Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

The artist Cícero Dias was the subject of this article that includes a combination of first-hand accounts on his artistic career. The text was originally published due to an exhibition on abstract art by the artist in Recife (Faculdade de Direito) [...]

This text by Sérgio Milliet is a review of a show of recent abstract paintings by Cícero Dias held in Rio de Janeiro. In it, Milliet formulates an opposition between figuration and abstraction. The author also asserts that, in his view, Dias’s [...]

This essay by author Gilberto Freyre is dedicated to the work of the artist Cícero Dias; the text compares the work to the highly renowned Brazilian painter Candido Portinari. In his opinion, despite being the most nationally famous visual artist, [...]

In his article about the exhibition of paintings by Cícero Dias at the Faculdade de Direito (Recife), the art critic Mário Pedrosa notes that “no other Brazilian painter evolved as radically” as Dias, thus explaining the controversial reaction [...]

This essay is an analysis by Gilberto Freyre on what he felt was a “lack of common sense” with regard to the work of Cícero Dias, declaring that there was no “conventionalism” in his paintings. At times, their titles brought contradictory [...]

This essay is about the proposal of the author Gilberto Freyre about the need for teaching the sociology of art within a planned fine art curriculum, highlighting the importance of this and anthropology. In his opinion, one must try to understand a [...]

After spending many years in Paris, the artist Cícero Dias returned to his native city, Recife, in the Brazilian state of Pernambuco. There at the Faculdade de Direito, he exhibited his work, which was of a distinctly abstract nature. In his review [...]

Art critic Frederico Morais argues that art as a social necessity must form an integral part of national consciousness and be considered a facet of freedom. He supports attempts to create conditions conducive to enabling the masses to perceive the [...]

This text was written by Waldemar Cordeiro in response to Sérgio Milliet’s critique of his “Manifesto Ruptura” that was published in the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo on December 13, 1952. In addition to replying to each one of Milliet’s [...]

In this article, Gilberto Freyre outlines some of his thoughts about an exhibition of work by Cícero Dias—in the city of Feira de Santana, sixty kilometers from Salvador, the capital of the state of Bahia. The reason for the text was due to a [...]

In this article Damián Bayón questions the general state of the art world and the place occupied by Latin American artists within it. He defines the preeminent art trends of the time and then analyzes the way in which Latin American [...]

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 [...]

Gilberto Freyre, the sociologist from Pernambuco, discusses the I Congresso Afro-Brasileiro, held in Recife in 1934. Freyre briefly refers to comments and discussions concerning the viability of the meeting and the informality of the event, among [...]

This essay was included in the catalogue for the Exposição de Pintura Brasileira held in London in 1944. Organized by the critic Rubén Navarra, the show presented a broad selection of Brazilian paintings that covered the transition from the 1930s [...]

In his essay, critic Sérgio Milliet analyzes the painting taking place in São Paulo at the end of the 1930s, with an eye toward two exhibitions: the first, at the II Salão de Maio and the other, at the Salão do Sindicato dos Artistas Plásticos ( [...]

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 [...]