Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

José Cúneo’s text entitled “Arte Abstracto” was read at a lecture that he gave in Montevideo. Although the exact date when it was written is unknown, the lecture appears to have been given in 1956 or 1957 at the Escuela de Bellas Artes in [...]

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. [...]

In this letter, Héctor Velarde responds to the artist Antonino Espinosa Saldaña, regardin the debate provoked by the establishment of a course on “Inca Art” at the ENBA (Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes). The author considers that humor [...]

This document is a technical description of the architectural solution put into effect by the implementation team working on the Ministério da Educação e Saúde (MES) project designed by Lucio Costa, Oscar Niemeyer, Affonso [...]

In an article written in 1951 entitled “Depoimento de um arquiteto carioca” [Testimony of an Architect from Rio de Janeiro], Lúcio Costa describes Le Corbusier’s visit to Brazil in 1929, his plan for the city’s urban layout, and what he [...]

In this excerpt from her book Carlos Raúl Villanueva y la arquitectura de Venezuela, Professor Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, from the United States, describes how the architect [Villanueva] expresses his own personal view of the “synthesis of the arts.” [...]

This article by painter Emilio Goyburu contributes to debates on the meaning of abstraction, specifically in terms of the important role that color plays in the arts. Nature, in Goyburu’s view, strikes us by means of color and, as a result, all art [...]

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 anonymous article announces that the Swiss architect, Le Corbusier, might soon visit Brazil. According to the article, the noted architect considers the “geometric spirit” to be “a contemporary synthesis.” In a eulogy to the industrial [...]

In this text, French-Swiss architect and urbanist Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier, recounts the experiences he had during his first trip to Brazil (1929). He describes the aerial view of Rio de Janeiro and the “favelas”—the [...]

This is a lecture delivered by Renato Almeida in Salvador (capital of the state of Bahia) on October 26, 1926. He praised the reformist line of thought that arose in Brazil as “a riot” against everything that was “sterile imitation.” He saw [...]

This anonymous article reports on the lectures given by the Swiss architect and urban designer Le Corbusier during his visit to Rio de Janeiro in 1929. Sponsored by the Instituto Central de Arquitetos (in what was then the capital of Brazil), Le [...]

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 [...]

In this review, Abraham Haber discusses the connections created by Mondrian, Le Corbusier, Gorin, and Max Bill between painting and architecture, in order to show how they differed from the ideas that were proposed by Perceptivism [...]

This text expresses the disagreement of the young Argentinean generation regarding a note that Alejandro Bustillo (1889-1982) sent to the Professional Council of Architecture, in which he proposed a regulation of the profession. It poses a critical [...]