Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This anonymous article provides a brief review of the exhibition schedule that the Venezuelan artist, curator, and museologist, Miguel Arroyo, who at the time was the director of the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas, is organizing. The curator’ [...]

This essay by the Spanish writer Guillermo de Torre is divided into two separate sections. The first is about the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (located in Mexico City, in Valle del Pedregal de San Ángel), a project in which several [...]

In his review of the XIX Salón de Arte Venezolano (1958), the critic Perán Erminy notes the ingenious reliance on historical criteria in the arrangement of works selected for the event, from the old landscape masters to the new style of Abstract [...]

From the seven chapters of the book Poleo. Categorías del espíritu,written by historian Carlos Silva about the paintings of Héctor Poleo, this text represents the third chapter, “Arte y estilo de Héctor Poleo,” wherein the essayist analyzes [...]

In this text, journalist Sergio Antillano examines the life of his friend and contemporary, artist Héctor Poleo, commenting specifically on his studies at the Academia de Bellas Artes in Caracas and the Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City. [...]

In this essay, the art critic Denys Chevalier presents the reasons why he finds the aesthetics of Héctor Poleo’s work similar to those of Symbolism. According to Chevalier, during that period of the Venezuelan painter’s artwork (late 1960s to [...]

This anonymous text provides a detailed review of the rooms and halls of the Museo de Bellas Artes (Caracas) containing the works of the XVIII Salón Oficial de Arte Venezolano (1957). The works, according to the author, were grouped in the space by [...]

This essay was written by Alfredo Boulton (1908–95), the Venezuelan historian and art critic. It appeared in the catalogue for the exhibition of works by the painter Héctor Poleo at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas (1974). In his essay, [...]

The introductory text in the catalogue of the Héctor Poleo exhibition was written by Miguel Otero Silva. In it he presents a chronology on the work of the Venezuelan artist that focuses on how the artist interprets the human drama through his [...]

In this essay on Venezuelan painter Héctor Poleo, historian and critic Francisco Da Antonio focuses on the last twenty years of the artist’s production and ventures a stylistic chronology and interpretation of his art. For instance, he argues that [...]

In this critical essay, historian Francisco Da Antonio discusses the indebtedness of artist Héctor Poleo to Mexican muralism in terms of form and pictorial technique. He also explores the way in which Poleo’s work differs from the aesthetic- [...]

In her essay in the catalogue for the exhibition Poleo desconocido (1997), Bélgica Rodríguez outlines her curatorial ideas. She speaks highly of the Venezuelan painter and his mystic, ethical, aesthetic, and existential qualities, all of which are [...]

In his essay—published in the catalogue for the exhibition of works by the Venezuelan painter Héctor Poleo at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas—the historian and art critic Alfredo Boulton identifies three periods in the artist’s [...]

In this critical essay, historian Juan Carlos Palenzuela discusses what he considers the meteoric rise of the career of Venezuelan artist Héctor Poleo, mentioning specifically the awards he won at a young age, his frequent travels, and his [...]

The art critic Alberto Junyent reviews the second exhibition of works by the Venezuelan painter Héctor Poleo at the Galerie Drouant in Paris in 1966. In his essay, Junyent formally reviews the collection of works as a whole from an aesthetic and [...]

This 1958 review by the Catalan art critic Alberto Junyent of the painter Héctor Poleo’s first exhibition at the Galería Drouant in Paris casts a spotlight on the Venezuelan artist in the French capital. Referring to this event, Junyent takes [...]

In this chapter of his book, art historian and critic Simón Noriega provides the most extensive and exacting analysis of the life and work of painter Héctor Poleo available in Venezuela at the time. The text is crucial to understanding the [...]

There are five chapters in La Pintura de Héctor Poleo, Simón Noriega’s book about the Venezuelan artist. The one chosen here is chapter III, “El surrealismo de Poleo.” Section 4—“¿Reinterpretación o Mímesis?”—presents Poleo’s [...]

“El surrealismo de Poleo” is the third of five chapters in Simón Noriega’s book La Pintura de Héctor Poleo. In the chapter’s third section, entitled “Poleo y la cultura figurativa de los años cuarenta”, Noriega reports that the [...]

In this short essay, critic Walter Engel attempts to demonstrate that, due to the maturity, breadth, and social content of its painting, Latin America will become a new center for art on a par with Paris. Engel—an Austrian critic who lived in [...]

“Luis Navarro” (possibly a pseudonym of the author) meticulously describes the participation of each one of the artists involved in the arts integration project led by architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva at the Ciudad Universitaria of Caracas. [...]

The Venezuelan art historian Bélgica Rodríguez takes a look at the art produced in her country. According to her, twentieth-century Venezuelan art began with the landscape painters who were active in the early part of the century. She [...]