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 [...]

This document is a 1977 calendar produced by the Movimiento Artístico Chicano (MARCH), which includes biographies and reproductions of works by twelve Chicago-area Chicano artists, one for each month. Significant dates in Chicano history are also [...]

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 document is a flyer produced by the Taller de Gráfica Popular (TGP) [The People’s Graphic Workshop], with an engraving by Leopoldo Méndez that denounces the isolation and lack of teachers due to the reactionary wave of violence against them [...]

Antonio Rodríguez interviewed some figures who were well known in the art world to find out their opinions on the paintings by Jorge González Camarena in the entrance hall of the Edificio Guardiola. Made up of two huge nudes, they had recently been [...]

After discussing how busy Germán List Arzubide—the Estridentista from old times—kept in New York’s workers’ media, Ben Ossa mentions the ideas suggested to LEAR by the “Congreso de Artistas Americanos (de Estados Unidos)” [American [...]

Ramón Alva de la Canal painted the first version of El Café de Nadie [No Man’s Café] in 1924. After it disappeared, he decided to paint the scene again, but this time he introduced some new elements. To illustrate it, he included the names of [...]

In this short article by Antonio Rodríguez, the art critic shows his support for an article published in the previous issue of the journal Espacios by the artist Roberto Berdecio, in defense of “social painting.” Rodríguez believes that “ [...]

In this essay, originally published in 1970, Jorge Alberto Manrique points out that in the 1950s the Mexican School of Painting began to stagnate in terms of both form and motifs. However, official support allowed it to maintain its control of the [...]

While he was in Brussels, Fernando Gamboa stayed in close communication with the architect Enrique Yáñez, who informed him of the progress of the artists working on the Centro Médico [Medical Center]. In addition to designing the Centro, Yáñez [...]

This article by Pablo Fernández Márquez analyzes the last two publications of the magazine Artes de México (numbers 17 and 18), which was then under the editorial direction of Rafael Salas Anzures. The first of these (17) deals with the pre- [...]

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 [...]

This extensive document covers the various phases of the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios [LEAR, League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists] and the international causes the organization supported. Despite being billed as a “Congreso [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Art critic Raquel Tibol questions the writer Luis Cardoza y Aragón and four artists from the second generation of the Mexican School of painting–Raúl Anguiano, Alberto Beltrán, Leopoldo Méndez, and José Chávez Morado—about the letter signed [...]

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 [...]

Jesús Guerrero Galván makes some observations about the production by Leopoldo Méndez, within the context of several group exhibitions that were held in 1926. He qualifies the social function of the œuvre by his colleague and considers his [...]

This book takes as its subject a series of lectures held in 2000. It constitutes the first documentary account of the contributions of the visual artists who were involved in the Estridentista movement avant-garde and its relation to the urban scene [...]

Once the Centro de Arte Realista was founded, David Alfaro Siqueiros refers to the successes of the last 40 days. He awaits the response from the opposition to the proposals made about “La Pintura Mexicana Moderna”. The Centro’s first success [...]

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 [...]

Carlos Mérida starts this lecture by commenting on the effort made by U.S. artists to found a center for the Union Artists Gallery, which would surely lay the foundation for the future of art in the United States. He notes the close affinity between [...]

From a European perspective, Paul Westheim gives his first impressions on modern art in Mexico. He identifies two of its qualities: first, an originality and independence from European art and, second, a rebirth of folk art that is removed from the [...]

Five years after their first manifesto Actual [see doc. 737463 and doc. 754048], Germán List Arzubide recounted the early activity of the estridentista group. The author began with a description of the group’s leader, the poet Manuel Maples Arce. [...]

Based on this description by the chronicler of Estridentismo and director of the magazine Horizonte, Germán List Arzubide, said publication was sponsored by the revolutionary government of the State of Veracruz. The magazine got its impulse from the [...]

This is a summing up, by one key figure of the estridentista movement and of its impact, in spite of the small size of the group. Germán List Arzubide recounts, twenty years later, what Estridentismo consisted of, how the movement started as a [...]

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, [...]