Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This print by Leopoldo Méndez was used for the cover of the first issue of Frente a Frente [Face to Face], in which the inauguration of the Palacio de Bellas Artes was satirized as an act of cultural exclusion. At the bottom of the page, a policeman [...]

When no agreement could be reached to present the exhibition of Mexican art at the Petit-Palais in Paris, Fernando Gamboa was forced to find an alternative space. In this letter to Carlos Chávez, Gamboa informs him of the results of attempts to hold [...]

Carlos Chávez tells the press that he had received an order not to exhibit the painting Pesadilla de guerra y sueño de paz [Nightmare of War and Dream of Peace]. As such he had only two choices: remove the painting or close the museum; he opted for [...]

Diego Rivera speaks at length to the newspaper Excélsior on learning that President Miguel Alemán’s administration has refused to send his mural to the 1952 Paris Exhibition. In the first place, Rivera claims that the government has ridden [...]

The National Theater was a major architectural project during the Porfirio Díaz administration, but it was never completed due to the outbreak of the revolution in 1910. Later worked on by several post-revolutionary governments, it was transformed [...]

This is an illustration by the cartoonist Rafael Freyre Flores, in which he casts Carlos Chávez as the Director of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (INBA) and Fernando Gamboa as the person in charge of taking an exhibition of Mexican art to [...]

This article reports on the scandal prompted by the confiscation of Pesadilla de guerra y sueño de paz [Nightmare of War and Dream of Peace], the mural painted by Diego Rivera for the exhibition Arte mexicano: desde tiempos precolombinos hasta [...]

The painter Diego Rivera requested an interview with composer Carlos Chávez through Alejandro Gómez Arias, the representative of INBAL; Rivera wished to resolve the matter related to his confiscated mural— Pesadilla de guerra y sueño de paz [ [...]

In this article David Alfaro Siqueiros denounces and criticizes the Colegio Nacional. The charter and rules were written by Octavio Vejar Vázquez who was Minister of Education at the time, and whom the painter considers to be mediocre. Siqueiros [...]

In a brief interview, Carlos Chávez, director of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura (INBAL, 1947), gives a detailed explanation of the efforts put forth to portray “the interior development of the country and to promote the nation [...]

In this seminal text from the mid-1950s, a young José Luis Cuevas criticizes the cultural policies of the Mexican government three decades later for still favoring nationalist art, especially as pictured in murals. Cuevas tells an ironic story that [...]

This short article revolves around the events surrounding the Exhibition of Mexican Art with work that ranged from pre-Columbian times up to the date of the article. Organized by the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (INBA), it was about to be shown [...]

In this article Jorge Cuesta writes about the difficulty in determining, at first sight, the artistic and educational value of the works in the exhibition of revolutionary posters organized by the Departmento de Bellas Artes de la SEP [Ministry of [...]

The writer Alejandro Núñez Alonso ironically comments on the restrictions imposed by the Secretaría de Educación Pública [Ministry of Public Education or SEP]. According to his comments, the visual artists will no longer receive a salary, nor [...]

This brief article, which was probably excerpted from an anonymous interview with Diego Rivera, reports that if no solution can be found to the problems that have arisen between the painter and Carlos Chávez, the Director of the INBA (Instituto [...]

This document reports that a Soviet spy gained entry [into Mexico] and that this person came to work with the organizers of the Congreso de la Paz [Peace Conference]. The mural Pesadilla de guerra y sueño de paz [The Nightmare of War and the Dream [...]