Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In the prologue to the catalogue of the 1935 exhibition of contemporary Mexican art, Mexican artist Jorge Juan Crespo de la Serna provides a brief overview of Mexican art from the time of the Mayans until the present. He asserts that Mexican art, [...]

This article is one of the few that describes the murals painted in several primary schools in Mexico, thus it allows us to know what it was like before its total or partial destruction. The title of this mural by Pablo O’Higgins was Vida y [...]

When interviewed for his participation in the first exhibition of Los Contemporáneos group, Manuel Rodríguez Lozano replied: “We are not a group but rather four independent painters,” the common denominator among them being “work and honesty [...]

This article analyzes the works exhibited by Abraham Ángel, Julio Castellanos, Carlos Mérida, Manuel Rodríguez Lozano and Rufino Tamayo. It also states that other artists were invited to participate: José Clemente Orozco, who promised to send [...]

On the fifteenth anniversary of the Galería de Arte Mexicano [GAM, Mexican Art Gallery], Margarita de Ponce reviews its activities and discusses what she considers to be its greatest contributions toward the distribution and promotion of Mexican art [...]

This document is Carlos Chávez’s response to the letter that Rufino Tamayo had written to Fernando Gamboa on August 20, 1951. In it, Tamayo asks to know the government’s point of view on the Mexican Art Exhibition that would take place in Europe [...]

It had been a month since El Machete reported the end of a dispute between Luis Cardoza y Aragón and the defenders of the single cultural front promoted in the magazine Frente a Frente [Face to Face]. In this article, the Estridentista and active [...]

In this document Juan de la Cabada responds to Luis Cardoza y Aragón’s criticism of the first art exhibition organized by the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR) [League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists]. At the same time de [...]

“I believe that the LEAR is on the completely wrong path . . . , it is the only organization in Mexico that is against art.” With these terms, the writer Luis Cardoza y Aragón stated his disagreement with the selection of works presented by the [...]

The film director and screenwriter Chano Urueta reviews the group exhibition of the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios [LEAR, League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists] held at the former church of Santa Clara, which was later converted [...]

José Gorostiza analyzes a group of painters who comprise what he calls the Nueva Escuela de Pintura [New School of Painting] in Mexico. Its representatives include Julio Castellanos, Jesús Guerrero Galván, Agustín Lazo, Carlos Mérida, Roberto [...]

In this book published in 1937, Frances Toor, the North American promoter based in Mexico, makes a study of the most representative artists of modern Mexican painting. Toor served as editor and author of the introduction, while the painter Carlos Mé [...]

In this essay entitled “The Mexican School,” Laurence E. Schmeckebier analyzes the rise and evolution of the “Mexican School of Painting.” Schmeckebier places the origin of this “school” in the first generation of muralism and in [...]

The Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA) published this catalog along with the 1943 exhibition, The Latin American Collection of the Museum of Modern Art. It was the first major exhibition of Latin American art at MoMA, and it included works by [...]

In this book, published in 1951, Virginia Stewart looks back at the 45 most representative artists of modern Mexican painting. Her list, created at the end of the golden era of the “Mexican School of Painting,” includes painters from the first [...]