had only two choices: remove the painting or close the museum; he opted for [...]

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 [...]

Bertram Wolfe, Diego Rivera’s biographer, states that the period from the late 1930s through the early 1940s was a solitary, confusing time for the painter due to the fact that his name was appearing constantly in newspaper headlines as the [...]

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 article reproduces some of Diego Rivera’s observations regarding his work, based on a number of sketches done in Paris and Tehuantepec “in which the penetrating sensibility of the artist may be discerned.” These sketches would later be [...]

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 [...]

The press waxed passionate with accusations among members of the Latin American left about the decision by the American University in Bogotá to grant an honorary doctorate to Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre. To Diego Rivera, this seemed to be an [...]

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 [...]

In this essay from 1937, Justino Fernández conducts a study on the evolution of Mexican art during the 1920s and 1930s. The text is organized in three large sections: mural painting, general painting and sculpture. Fernández characterizes mural [...]

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 [...]

Adolfo Best Maugard describes the nature of “authentic” Mexican art in order to define the essential features of the aesthetic idea based on a “grammar of drawing” that he proposes as the formula for what he sees as “current national art [...]

In his long essay, Siqueiros defends Diego Rivera’s work in response to Margarita Nelken’s article on the latter’s retrospective exhibition at Bellas Artes published in the latest issue of Cuadernos Americanos. He accuses Nelken of being “ [...]

The legendary French painter, Henri Matisse, who was in New York in the early 1930s, disagrees “with the theories on art set forth by Diego Rivera.” Confronting the Mexican painter’s declarations in favor of work with “political” content, [...]

The Art Salon of the SEP [Ministry of Public Education] (1931-1934), as coordinated by the painters Francisco Díaz de León and Gabriel Fernández Ledesma—who represented both the Departamento de Bellas Artes de la Secretaría de Educación Pú [...]

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 [...]

This article announces a new column in the magazine Hoy that will feature “weekly comments from the desk of a Mexican diplomat who, for obvious reasons, wishes to remain anonymous.” Covering each of the days of the previous week, the author of [...]

In an open letter to the newspaper, David Alfaro Siqueiros makes a number of statements about the article published in the same paper defending students’ rights in terms of the paintings at the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria (ENP). Siqueiros [...]