Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

Juan B. Climent interviews Manuel Rodríguez Lozano, who leaves no doubt about his position regarding the figures of Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros in Mexican art. Lozano talks about the need to vindicate the native figure stemming from [...]

José Clemente Orozco believed that opposition to political painting was nothing new in Mexico; it had been around since the start of the mural movement. Some painters tried to stamp out all forms of figurative or representative expression. When [...]

In this short article by Antonio Rodríguez, the art critic shows his support for an article published in the previous issue of the journal Espacios by the artist Roberto Berdecio, in defense of “social painting.” Rodríguez believes that “ [...]

In this chapter from América Latina en sus artes Jorge Alberto Manrique begins by describing the artistic movements of the 1920s and comparing this period to a giant hinge that moved backward to the nineteenth century and forward to the twentieth [...]

The critic Antonio Rodríguez uses this article to defend the murals painted by Jorge González Camarena in the main hall of the Edificio Guardiola, in the center of Mexico City. The author believes that the short newspaper article calling for these [...]

José Clemente Orozco did not publish any more political caricatures after the 1913 Decena Trágica [Tragic Ten Days]. This paragraph discusses at length the late-nineteenth-century transition from the end of the traditional press to the efficiency [...]

In this book, Margarita Nelken, a Spanish critic based in Mexico, discusses the development of Expressionism in Mexican art. She argues that Mexican Expressionism has a native origin that, with the passage of time, has been enriched by the different [...]

After discussing how busy Germán List Arzubide—the Estridentista from old times—kept in New York’s workers’ media, Ben Ossa mentions the ideas suggested to LEAR by the “Congreso de Artistas Americanos (de Estados Unidos)” [American [...]

During the 1940s, Carlos Mérida’s reflections tend toward abstract art and its protagonists. In this article, the painter states that for those who are not familiar with abstract painting, a symbolic form of interpretation is the most logical. [...]

This document is the first section of Margarita Nelken’s book Pintores de México [Painters of Mexico], which she wrote by commission of the Secretaría de Educación Pública [SEP, Ministry of Public Education]. Nevertheless, it was never [...]

Author Dorothy Chaplik provides an overview of the life and art of Alejandro Romero, a recognized Chicago-based Mexican painter and muralist. She traces his artistic career from his childhood in Tabasco and youth and Mexico City, when he first [...]

This is a summary of Gilberto Freyre’s thoughts on the subject of Latin America, with a focus on the cultural anthropological aspects of a hybrid civilization based on a blend of black, American Indian, and European traditions. The author discusses [...]

This short article by the art critic Margarita Nelken comments on the recent inauguration in Paris of the traveling exhibition of Mexican art with work ranging from the pre-Columbian period up to the date of the article. She describes the artistic [...]

Bandera de provincias [Flag of the Provinces] also took on the task of “discovering” José Clemente Orozco. The magazine commissioned Enrique Martínez Ulloa from Jalisco to write about Orozco’s painting. The author wrote three articles [...]

Poet and critic José Juan Tablada points out that for the first time contemporary art from Mexico had been fully recognized in the United States through the œuvre of José Clemente Orozco, an artist “whose psychological power and highly tragic [...]

This is the first of two articles by Sebastián Salazar Bondy, published under the pseudonym “Juan Eye,” on the Mexican art exhibition organized in Lima by La Crónica newspaper. The author believes the show is exceptional for its positive [...]

This article reviews the José Clemente Orozco exhibition that included the paintings belonging to his La casa del llanto [The House of Weeping] series (1911) and others as well. The exhibition took place at the Biblos bookstore, located in the [...]

Fradique’s article, signed in Guadalajara, which is the capital of the state of Jalisco, sets out to review the work of some of the artists from that state. He begins with the “elders”: Dr. Atl, Alfredo Ramos Martínez (sic) and Rafael Ponce de [...]

In this lengthy article, Fausto Ramírez discusses the importance of paying attention to the creative work of men of art and science as one contemplates the future of the world, as was done at the New School for Social Research (1930). This topic was [...]

This is an autobiographical account by the Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco that reveals the extraordinary influence exerted on his life and work by Dr. Atl. When Dr. Atl returned from Europe, he sought the support of his old colleagues [...]

In this essay, Ricardo Romo discusses the vibrant tradition of Chicano muralism, proposing as his goals both an examination of the historical evolution of murals painted in borderland states across the United States (California, Arizona, New Mexico, [...]

The painter and engraver Fanny Rabel directs an ironic, open letter to Diego Rivera because of the declarations he had made four months earlier in the same publication. [See 794985] In the name of the young generations, Rabel asks Rivera if a change [...]

Bertram Wolfe, Diego Rivera’s biographer, states that the period from the late 1930s through the early 1940s was a solitary, confusing time for the painter due to the fact that his name was appearing constantly in newspaper headlines as the [...]

In 1944, David Alfaro Siqueiros wrote an open letter to José Clemente Orozco in which he admitted that he could identify the different stages of his work. Siqueiros begins by saying that an artist’s work is not an individual creation but the [...]

Diego Rivera writes a long letter to the Seminario de Cultura Mexicana [Mexican Cultural Seminary] in which he challenges the statements made by the Spanish writer José Bergamín about landscape painter José María Velasco and José Clemente Orozco [...]

The journalist Luis Suárez complains about the selection of paintings made by the “International committee of experts designated by the general commissioners of the Pavilions of certain number of countries with some importance in modern art,” [...]

Jean Charlot thanks, ironically, the fact that José Clemente Orozco has not studied in Europe, since the United States offered him the mechanical elements of his œuvre, and Mexico the dramatic elements. Orozco, in Charlot’s opinion, lives within [...]

This article discusses a plan by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City to purchase works by José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, Rufino Tamayo, Jesús Guerrero Galván, and Juan Soriano. The chosen artists’ formal and artistic qualities are [...]

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 [...]

In this essay from 1937, Justino Fernández conducts a study on the evolution of Mexican art during the 1920s and 1930s. The text is organized in three large sections: mural painting, general painting and sculpture. Fernández characterizes mural [...]

The Comisión Nacional de Pintura Mural [National Commission for Mural Painting], which consisted of Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, was founded in late August 1947. The Commission’s goal was to stimulate and [...]

In this biographical sketch, Loló de la Torriente defines the aspiration of David Alfaro Siqueiros as wanting to be recognized as a leader of socialist fighters rather than as a painter. The text is divided into four parts: Siqueiros, the man; the [...]

The questionnaire consists of six questions concerning the importance of social art in Mexico. The questions are as follows: Do you believe that the function of art in our time is to deliver an eloquent message of social content to the people? Do you [...]

This letter by José Luis Cuevas, sent from Philadelphia, was published in the newspaper Novedades on February 15, 1958. The missive is a response to an article by Andrés Henestrosa published three weeks earlier. Here, Cuevas defends German [...]

In an open letter to the newspaper, David Alfaro Siqueiros makes a number of statements about the article published in the same paper defending students’ rights in terms of the paintings at the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria (ENP). Siqueiros [...]

In this catalogue essay, Victor Alejandro Sorell considers the 36-year career (spanning 1964–2000) of the Chicano artist Carlos Cortez, praising him as the “quintessential artist-reporter,” and emphasizing his virtuosity as a master printmaker [...]

The author of this article criticized Rufino Tamayo’s œuvre, comparing it to Picasso’s Cubism and remarking that the artist was “a servile imitator of the Paris School.” According to MacGregor, Tamayo’s contributions were for this “ [...]

Roberto de la Selva—one of the earliest critics in the field of mural painting—set out to articulate a technical comparison between the work of Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, with a distinctly favorable emphasis on the latter. Describing [...]

Justino Fernández describes José Clemente Orozco’s work as “frivolous art,” which explains its limited appeal; but that doesn’t mean that it is not enjoyed, since Orozco documents human reality and, consequently, historic reality. Ferná [...]

Roberto de la Selva reviews Diego Rivera’s work and comments on the murals Rivera painted in the auditorium of the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria and at the SEP (Ministry of Public Education), both in Mexico City. De la Selva hints that these works [...]

Roberto de la Selva seeks to communicate to his readers the reach and present reality of Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, establishing a comparative “technical and ideological” vision of the work of both artists. The author presents his [...]

Alejandro Núñez Alonso addresses the significant impact of Mexican art abroad. Both European critics and the public had been pleased with this great exhibition—Arte Mexicano en Paris [Mexican Art in Paris], 1952—with a full panorama of Mexican [...]

The poet and art critic Xavier Villaurrutia believes José Clemente Orozco’s murals were his best works; then his drawings, lithographs, and engravings and, lastly, his oil paintings. Villaurrutia believes that oil painting was not the most [...]

According to the art critic Raúl Flores Guerrero, the current stagnation and crisis of Mexican painting, was mainly due to three factors. The first factor was the lack of adequate preparation of the new generation, the second one was due to the [...]

David Alfaro Siqueiros attempts to answer the question: “If you were nominated by the El Colegio Nacional to replace José Clemente Orozco, what would you say?” He replies in a long, complex, four-page essay. He eschews a yes or a no answer and [...]

In a short article published on May 31, Miguel Álvarez Acosta, the director of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (INBA), stated: “The fact that the best paintings by Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros did not appear in the Biennial was Carrillo Gil [...]

Xavier Moyssén writes about mural painting’s nineteenth-century precedents, in private houses and in pulquerías [agave sap saloons,] and works painted by nineteenth-century students at the Academia; the artists, he includes, are José Obregón, [...]

This article describes the program by the government of Jalisco to decorate, with mural paintings, the Museo y Biblioteca del Estado [State Museum and Library]. The author mentions the governor [Sebastián] Allende, who plans to invite one of the [...]

This is the Mexican critic Antonio Luna Arroyo’s biographical sketch of the German sculptor Herbert Hofmann-Isenbourg. It spans the latter’s education in philosophy and aesthetics in Berlin, his travels—including three trips around the world— [...]