Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This essay, by the Brazilian curator and art historian Aracy Amaral, appeared in the catalogue for the exhibition Modernidade: arte brasileira do século XX (Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, 1988). Amaral discusses the origins of the [...]

In this presentation of an exhibition of work by Rosana Paulino held in 1997, art critic Aracy Amaral places emphasis on innovative features of Paulino’s work that mark a break with the Brazilian art scene of the time. She specifically mentions [...]

This essay is about reaching a dead end in the nationalist project as well as the aesthetic requirements inherent in the avant-garde when modern art began to develop in Brazil. That development was launched with the 1917 exhibition by the painter [...]

While researching feminine strokes in Anita Malfatti’s painting, Mário de Andrade discerns her impetuous nature, the masculine strength of her colors, and the tragic energy of her subjects, though he also glimpses hints of humor and sadness. He [...]

This essay, written by Manuel Bandeira, is an assessment of the “Salão de 31” exhibition which also had been disparagingly tainted as the “Salão dos Tenentes” by another journalist, parodying the then Lieutenant Getúlio Vargas whom had [...]

This article is about the Salão Nacional de Belas Artes that was organized by the architect Lúcio Costa; it explains that the organizing committee decided that no submission would be rejected. This prompted the “old guard” artists to boycott [...]

This article, published on the last day of the Exposição de Pintura Moderna Anita Malfatti, remarks on the “crowd of onlookers” that had visited the exhibition. The author notes that this painter’s work is as personal as it is modern, and [...]

The writer Monteiro Lobato serves up a conservative review of the Exposição de Pintura Moderna — Anita Malfatti in a heated attack on avant-garde art, describing the exhibition as being, in his opinion, the work of “people who see things [...]

The painter Anita Malfatti describes her career in art and the various events that led up to the Semana de Arte Moderna [Modern Art Week] (1922). She discusses her time in Berlin and her training in the workshop of painters Fritz Burger and Lovis [...]

SPAM (Sociedade Pró-Arte Moderna) was founded in December 1932 in São Paulo. Its stated goals were to create closer artistic ties, and relationships between artists and the public. The catalogue for the SPAM 1ª Exposição de Arte Moderna includes [...]

This is an article about the founding of the Grupo Almeida Júnior in São Paulo in 1935, a group that was organized to host conferences and an annual exhibition of works by its members, who were: the painters Anita Malfatti, Georgina de Albuquerque [...]

In April 1942, in celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Semana de Arte Moderna [Modern Art Week] at the Teatro Municipal in São Paulo in 1922, Mário de Andrade gave a talk at the library of the Ministério das Relações [...]

The catalogue for the Exposição de uma casa modernista was written by the architect Gregori Warchavchik, creator of this radical project. Although it was controversial in the conservative milieu of the period, the project was fairly significant in [...]

After criticizing the selection made in the United States to represent Brazil at the Latin American Exhibition of Visual Arts that was held in New York during the 1939 World’s Fair, the great Brazilian polymath, Mário de Andrade continues by [...]

In this article written in 1917, Anita Malfatti records her impressions of her travels in the United States and Europe. The Brazilian artist enthusiastically describes the protests prompted by the paintings she exhibited on her return to São Paulo. [...]