Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this text, eminent Latin American avant-garde poet César Vallejo asserts that “among the symptoms of the final decline of the capitalist intelligentsia is the vice of coterie.” He argues that the crises of economic imperialism are reflected [...]

According to José Carlos Mariátegui, Breton (in his second manifesto) “prosecuted” all the writers and artists who, having initially embraced surrealism, then renounced it. Though he mentions the attacks on Pierre Naville, he claims that the [...]

In this text, José Carlos Mariátegui argues that no avant-garde artistic or literary movement has been “as significant historically or important as content as Surrealism.” He asserts that, while Futurism attempted to go beyond formal [...]

This article is by Hans Platschek who was living in Montevideo between 1939 and 1953. The German artist makes a self- analysis on the resulting situation of postwar modernism, specifically the debated notion of “Art Nouveau or young art” both in [...]

In this text, writer Juan Ríos remarks on the Surrealist exhibition held at the Galería de Lima in July 1954. In his view, Surrealism is outdated. Initially an iconoclastic movement, it has, over the course of several decades that witnessed a [...]

This brief interview with Fernando de Szyszlo took place upon his return to Lima after having lived in Paris—which he calls “a fountain of life”—for a number of years. With enthusiasm, he describes the stimulating cultural milieu of the [...]

This text by Murilo Mendes was written on the occasion of the death of French Surrealist writer André Breton in 1966. On the basis of certain encounters he had with Breton in Paris in 1952 and 1953, Mendes makes observations on the work and [...]

This essay examines the impact of Roberto Matta’s presence in the United States during 1939–1948, when, as part of a Surrealist cohort of émigrés, he established temporary residence in New York to escape the war in Europe. The authors [...]

According to Ceferino Palencia, the Spanish art critic living in exile in Mexico, Frida Kahlo’s pictorial art was an eloquent example of will in service to sensitivity. Palencia speaks of Frida’s lifelong rebellion against her mother’s violent [...]

This document lists the painters who were members of the Surrealist group, El Mirador Azul [The Blue Lookout Point], and the works that were shown at the Exposición de Pinturas [Painting Exhibition] on March 12, 1956, at Sala de Exposiciones, the [...]

The protest reports on a series of cancellations and blockages that prevented André Breton from arriving at the university and other college facilities. This occurred despite his official invitation and the fact that his presentation was planned in [...]

The first chapter of the book Gestación y Advenimiento, México y el surrealismo, 1925-1950 [Gestation and Advent, Mexico and Surrealism, 1925-1950] is dedicated to the Surrealist presence in Mexico. From a literary perspective, Luis Mario Schneider [...]

Diego Rivera denounces the “sordid sabotage” that the French poet André Breton has been subjected to at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México: as an action driven by a network of intellectuals controlled by the Soviet [...]

Meant as a wakeup call for the Lázaro Cárdenas’ administration (1934-40) in Mexico, Diego Rivera launches an attack against the police intelligentsia, including some agents of the Soviet GPU that, in his judgment, had infiltrated [...]

The art historian Francisco Reyes Palma briefly describes the construction of an image of 1930s Mexico in accordance with the aesthetic/political strategy of Surrealism. He starts by talking about the relationships that arose among the painter Diego [...]

In this essay, Octavio Paz discusses the dreamy, surrealist nature of the work of Alberto Gironella. Paz points out that Gironella’s art is situated between the word and the image, and this is why he defines him as a poet of visual images: a & [...]

In this essay Teresa del Conde analyzes the characteristics of what she calls the “young painting of Mexico,” meaning those national vanguard trends that had arisen in the 1950s and that developed fully during the 1960s. Members of this group [...]

The old Guatemalan Estridentista, Arqueles Vela, muses on how the revolution influenced Mexican art. He does not believe that cubism or the poetry of the proletariat were the first fields to be affected; instead, he points to the corridos, the [...]

In this essay, along with posthumous praise for the figure, André Breton, Octavio Paz establishes a new approach to surrealism, automatic writing and the concept of revelation: “The critics are saying that surrealism is no longer the [...]

This is a dense re-telling of Octavio Paz’s nexus to surrealism and particular link to André Breton. It tells of the role played by the poet Benjamín Péret in this long relationship, which the Mexican writer sums up as a [...]

Un chien andalou [Un perro andaluz (1929) [An Andalusian Dog]—a film directed by Luis Buñuel, with a script written by Buñuel and Salvador Dalí—was presented in Mexico nine years after it was shot. Efraín Huerta, a writer by trade and an [...]

Letras de México, the magazine directed by Octavio G. Barreda, devoted its May 1938 issue to André Breton and Surrealism. It published several of his essays: an excerpt of “Les vases communicantes” [Communicating Vessels], “Le merveilleux [...]

According to Rafael Heliodoro Valle, the distinguishing feature of the Surrealist movement is that it has “old roots” that set it apart from the rest of the avant-garde. And that, “Mexico, [which] is not a myth,” but has a mythical past has [...]

In this section of his four-part essay, Juan Larrea discusses the creation, development, transcendence, and objectives of Surrealism, referring to a particular case to express the significance of the movement. He mentions Víctor Brauner, the [...]

Juan Larrea, the Spanish writer living in exile in Mexico, refers to an article by André Breton (“Situación del surrealismo entre las dos guerras” [The State of Surrealism between the Two Wars]), in which the leader of the movement outlines a [...]

In this article, Margarita Nelken looks back over Alice Rahon’s career. Nelken explains that Rahon, the French artist who straddled between both Surrealist painting and Surrealist poetry, had shaken off her father’s aesthetic influence [...]

According to Palencia, Leonora Carrington is unique among Surrealist painters because she knows how to harmonize, combine, and fuse the naïve aspects of primitive art with the modern expression of André Breton. The critic says that Carrington [...]

In 1936 Luis Cardoza y Aragón—the writer who was involved with the surrealist avant-garde while he was in Paris, and later lived in Mexico—heard from the poet André Breton, who asked him for an introduction to the art of Mexico, where he was [...]

In Palencia’s view, Frida Kahlo is one of the best representatives of the oneiric or surrealist genre. Nevertheless, he believes she should be included within this group with certain restrictions and limits. The quote by André Bretón (“Frida [...]

In the introduction to this catalog, César Moro (a celebrated Peruvian poet and artist) alludes to the antecedents of Surrealism within the avant-garde movements of the beginning of the twentieth century. He also identifies the contact points that [...]

André Breton is interviewed before his trip to Mexico, due to the great deal of anticipation caused by his forthcoming visit. The French poet declares that this trip “crystallizes a beautiful dream and a long deferred wish,” since Mexico has [...]