Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

The poet Iván Silén writes about what Puerto Rican painting is and aspires to be. He believes that painting in Puerto Rico has become “insulated” and has been seriously harmed by foreign “isms.” He mentions that certain artists are the [...]

Marta Traba, the Argentine critic who lived in Puerto Rico for some time, claims that there is a form of Puerto Rican art that can be understood and recognized elsewhere. As examples, she mentions portraits by the Puerto Rican painter Francisco Rodó [...]

Marta Traba, the Argentine critic who lived in Puerto Rico for some time, accepts that there is a political and cultural “art of resistance” in Latin America and in Puerto Rico. This “resistance” refuses to follow aesthetic models developed [...]

In this essay, Samuel Cherson, a Cuban critic living in exile in Puerto Rico, discusses the exhibition organized by the Hermandad de Artistas Gráficos [Graphic Artists Association] featuring the artists who refrained from participating in the Quinta [...]

In this interview with Myrna Báez, fellow Puerto Rican artist Manuel García Fonteboa—who worked for Báez as a printer of silkscreens on many occasions—asks about her training in art and the methods she uses in her graphic work. Báez explains [...]

Puerto Rican artist and critic José Antonio Torres Martinó states that Myrna Báez has been a militant supporter of Puerto Rican independence throughout her lifetime. Her work, however, is by no means political propaganda. Like many artists before [...]

Puerto Rican art historian Margarita Fernández Zavala divides Myrna Báez’s graphic work into four parallel stylistic discourses: costumbrismo (representation of local everyday life), formalism, expressionism, and lyricism. Fernández Zavala dates [...]

Argentine-Mexican art historian Raquel Tibol asserts that Myrna Báez’s work must be analyzed from many different perspectives in order to attend to questions like technique, the artist’s status as a Puerto Rican woman, her character, her times, [...]

In this text, Puerto Rican art historian Marimar Benítez states that most of Myrna Báez’s graphic production from the seventies and early eighties made use of silkscreen, holograph, and etching techniques. Benítez asserts that Báez’s graphic [...]

Puerto Rican critic and artist José Antonio Torres Martinó discusses the works by Myrna Báez exhibited at the Museo de la Universidad de Puerto Rico in 1976. He states that though Báez makes use of North American neorealism, she distances herself [...]

Puerto Rican educator Margot Arce de Vázquez discusses the works presented by Myrna Báez in the exhibition held in her studio in 1980. In Arce de Vázquez’s view, these works, with their interesting and new pictorial language, represent a marked [...]

In this essay, Puerto Rican critic Enrique García Gutiérrez discusses the nine reduction woodcuts by Marta Pérez García included in the exhibition Huellas held at Casa Candina, San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1991. The author asserts that there is [...]

In 1963, a group exhibition of Puerto Rican graphic art was organized under the title: Exposición Colectiva de Grabados Puertorriqueños: Pequeña Retrospectiva [Small Retrospective]. Regarding the exhibition, the Italian art buyer Luigi Marrozzini [...]

In 1974, Ricardo Alegría was director of the Office of Cultural Affairs, as well as a member of the committee for the III Bienal de San Juan del Grabado Latinoamericano [Third San Juan Biennial of Latin American Graphic Art]. [In this letter,] Alegr [...]

The critic Samuel Cherson gives a historical account of the Bienal de San Juan del Grabado Latinoamericano y del Caribe [San Juan Biennial of Latin American and Caribbean Graphic Art]. He notes that the 7th Biennial (1986) opened 3 ½ years after [...]

This article, written by the artist and essayist José A. Torres Martinó, explores the subject of regionalism in Puerto Rican art and its role in the early twentieth century, and discusses the regional-universalist expression of a group of artists [...]

Puerto Rican historian and curator Marimar Benítez discusses the importance of the print—particularly of the linoleum variety—to artists of the 1950s. Social commentary, condemnation of living conditions among Puerto Ricans, and criticism of the [...]

Puerto Rican historian Margarita Fernández Zavala interviews Myrna Báez on the occasion of the retrospective exhibition of Báez’s work from 1971 to 1981 organized by the Museo del Barrio (New York, NY). The show was also exhibited at the Museum [...]

In 1973, Andrew Stasik, director of the Pratt Graphic Center, assembled a collection of Puerto Rican prints later acquired by the Exxon Corporation, which also sponsored an exhibition of the collection that traveled to major cities in the United [...]

Argentine critic Marta Traba, who lived in Puerto Rico in the early 1970s, comments on the figurative paintings and landscapes by Puerto Rican artist Myrna Báez. Traba asserts that Báez has become a significant artist due to “the variety and [...]

The Puerto Rican critic and historian Marimar Benítez explains that the Puerto Rican artist Myrna Báez was among those honored at the VIII Bienal de San Juan del Grabado Latinoamericano y del Caribe [8th San Juan Biennial of Latin American and [...]