Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

Last of the two articles by Sebastián Salazar Bondy, published under the pseudyonym “Juan Eye,” on the Mexican art exhibition organized by La Crónica newspaper. For the author, if Mexican painting has “laid the foundations for its own school [...]

In this document, Professor Amelia Malagamba explores how Afro-Mexican icons and symbols, as well as sociopolitical issues in the African-American community, have been transformed into what she terms “cultural capital.” A “cultural capital”as [...]

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 text, Damián Bayón considers the question: What qualities make art produced by Latin American artists Latin American? He begins by declaring that the art of Latin America becomes Latin American when an artist—because of his or her [...]

Written by well-known muralist John Pitman Weber, this essay provides biographical information on Carlos Cortez, a Milwaukee-born and Chicago-based artist and poet of Mexican-Indian and German ancestry. Weber talks about the places and people Cortez [...]

In this interview, Carlos Cortez talks about his artistic influences, including the Mexican muralists, Käthe Kollwitz, and Rembrandt, among others. He considers the social, political, and economic motivations that underpin his art. He also describes [...]

In this letter, José Antonio Torres Martinó tells Lorenzo Homar that the Mexican artist Alberto Beltrán greatly enjoyed the book that Homar had sent him, and would like to publish it in El Gallo Ilustrado, the supplement put out by El Día (a left [...]

In this catalogue essay, Victor Alejandro Sorell considers the 36-year career (spanning 1964–2000) of the Chicano artist Carlos Cortez, praising him as the “quintessential artist-reporter,” and emphasizing his virtuosity as a master printmaker [...]

This document includes the text of the catalogue and the program of lectures and film screenings related to the exhibition, Posada: Printmaker to the Mexican People. The catalogue opens with “Corrido of the Coming of Don José Guadalupe Posada to [...]

In this bilingual essay, Chicano artist and poet José Montoya reflects on the creative history behind the poster titled José Montoya’s Pachuco Art: A Historical Update [El arte pachuco de José Montoya: Una actualización histórica] for the 1977 [...]

Puerto Rican critic Ernesto Ruiz de la Mata comments that after the II Bienal de San Juan del Grabado Latinoamericano [2nd San Juan Biennial of Latin American Graphic Art] was inaugurated, many people forgot about the marginal activities that made [...]

In this text, Carlos Cortez comments on the need for a movement to liberate art from the market, private collections, and those who see the consumption of art as a means of separating themselves from the lower classes. He contends that too often art [...]

In this review of the exhibition Art of the Other Mexico: Sources and Meanings, Victor Alejandro Sorell writes that the border is the exhibition’s overarching and master trope. The exhibition features works of art by the “greater Mexican [...]

In this essay, Tomas Ybarra-Frausto focuses on the heart as an important symbol in Chicano art. Divided into two sections: “Themes and Variations” and “Maintenance and Extension of Traditions,” he argues that the “moral dimension” of [...]

Amalia Mesa-Bains’s essay proposes a historical lineage of heart imagery and the concept of “lo del corazón” [that which comes from the heart] that begins in the Mexico’s Aztec ritual of human sacrifice and culminates in public and popular [...]

With this article, the journalist celebrates the recent publication of MacKinley Helm’s book Modern Mexican Painters in the United States. His review describes the book as the most complete panorama of Mexican painting: “no other writer that we [...]

In this compilation of a series of discussions, eighteen members of Taller de Gráfica Popular (TGP) address the history of the organization, including its founding, development throughout twenty years of activities, and present state in 1957. Member [...]

The Taller de Gráfica Popular [TGP, People’s Print Workshop], with Leopoldo Méndez, Pablo O’Higgins, and Luis Arenal as founding fathers, had always intended to work together as a group on various types of printmaking and painting in the studio [...]

Carlos Chávez announces the opening of the Mexican art exhibition organized by the governments of Mexico and France, in which a very carefully selected collection of masterpieces would be presented, beginning with the pre-Cortés era and continuing [...]

After reviewing the rich array of techniques used by the printmaker José Guadalupe Posada, Jean Charlot attributes to this producer of “anonymous work” the nature of creator and turns him into a representative of national Indo-American art. [...]

The synopsis and the annotations in English are coming soon. However, our bilingual readers can click on “Español” to access this information in Spanish [...]

The synopsis and the annotations in English are coming soon. However, our bilingual readers can click on “Español” to access this information in Spanish [...]

In this article, the painter Gabriel Fernández Ledesma traces the history of European funerary traditions during the colonial period. He explores “The Triumph of Death” and its portrayal on playing cards and in the theater, discussing its [...]

This letter by José Luis Cuevas, sent from Philadelphia, was published in the newspaper Novedades on February 15, 1958. The missive is a response to an article by Andrés Henestrosa published three weeks earlier. Here, Cuevas defends German [...]

This document is a letter from Samuel Paz to Jorge Romero Brest, who was visiting the United States at that time. It reports the steps taken to attain the participation of artists Kenneth Noland, Morris Louis, Pol Bury and Mark Brusse for the Premio [...]

This issue contains more than 400 engravings by José Guadalupe Posada, with a preface by Diego Rivera, in which he redefines the engraver as a “worker,” “warrior of leaflets,” the “greatest artist” produced by the people, and the [...]

The author offers a critical, manifesto-style review of the situation in the field of Latin American art and, especially, culture. Alberto Pérez describes himself as an “American,” “Hispanic American,” “Indian [...]

In 1922, in the chapter dedicated to literature, poetry, and printing—emphasizing the editorial house Antonio Vanegas Arroyo—Dr. Atl refers for the first time to the printmaker José Guadalupe Posada. He describes him in detail: “grabador ú [...]

This was the catalog for the Exposición de Artes Mexicanas [Exhibition of Mexican Arts] presented in summer 1930 in the galleries of the Ministry of Public Education (SEP) in Mexico City. The sponsors of the exhibition were the Carnegie Corporation [...]

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 [...]

The printmaker Leopoldo Méndez, with the support of Mariana Yampolsky and Adolfo Mexiac, completed a careful and voluminous edition of the prints by José Guadalupe Posada, which included a selection of his illustrations for free handouts, posters, [...]

Baciu produces a panorama of the work by French painter Jean Charlot, from his early links to his country’s avant-garde and his integration into the first Mexican muralist movement, through to his relationships with the Estridentista movement and [...]

In his comments on the work of José Guadalupe Posada, Carlos Mérida highlights the plasticity of Posada’s artwork. He goes on to point out that both Leopoldo Méndez and Alfredo Zalce have carried on the tradition initiated by Manuel Manilla, [...]