Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

An article in this newsletter lists the exhibitions that the CAYC organized in 1972. The list includes events held at the center’s premises as well as those that were presented at the local and international institutions with which the CAYC [...]

An article in this newsletter invites readers to a screening of Reading Film from “Knots” by R. D. Laing, directed by David Lamelas, at the CAYC. The film was made with help from the CAYC to exhibit Art Systems during the Bienal de S& [...]

In this newspaper article, Marta Traba asserts that Beatriz González’s art epitomizes the Colombian avant-garde. It describes the difficulty of introducing González’s oeuvre at the XI Bienal de São Paulo, and states [...]

In his testimony the critic Ferreira Gullar describes his involvement in the third Salão Nacional de Arte Moderna, also called the Salón Blanco y Negro (Black-and-White Salon), in 1954. At that point in time he was not a professional [...]

This text was written in 1950 by Guillermo de Torre, a year after the death of Joaquín Torres García. In it, he made a brief assessment of the artistic master relating to modern art from his beginnings as a muralist in Barcelona, while [...]

This is the Brazilian art critic and curator Walter Zanini’s official invitation to Clemente Padín, asking him to take part in the XVI Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, in 1981. The document created a “diplomatic” incident that was solved [...]

This document is a confidential report, perhaps to be sent to the KGB, on the three Uruguayan artists selected to participate in the 1961 São Paulo Biennial. The text addresses other aspects of the art scene in Uruguay as well, among them the group [...]

In this text, architect and art critic Fernando García Esteban addresses the meaning as well as the repercussions of the sixth São Paulo Biennial. He discusses the problem of the criteria used to allocate awards and the difficulties faced by [...]

In this text, the painter, sculptor and art and music critic for the weekly Marcha, Pablo Mañé Garzón, criticizes the IX São Paulo Biennial and what he calls “the art of biennials” in general. He argues that art displayed on a mass scale in [...]

Roberto Guevara offers his thoughts in a critique of the artwork presented in Venezuela by the painter María Zabala, based on her most recent design using neon light. Guevara offers some background on Zabala’s creative life that illustrates her [...]

Venezuelan critic Roberto Guevara comments on the underlying concept of the Venezuelan representation at the XII São Paulo Biennial in 1973; it consisted of a collective work by Margot Römer, Ana María Mazzei, William Stone, Rolando Dorrego, and [...]

In this article, Yasmín Monsalve reports on Gego’s presence at the Twenty-third São Paulo Biennial in 1996, and on her exhibition Gego. Dibujos. Dibujos, grabados y tejeduras [Gego Drawings: Drawings, Prints, and Weavings] presented that same [...]

Venezuelan journalist and filmmaker Gustavo Báez reports that Venezuelan artists José Antonio Hernández-Díez, Jesús Rafael Soto, and Gego enjoyed a warm reception at the twenty-third São Paulo Biennial in 1996. Báez explains that the theme of [...]

The journalist Miriam Delgado interviews the Venezuelan engraver Gladys Meneses. During the course of the conversation, Meneses talks about an important change in her approach to her art. She explains that she decided to replace paper with other [...]

The journalist L. D. wrote this text [in October 1989] about the selection of work by Gladys Meneses to represent Venezuela in the twentieth Bienal de São Paulo. He notes that there was a press conference attended by public figures from Brazilian [...]

In the first of the two parts of this essay, Elsa Flores provides a critical analysis of the work by Miguel von Dangel featured in the São Paulo Biennial. Flores’s premise is that von Dangel’s work is a model “Latin American response” to the [...]

In the second part of this essay, Elsa Flores concludes her critical analysis of the work of visual artist Miguel von Dangel featured in the São Paulo Biennial. Flores examines the underlying premise that the combination of elements in von Dangel’ [...]

The creator of the work “Ida Píngala II,” Alfred Wenemoser, wrote a text organized into two parts describing the work, which was shown at the Bienal de São Paulo in 1981. In the first part, the artist summarizes in six steps the content of his [...]

With this text, Mariela Avellaneda de Luna officially presents Gego at the twenty-third São Paulo Biennial. Avellaneda points out the importance of the line in Gego’s large structures, such as the versions of Reticulárea, emphasizing the way the [...]

This text by Eduardo Serrano introduces the work Tres Pizarrones by Santiago Cárdenas, exhibited at the XIV Bienal de São Paulo in September 1977. The catalogue [in which the text was published] provides an overview of the artwork created by Cá [...]

This article introduces the exhibition of prints by the Colombian artist Aníbal Gil Villa at the Centro Coltejer in the city of Medellín, where he presented his “dimensiones especiales” series. This 1977 exhibition underscored the importance of [...]

In her presentation of the art and technology section of the XVII São Paulo Biennial, curator Berta Sichel asserts that the show Novas Metáforas/Seis Alternativas would act as a sort of report on the most recent artistic uses of an array of media [...]

Walter Zanini, curator of the 1981 and 1983 São Paulo Biennials, defends the critical role that curators play in mega-exhibitions like the São Paulo Biennial. He asserts that that role exceeds formulating the concepts that serve as the structure of [...]

This document consists of a series of statements on the XXI São Paulo Biennial. Professor Walter Zanini, curator of the sixteenth and seventeenth biennials, held in 1981 and 1983 respectively, condemns a modality whereby artists are selected to [...]

This essay analyzes certain characteristics inherent in the selection of foreign artists for participation in the twentieth International Biennial of São Paulo in 1989, highlighting the preponderance of retrospectives. To the writer Lorenzo Mammì, [...]

In this article the journalist Lisette Lagnado discusses the layout of the XX Bienal Internacional de São Paulo in terms of the artwork/space ratio and arrangement vis-à-vis the interaction among artists, curators, architects, and even the public. [...]

This text is an interview with João Cândido Galvão, curator of the XXI São Paulo Biennial, by Norma Freire and Agnaldo Farias. In it, Galvão discusses some of the problems that complicated the organization of the biennial, including [...]

This newspaper report highlights the problems, controversy, and expectations that surrounded the curatorial proposal of the twentieth Bienal Internacional de São Paulo of 1989. Additionally, it included comments made by three renowned art critics, a [...]

In his text presenting the special section on Mail art at the XVI São Paulo Biennial, Walter Zanini explains the reasons for including this art form in the event he curated. He asserts that Mail art played a central role in the dematerialization of [...]

In 1961, the magazine ARTnews sent critic Harold Rosenberg to São Paulo to cover the opening of the VI São Paulo Biennial, which had been postponed due to the sudden resignation of Brazilian President Jânio Quadros a few months earlier. In this [...]

Curator Agnaldo Farias makes use of the image suggested in the story “A terceira margem do rio,” by João Guimarães Rosa. He applies this image to a discussion of the issues that affected the selection of works to represent Brazil in the [...]

The artist Samson Flexor, after mentioning a few of the participants of the third Bienal do Museu de Arte Moderna (1955) who up until then were considered figurative artists, maintains that they have already joined a new movement that represents “a [...]

The curators of the twentieth São Paulo Biennial who wrote this text look to Susan Sontag’s essay “Against Interpretation” to illustrate the continuity of modernism in the work of major artists from a number of countries. The aim of this [...]

Using her personal annotations written during a tour of the First São Paulo Biennial (1951) as a starting point, the author transcribes some of the opinions of art critics of diverse nationalities regarding the definitions of “abstraction” and [...]

Adriano Pedrosa, curator of the segment “Arte Contemporânea Brasileira” in the 24th International Biennial of São Paulo (1998), states that the name of the exhibition he is curating raises the following question: “What art is (not) [...]

Pietro Maria Bardi lists four factors that should be considered as part of a complete overhaul that would make the Bienal de São Paulo comparable to the Biennale di Venezia: 1) Do not send an official invitation to the governments of the various [...]

Mário Schenberg praised the organization of the Ninth São Paulo Biennial [1967] for understanding “this moment of extraordinary activity and profound renewal in Brazilian art.” His praise was based on the priority given to innovative works, [...]

This was the official introduction to the Fourteenth São Paulo International Biennial, an exhibition that paid tribute with great fanfare to the founder, Francisco Matarazzo Sobrinho. As of the formation of a Conselho de Arte e Cultura (CAC), the [...]

This newspaper article remarks on the performance of art critic Mário Pedrosa from the time he was named the director of the Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM) and of the VI São Paulo Biennial. Pedrosa had returned from a long trip to Europe and the [...]

This commentary by Mário Pedrosa centers on the large audiences that admired and interacted with the works exhibited at the IX São Paulo Biennial (1969). He states that: “art has ceased to be that distant and humorless thing, that terribly [...]

Sheila Leirner, the curator of the Eighteenth São Paulo International Biennial [1985], introduced her curatorial model based on “a universalist vision and the abolition of borders in time and space.” She expected that as well as the new media [...]

The controversial author Décio Pignatari visited the IX International Biennial of São Paulo in 1967, which inspired him to write a brief overview on the subject of “anti-art.” In one of his brazen statements he claims that “the Biennale is [...]

Undermining the guidelines of the exhibition Universalis: a desmaterialização da arte (XXIII São Paulo Biennial, 1996), Puerto Rican curator Mari Carmen Ramírez explains the contrarian concept of the “re-materialização” of art which, in her [...]

In this text, Nelson Aguilar, chief curator of the XXIII São Paulo Biennial (1996), justifies his choice of the theme Universalis: a desmaterialização da arte for the event. He argues that the perseverance of art at the end of the second [...]

Curator Nelson Aguilar asserts that the 22nd São Paulo Biennial (1994) would place emphasis on the question of the support. Since the fifties, he claims, Brazilian artists “increasingly showed reluctance to limit themselves to […] that [...]

In this essay, the chief curator of the twenty-first Bienal de São Paulo, João Cândido Galvão, explains the very ambiguous criteria he used for the selection of works: “man.” In his opinion, art does not exist without “man” at its center [...]

In this groundbreaking essay, Julio Plaza provides the reader with an overview of what was at the time, the very recent “video text” technology featured in a special section of the seventeenth São Paulo Biennial, a section that Plaza curated. He [...]

Lygia Pape interviews Hélio Oiticica after he had returned from having lived for a period in New York. When asked about the term “Latin American art,” Oiticica says that he does not believe his work fits into that category, which he considers [...]

The curator Walter Zanini presents a proposal for the XVI Bienal de São Paulo that calls for significant changes in how the event is organized, suggesting that artists should be grouped in terms of artistic languages instead of perpetuating the [...]

Geraldo Ferraz comments on the fact that art critics were impatient to know whether or not the seventh Bienal de São Paulo (1963) had brought figurative art “back.” According to the critic Jacô Klintowitz, the question of whether their art will [...]