Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In 1975, Colombian writer Fausto Panesso published Los Intocables, a book featuring interviews with six major Colombian artists from the 20th century. The interview with sculptor Édgar Negret addresses the artist’s private life, touching on topics [...]

The text “Negret” by the Argentine art critic based in Colombia, Marta Traba, consists of an analysis of the entire body of work of the sculptor Édgar Negret up to 1964. This is probably one of the first articles on the artist to present all his [...]

In this article, poet and art critic Jorge Gaitán Durán takes stock of the activities that took place on the Colombian art scene in 1946. He begins with a reflection on the overall state of the visual arts in the country. He asserts that 1946 [...]

One of the closing chapters of the multi-volume publication Historia extensa de Colombia, this text by Luis Alberto Acuña reconstructs the history of Colombian sculpture. In it, Acuña discusses the work of two artists—Édgar Negret and Rodrigo [...]

Art critic Walter Engel wrote five articles on exhibitions held in 1948, among them the solo show of artist Carlos Díaz Forero, sponsored by the Universidad Nacional of Bogotá and held at the Museo Nacional in that city in August; the exhibition of [...]

This chapter of the encyclopedia Historia del arte colombiano [History of Colombian Art] written by Germán Rubiano is divided into three parts. In the first part, Rubiano discusses the art that is referred to in the chapter and that he considers to [...]

“Los comienzos de la experimentación” is the third chapter of the research paper La experimentación en el arte colombiano del siglo XX, written in 1991 by the art historians María Teresa Guerrero and Ivonne Pini. This fragment presents the [...]

Gloria Zea, the director of the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá, Ángel Kalenberg, manager of the Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales of Montevideo, Uruguay, and Axel Stein, director of the exhibition hall of the Fundación Eugenio Mendoza, in Caracas [...]

“Édgar Negret. De la máquina al mito” by Venezuelan art historian José María Salvador provides a brief chronological analysis of Édgar Negret’s production from 1957 to 1991. Salvador divides Negret’s work into three major periods. The [...]

The text “En palabras de Negret”—which consists of fragments of a conversation between Colombian sculptor Édgar Negret and cultural journalist José Hernández—addresses topics crucial to Negret’s life and work. The dialogue deals with the [...]

“Los nuevos materiales” is the third chapter in a long book by Galaor Carbonell entitled Negret. Las etapas creativas. The book is one of the most thorough and sound studies of the life and work of Colombian sculptor Édgar Negret. In this [...]

“Fabricación del silencio” is the title of a text in letter form from Basque artist Jorge Oteiza to Colombian sculptor Édgar Negret. In the forties, Oteiza lived in Popayán (Cauca Valley), the region of Colombia where Negret was born; he was [...]

In this short article, the art critic Eduardo Serrano introduces the work of artists Enrique Grau Araujo and Édgar Negret on the occasion of their eightieth birthdays. Serrano assures us that Grau has enriched the figurative tradition in Colombian [...]

In the catalogue text for the exhibition Fanny Sanín: Obras de 1960 a 1986 held at the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá, John Stringer, the Australian curator of the show, analyzes the work produced by Fanny Sanín, a Colombian artist who lives in [...]

This document is the catalogue to the Salón de Arte Moderno held in the exhibition hall of the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango in November 1957. In addition to an introduction, the catalogue contains a list with basic information (style, dimension, [...]

The book Las artes plásticas en la América Latina: del trance a lo transitorio [The Visual Arts in Latin America: From Trance to Transitory], written by the Brazilian art critic Frederico Morais, is essentially divided into two parts: (i) “ [...]

Published in the catalogue to the exhibition commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Primer Salón de Arte Moderno, this text by Sylvia Juliana Suárez presents the idea, process and results of a curatorial and editorial project formulated by [...]

In this text, historian and critic Germán Rubiano Caballero provides an overview of Colombian art from the twenties through the eighties. He analyzes each decade on the basis of two key criteria: how the modern is constructed and the tension between [...]

This document is Edgar Negret’s response to the press release from the Ministry of Public Works in which he set forth points related to the controversy generated about Abstract art in Colombia based on the monument to Bolívar, a sculpture the [...]

Appearing in El Espectador, a Colombian daily newspaper with national circulation, this is an article on a press conference held by members of the Academia Colombiana de Historia [Colombian History Academy] through which they took their criticism of [...]

In this article, the critic Jorge Gaitán Durán discusses the work of the sculptor Edgar Negret. The former refers to the Colombian artist’s commitment to addressing the country’s social conditions in his work. This commitment is visible in the [...]

In this letter to the editor of the Bogota-based newspaper El Tiempo, a group of artists, journalists, and individuals connected to the Colombian art world voice their displeasure at the Academia Colombiana de Historia’s position on the planned [...]

This document makes some relevant points in the debate over abstract art in Colombia that was sparked by the monument to Bolívar, originally commissioned from the sculptor Édgar Negret by the Ministry of Public Works. In the article, the Colombian [...]

This press release, written by the Minster of Public Works and Transportation (1980) Enrique Vargas Ramírez, was distributed to the Colombian media on the occasion of the controversy concerning the monument commissioned from the sculptor Édgar [...]

In this article, poet and critic Luis Vidales expresses his position on the debate surrounding abstract and figurative art, a polemic central to Colombian art at the time. First, Vidales argues that certain concepts have been poorly defined in [...]

In this text, Austrian historian and critic Walter Engel, who lived in Colombia starting in 1938, discusses the suspension of the Salón Anual de Artistas Colombianos from 1947 to 1949. He observes that during that period “historic” events took [...]

This is the first part of an article published by critic María Elvira Iriarte in 1984 in which she reconstructs the period during which abstract art came to play a central role in the visual arts in Colombia. In a chronological overview, Iriarte [...]

In the introduction to the exhibition Solidaridad held at the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogota, Colombia, in 1976, Argentine critic Marta Traba—who lived in Puerto Rico for many years—explains that the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende was [...]

This document is the postcard invitation to the inauguration of the Corporación Ciudad Solar [Solar City Association], an independent cultural space in Cali, Colombia, established by Hernando Guerrero, Francisco “Pakiko” Ordóñez, and Miguel [...]

This essay posits the concept of “geometría sensível” [Sensitive Geometry] as one of the unitary characteristics of contemporary Latin American art, and notes the growing interest (within the region and further afield) in [...]