Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

Aracy A. Amaral asserts that there is no such thing as a unified expression of Latin American art, but instead a desire for cultural integration that has not yet been resolved. She understands that the countries of the Americas share common problems [...]

This letter was a part of the correspondence maintained by Bernardo Salcedo with Emma Araujo de Vallejo, director of the Museo Nacional de Colombia from 1974 to 1982. From Budapest (Hungary), and dated August 8, 1977, the letter was written during [...]

Lorenzo Homar writes to Ricardo Alegría, the director of the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña [Puerto Rican Cultural Institute] (ICP), to thank him for suggesting to Zoran Krisnik that he (Homar) should take part in the Ljubljana Biennial [which [...]

As a gesture of affection, Puerto Rican artist Lorenzo Homar offers Colombian artists Maritza Uribe and Gloria Restrepo comments on his contribution to a collection of posters at the Museo La Tertulia in Cali, Colombia. In exchange for his remarks, [...]

Colombian artist Pedro Alcántara informs Puerto Rican artist Lorenzo Homar that the studio at the Museo [La Tertulia] no longer exists, and therefore its collective, the Taller Gráfico [Graphic Workshop], is operating on the basis of “ongoing [...]

Lorenzo Homar writes to the Colombian artist Pedro Alcántara to congratulate him on being awarded the Berlin Intergraphic Festival Prize. Homar asks Alcántara to refer to the notes he includes in his letter and read them to the artists who attended [...]

In this article, art historian Germán Rubiano provides a retrospective vision of the contributions that Argentine art critic Marta Traba—who died tragically in the outskirts of Madrid in 1983—made to the Colombian art scene. In his text, Rubiano [...]

In this brief chapter, the artist and researcher Nicolás Gómez Echeverri explains how the art critic Marta Traba became a cultural icon on television in Colombia. Gómez draws on his research to describe the physical and intellectual [...]

This is the fourth chapter of En blanco y negro: Marta Traba en la televisión colombiana, 1954–1958 [In Black and White: Marta Traba on Colombian Television, 1954–1958], in which the author, the artist and researcher Nicolás Gómez Echeverri, [...]

In the book 11 tipos. Arte en Venezuela en los años setenta, the researcher Juan Carlos Palenzuela makes an exhaustive study of Venezuelan art in the1970s, a time when conceptual art was unquestionably being produced in that country. The author [...]

This document includes a number of texts by the organizers of the Segundo Festival de Arte de Vanguardia [Second Festival of Avant-Garde Art], presented in the city of Cali, Colombia from June 16 through July 1, 1966 by members of the nadaísta [ [...]

The “Acta de constitución del Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá” [Articles of Association of the Museum of Modern Art in Bogota] begins with the following two lines: “On November 20, 1962, at the Teatro Colón, at 7 p.m., the Museo de Arte [...]

In this article, Beatriz González formulates a link between the defiant attitudes of Colombian artists and critics, and the international social change that occurred during the sixties. She reconstructs the Colombian context in which those attitudes [...]

In this article, Alfredo Chacón reviews and issues commentaries on the principal arguments of the art critics involved in the controversy that Marta Traba began through her article “El arte latinoamericano: un falso apocalipsis.” Chacón states [...]

In this article, J. R. Guillent Pérez confronts what he considers to be Marta Traba’s “attitude of disdain,” in her use of the term “apocalypse” in a negative sense; in doing so he makes use of philosophical sources, such as L’être et [...]

In this essay, Alejandro Anreus outlines the cultural and historical conditions that have influenced what he terms the “iconography of Latin America.” He emphasizes the role of U.S. cultural imperialism and exploitation in the development of a [...]

Puerto Rican curator and art historian Marimar Benítez explains the connections among the books that Marta Traba wrote during her stay in Puerto Rico: Propuesta polémica sobre arte puertorriqueño [Polemic Proposal on Puerto Rican Art] (San Juan: [...]

Marta Traba characterizes the Puerto Rican art world as extremely eclectic. With the exception of Francisco Rodón whose work focuses almost exclusively on a gruesome sort of portraiture, many other Puerto Rican artists from the same [...]

Open letter to Philosophy Graduate J. R. Guillent Pérez. In this letter the artist Alejandro Otero highlights his differences on the ideas of Marta Traba, which had already been questioned by the addressee. Otero, openly in opposition to Traba, felt [...]

The curator Ivo Mesquita discusses the concepts and criteria that informed his curatorial process in organizing the Latin American art exhibition Cartographies (Winnipeg Art Gallery, Winnipeg, Canada, 1993). He proposes the concept of “cartography [...]

Puerto Rican artist Antonio Martorell provides a glimpse of the images that come to mind when he remembers Marta Traba when she was living in Puerto Rico. He says that she possessed a “provocative, questioning, and polemical mind committed to [...]

Antonio Rodríguez begins his text by justifying, to a degree, José Luís Cuevas’ harsh denunciation of the Mexican muralism movement to Marta Traba. The writer states that Cuevas, as a young painter and critic of his time, should be allowed such [...]

Antonio Rodríguez reports that José Luís Cuevas’ statements to Marta Traba concerning the Mexican muralist movement provoked resentful feelings in many painters that consider them to be unpatriotic. He states that Traba repeatedly attacked [...]

Antonio Rodríguez published an open letter sent to him by Marta Traba—the Argentine critic—in response to his article “El muralismo de México: uno de los momentos culminantes del arte de este siglo” [Muralism in Mexico: One of the Climactic [...]

Puerto Rican artist Rafael Rivera García criticizes Marta Traba’s choice of the term “eclectic” to describe Puerto Rican art. In his view, Traba should not have limited herself to four artists—Lorenzo Homar, Julio Rosado del Valle, Francisco [...]

In an interview for Bogotá-based newspaper El Tiempo, Colombian artists Álvaro Barrios and Luis Caballero discuss their expectations for the art scene in the new decade (the eighties). They address specifically the lack of art criticism in Colombia [...]

In this article, art historian María Margarita Malagón-Kurka analyzes a series of works by Colombian artists that address the topic of violence. She argues that there are two distinct tendencies that took shape in two different historical moments. [...]

In this interview focused on the topic of art criticism, artist Bernardo Salcedo expresses his opinion of Marta Traba’s assertion, made just days before, that there is no significant art criticism in Colombia and furthermore, that this is due to [...]

Argentine critic Jorge Romero Brest remarks that he was not invited to participate in the symposium “El artista latinoamericano y su identidad” [The Latin American Artist and His Identity] held at the University of Texas en Austin in October 1975 [...]

The critic Damián Bayón, who lived in Puerto Rico for a period, considers Marta Traba a “critic-judge,”“radical critic,” and even a “theorist-critic” due to her social and political commitment. Bayón discusses how early on Traba [...]

Making use of his philosophical background, J. R. Guillent Pérez critically analyzes the article by Marta Traba published in Caracas under the title “El arte latinoamericano: un falso apocalipsis.” In his judgment, Traba has not understood the [...]

“El Monumento a López es un Horror” [The Monument to López is a Horror] is the title of the article by Héctor Muñoz published in El Espectador on Friday, June 16, 1967. It compiles different opinions on the aesthetic and political [...]

The Venezuelan philosopher J. R. Guillent Pérez (1923–89) launches into his article quoting Heidegger and Krishnamurti on the subject of nihilism. He then shares some very pessimistic opinions about Venezuelans, whom he considers to be victims of [...]

In this text, Beatriz González recounts the history of the Salón Nacional, including the years during which it was not held (starting in 1980) and the reasons why. She also discusses the two retrospectives of the event: the first, which was held at [...]

The literary critic, María Sola, tells us that we can pinpoint the legacy of Marta Traba, which is the “dentro de la lucha de la mujer ‘por hablar’ en cambio de ‘ser hablada’ por otros” [women’s struggle to be the ‘speakers’ [...]

The chapter “Espacios ambientales: la ilusión óptica” in the book Verdades sobre arte, mentiras sobre papel. Encuentros con Santiago Cárdenas y su obra, is an interview done by Jaime Ardila and Camilo Lleras with the painter Santiago Cárdenas [...]

In this text, Aracy Amaral considers the strong negative responses provoked by a work entitled Etsedrón in the 1975 (XIII) São Paulo Biennial. She argues that this work provoked such responses because of its visceral power and because it is [...]

In this review of the opening of Gego’s exhibition at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo [Contemporary Art Museum] in Caracas in 1977, Luis Lozada Soucre reports on the great, well-attended event. He quotes Marta Traba, and interviews people in [...]

This essay, written by the Colombian attorney and philosopher Francisco Posada, is divided into nine parts: (i) an untitled introduction; (ii) “Colonial Feudalism”; (iii) “Realism and Social Conflict”; (iv) “Painting”; (v) “The Current [...]

In the introduction to the book Procesos del arte en Colombia [Processes of Art in Colombia] (1978), Colombian historian Álvaro Medina asserts that Andrés de Santamaría was well ahead of his time in Colombian art; it was thanks to his influence [...]

The director of the Museo de Bellas Artes [Museum of Fine Arts] in Caracas, María Elena Ramos, presented a paper at the I Coloquio de Arte No Objetual [First Symposium on Abstract Art] (Medellín, 1981) under the title, “La comunicación en las [...]

In this article, researcher and art historian William Alfonso López Rosas provides a theoretical justification for the need to historicize art criticism in Colombia, and he describes some of the most important efforts that have been made along those [...]

This newspaper article contains Bernardo Salcedo’s statements about the Primer Premio de Adquisición he was awarded at the III Bienal de Arte Americano held in Cordoba, Argentina in 1966. Salcedo compares this decision with the one made by the [...]

The American art historian, Shifra M. Goldman, writes an analysis of what happened in Mexican art during the years 1955 to 1965. In her opinion, this decade was marked by a growing international trend and by the essentialist loss of both national and [...]

This essay by the curator Julieta González is a preface to a book published by the Museo Alejandro Otero (2000) that collected articles related to the debate about “identity” in Latin America in 1965. The debate arose as a response to an article [...]

In this article, critic Perán Erminy takes stock of Marta Traba’s controversial visit to Caracas in 1965, arriving at the conclusion that the resulting debate was “extremely positive.” As a Venezuelan, Erminy maintains a favorable view of her [...]

“Las vanguardias son impuestas desde arriba” is the title of an article published in Sobre arte, a transcript of a magazine interview with the Colombian artist Leonel Góngora in August 1977. The brief introduction to the interview criticizes the [...]

The philosophy student in Paris, J. R. Guillent Pérez, tells the basic reasons that led a group of Venezuelan artists to form the group, Los Disidentes [The Dissidents], in Paris in 1950. He believes that the fact that he was a participant right [...]

Gloria Pachón Castro, the journalist from the Bogotá newspaper El Tiempo, interviews the painter Luciano Jaramillo following the jury’s decision at the XVII Salón de Artistas Nacionales [17th National Artists Salon] (1965).  This article quotes [...]

Marjorie Agosin, a North American Latin Americanist brought up in Chile, recalls how she met Marta Traba in the summer of 1979 when she was giving a class at Middlebury College (in Vermont). Traba, in Agosin’s view, was bold in her vision; she [...]