Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

Due to the exceptional circumstances at the time—the military coup d’état that had taken place in Chile—this newsletter marks a departure from previous formats. It expresses the center’s democratic solidarity with the [...]

In this essay Adriana Valdés discusses the production of women artists, and takes a sweeping look at women artists in Latin America and Chile. She follows María Zambrano’s lead regarding the cultural and historical forces that [...]

The theorist and visual artist Francisco González-Vera describes his text as a “model” that can be used to help position the work of Pablo Burchard within the framework of Chilean painting. To that end, he suggests taking an [...]

In this essay, Enrique Lihn discusses the Tango series of photographs by Paz Errázuriz, based on a review of the works of authors who have written about the origins and lyrics of this particular style of music and dance. Lihn claims that & [...]

This essay by Alberto Madrid is the research on the evolution of Chilean engraving at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de Viña del Mar. For this the author utilized references of national geographic elements associated with printmaking, which [...]

This essay is a review by Enrique Lihn on Pedro Millar’s exhibition at the Instituto Cultural de Providencia, and it being part of the IV Bienal Americana del Grabado in Santiago, Chile in 1970. Lihn characterized Millar’s work as [...]

This letter from Mario Pedrosa, the Brazilian critic, stresses the importance of the gesture made by artists who donated their works to the Museo de la Solidaridad in a spirit of soladarity with the people of Chile, who were at that time on the road [...]

Pedro Millar interviews Nemesio Antúnez, and they discuss printmaking based on their personal and group experience. The conversation touches on what prompted Antúnez’s interest in printmaking, the years he spent in the United [...]

In his essay “Realismo y crisis de la representación pictórica” (Realism and Crisis in Pictorial Representation), Guillermo Machuca addresses several critical points regarding the visual arts in Chile during the 1960s. They include, [...]

In his essay about the vast subject of art criticism in Chile from 1950 to 1973, Patricio Muñoz Zárate highlights the field’s defining moments, milestones, and notable personalities. In a series of subchapters, he sheds light on [...]

Francisco Brugnoli reviews the work of Matilde Pérez in terms of persistence and discontinuity. In his essay, he theorizes about art’s role as a means of communication and provides a historical perspective on the evolution of a kind of [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado discusses the Escena de Avanzada twenty years after Nelly Richard coined the term. Though it originally had militant undertones, the term evolved into a historical category. It applied to a set of texts and artworks that Richard [...]

In this essay, Guillermo Machuca discusses the evolution of Chilean art, from the founding of the Academia de Pintura to the artists of the 1960s, using the works in the collection held by the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (Santiago) as a base. [...]

In “Destrucción, reconstrucción y desconstrucciones” (Destruction, Reconstruction, and Deconstructions), Nelly Richard critically reviews the cultural situation in Chile during the military dictatorship (1973–90). It was, in her [...]

In this article, which is one of the first formal written accounts of the history of Chilean photography, Mario Fonseca emphasizes the absence of history, criticism, and market. He talks about the arrival of the first daguerreotypes in Chile, in 1840 [...]

The author, Nelly Richard, suggests an analogy between Galería Metropolitana’s location in an outlying area of the city (Comuna Pedro Aguirre Cerda in Santiago) and its editorial approach. She uses symbolic opposites, such as center and [...]

In this essay, Patricio Muñoz Zárate discusses his curatorial approach to the exhibition Subversiones/Imposturas organized for the IV Bienal de Arte. He describes a likely scene in which young artists try to change what is “ [...]

In this essay, Justo Pastor Mellado discusses the works by the painters Pablo Burchard, Gracia Barrios, and José Balmes at the exhibition curated by Francisco González. Pastor Mellado notes that González’s curatorial plan [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado wrote three interventions for the Seminario de interpretación de la coyuntura plástica. This third “polemical” text ranges from what was taking place in the visual arts field in Chile to what was [...]

In 1983 Justo Pastor Mellado addressed some discussions that were begun a couple of years earlier in his essay about Tránsito suspendido, the exhibition of works by Carlos Altamirano. He described this text as a second part, focusing the [...]

In this article, which appeared in the sixth catalogue for the Festival Franco-Chileno de Video Arte (1986), Nelly Richard discusses how video was used for artistic purposes in Chile. From a theoretical standpoint, she explores the experimental use [...]

In this handwritten letter, José Balmes, the Catalonian artist who had lived in Chile since the end of the Spanish Civil War, recalls his arrival in the Andean country aboard the Winnipeg, the ship provided by the populist Chilean president [...]

The curator and researcher Alberto Madrid analyzes Historias de identificación (Histories of Identification), housed in one of the rooms at the grand exhibition held at the MNBA in Santiago, Chile, which uses portraits to record presence and [...]

José de Nordenflycht discusses Justo Pastor Mellado’s curatorial vision for Chile 100 Años Artes Visuales. He mentions the area that included five painters who all studied at the Universidad de Chile: José Balmes, Samy [...]

In this article Pablo Oyarzún provides a critical review of the art produced over the course of three decades. He notes the lack of a tradition that could bear witness to and interpret art production in Chile. From the early twentieth century& [...]

In this text Nemesio Antúnez provides a brief description of Taller 99. He discusses the origin of the workshop and his association with Atelier 17 (founded in 1917) in Paris, where he completed his training as a printmaker, underscoring the [...]

Nelly Richard discusses the use of the human body as a support for a work of art. She refers to two art actions beginning in 1975. One of them was El perchero by Carlos Leppe; in the other, Raúl Zurita burned his face, photographed it, and [...]

Nelly Richard focuses on a number of artists as part of her assessment of the status of painting in Chile during the 1970s and 1980s. She discusses a selection of works by a group of artists who take a critical approach to the painting tradition, [...]

This is Pablo Oyarzún’s critical review of Nelly Richard’s book Márgenes e Instituciones (Margins and Institutions). He acknowledges her role in the field of Chilean art and her contributions to a new approach to art [...]

The theorist Justo Pastor Mellado outlines his curatorial approach for the exhibition 1973–2000: Transferencia y densidad. He begins by defining concepts such as “curator,” discussing the term’s evolution in Chile and its [...]

Eugenio Dittborn discusses Nelly Richard’s book, Margins and Institutions. Art in Chile Since 1973 (1986), condensing his review into four brief comments. The first considers the text as a “lengthy written work,” which contributes [...]

Adriana Valdés discusses Margins and Institutions. Art in Chile Since 1973, the book by Nelly Richard. Valdés pays particular attention to “the writing scene,” which included Richard as well as others who contributed to the [...]

José Joaquín Brunner explains how the authoritarian regime that came into power after the 1973 coup d’état impacted cultural production in its various forms and, more specifically, what was going on in the Escena de [...]

Diamela Eltit discusses Nelly Richard’s assessment of the Escena de Avanzada, explaining that, having been mentioned in Richard’s book, she finds herself in the paradoxical position of being a subject of the work in question as well as [...]

This is Nelly Richard’s “Introduction” to her book Margins and Institutions. Art in Chile Since 1973, in which she outlines the concept of the Escena de Avanzada. The “advanced scene” flourished in an unofficial sector [...]

Néstor Olhagaray, the video maker and researcher, writes about the arrival of video in the Chilean art world. He refers to one of the essential characteristics of the medium, which is its ability to create both a personal and a social [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado’s essay “Breve nota sobre pintura chilena: 1950–88,” introduced the traveling exhibition Cirugía Plástica [Plastic Surgery] to Berlin audiences. Mellado mentions certain specific features of [...]

In this article, the writer Gonzalo Muñoz discusses the art produced in Santiago, Chile, between 1974 and 1985, which he describes as being highly political and, therefore, very focused on the military dictatorship that was in power at that [...]

The essay “Parpadeo y piedad,” which appeared in the catalogue for the exhibition Cirugía plástica (Plastic Surgery), held in Berlin, discusses art in Chile, specifically, the art produced in the wake of the 1973 fascist [...]

   In her essay “Sobre arte y política(s): contraoficialidad, poder y lenguajes,” written for the exhibition catalogue Cirugía plástica (Plastic Surgery), Nelly Richard reflects on the socio-political and [...]

Nelly Richard   discusses C.A.D.A. (Colectivo  Acciones de Arte), taking a critical look at the art action group’s relationship to what she called the Escena de Avanzada, a name she coined based on the group’s strategies [...]

In this text Justo Pastor Mellado discusses the concept of “theoretical transference,” an idea that is mentioned in several of his publications. He uses two fictional models: one refers to the origin myth in Chilean painting, the other to [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado discusses the evolution of Chilean painting, from its roots to the 1980s. He divides his essay into six sections that explore the field’s history, from José Gil de Castro to the early twentieth century, remembering [...]

In this essay Justo Pastor Mellado presents an extension of his theory concerning the vital contribution made by printing to the emergence of “modernity” in Chilean art. The text, arranged in 21 sections, describes the evolution of [...]

In this essay Eugenio Dittborn writes about his Pinturas aeropostales [Airmail Paintings], discussing them in poetic terms laid out in 13 sections in which he describes how they were put together and how they were supposed to function. He explains [...]

In this article, Gaspar Galaz rates José Balmes as one of the most important painters in the Chilean art world. The writer notes the international influence Balmes brings to his local perspective and concentrates his attention on the paintings [...]

This text by Nelly Richard is based on a collection of quotes, which trace an argumentative arc that express her ideas about the exhibition she is reviewing. She also discusses certain situations in the art field at the time that show how the first [...]

In this text Nelly Richard offers a diagnostic on feminism in Chile and its connections to social sciences and art. The author refers to a Feminism (with a capital F) that developed in the social sciences, which became the predominant discourse and [...]

This text provides an analysis of what happens at a cultural level in a totalitarian society, which the author implies is a reference to Chile, and how political resistance is organized in such circumstances. One of the main features that José [...]

Diamela Eltit and Lotty Rosenfeld wrote this essay after the Círculo de Estudios de la Mujer invited them to take part in a conference commemorating International Women’s Day. Eltit and Rosenfeld had intended to show a pornographic film [...]