Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this document, the critic Francisco Da Antonio develops a chronological essay on the life and work of Domenico Casasanta, starting in 1958, when the artist arrived in Venezuela. After almost a decade in which he produced no work, in 1968, the [...]

In this text, Ronaldo Brito analyzes Amilcar de Castro’s work in the media of sculpture and drawing. He discusses the connections between de Castro’s production and modern sculpture. Brito asserts that de Castro’s art formulates a rejection of [...]

This article, written in the form of a poem, is about the series Excitáveis [Excitables] by the Brazilian artist Sérvulo Esmeraldo. The author, Erwin Leiser, pictures him walking through the back streets of Paris looking for images that will be [...]

Mário Pedrosa analyzes Lygia Clark’s artistic career beginning with the elimination of frames for her canvases (during the 1950s) through to the incorporation of the viewer’s action into her work (see her Bichos series) and the full integration [...]

The professor and essay writer Celso Favaretto assesses the parameters that frame the work of Hélio Oiticica, from the experience of pure art to the statement made by environmental art. In Favaretto’s opinion, the path followed by the artist from [...]

Hélio Oiticica presents his research into the transition from two-dimensional paintings to three-dimensional works of art, discussing some of his own projects—such as Invenções, Núcleos, and Penetráveis—and the designs for open air [...]

In this article, Hélio Oiticica reviews Amílcar de Castro’s sculptural works, noticing as he does so that the artist is adopting a new approach within the context of constructive art by combining intellectual and expressive elements as part of [...]

The author of this article, Rodrigo Naves, explains that Ronaldo Brito’s essay presents an overview of a movement that was representative of contemporary Brazilian art. Naves also suggests that Brito’s critique attempts to understand works that [...]

Swiss artist Max Bill analyzes the connections between form, beauty and function in the creation of utilitarian objects on an industrial scale. He defends the idea that everyday objects should combine functional and aesthetic qualities. In his [...]

Written in 1991, this article by art critic Alberto Tassinari discusses the show of work by Antonio Lizárraga held at Millan gallery in São Paulo. In Tassinari’s view, Lizárraga’s objects are neither painting nor sculpture, though they bring [...]

In the view of Jacob Ruchti, the origin of Constructivism can be traced to the analytic investigation of Cubism. He believes that Constructivism implies “a new conceptual vision of things,” where colors, lines, and forms have an expressive power [...]

The Venezuelan curator Tahía Rivero writes an analysis of the works of José Luis López-Reus, a local visual artist, in the exhibition Vacivus (Caracas, Sala RG, 1993). Rivero points out that the work of this painter is substantiated by [...]

The Argentine critic Silvia de Ambrosini claims that there have always been “opponents” in the art field. In her opinion, these “opponents” are what revitalizes the creative atmosphere. She says that in Latin American art “we find [...]

Décio Pignatari insists that the artist should be an integral part of the industrial production system, and proposes that art should be incorporated into architecture, urban development, industrial design, cinematography, advertising, and [...]

In this essay, Venezuelan curator Rina Carvajal asserts that by means of the disintegration and reconfiguration of the form, the visual discourse formulated by Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt, 1912–1994), a Venezuelan artist of German origin, opened up [...]

In this essay, Manuel Quintana Castillo identifies the formal assumptions upon which the Cubist aesthetic was constructed, and explains how Cubism influenced movements such as Futurism and Constructivism based on an intrinsic interest in geometry. In [...]

Journalist Rubén Wisotzki interviewed Magdalena Fernández in 1996, when she was awarded the Premio Eugenio Mendoza. Fernández acknowledges that her work, particularly her studies in design to which abstraction and geometricism are fundamental, is [...]

In this introduction, Luis Cancel explains the logic behind how he and his colleagues organized the exhibition The Latin American Spirit: Art and Artists in the United States, 1920-1970. He also explains, at length, the curatorial team’s larger [...]

Guillermo Meneses discusses the foreign artists invited by the architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva to work with him on his plan to incorporate art into the proposed Ciudad Universitaria in Caracas. Meneses begins by mentioning the artistic merits of [...]

In this text, Ronaldo Brito provides a critical analysis of Constructivist tendencies in modern art. He argues that the emergence of Neo-Concretism in Rio de Janeiro in 1959 was a consequence of the crisis of Constructivist ideologies. Brito presents [...]

This is the text of a lecture given by Joaquín Torres-García at the School of Science and Humanities in Montevideo, Uruguay, in which he reflected on modern art and even analyzed a number of theories. Among other controversial views, he announced [...]

Lygia Pape, the artist curating the Projeto Construtivo Brasileiro exhibition (in the version shown in Rio de Janeiro), analyzes the legacy of the constructive art movements in Brazil retrospectively, and based on these, assesses Brazilian art on a [...]

This article was written by Ramiro Pérez Reinoso who felt that the possibility of presenting a retrospective on the Cubist movement and its views “would not pale the increased hue of its modernity, seen in its last artists excited by its novelty [...]

Drawn from the content of the three chapters in the book by Manuel Quintana Castillo Cuadernos de pintura, this selection, the text “Reflexiones sobre el constructivismo,” can be found in Chapter III. In it, the essay writer informs us that it [...]

The author José Renau, exiled in Mexico, summarizes the principal avant-garde art trends of the 20th century, highlighting the contradiction between the works created and their artistic value in light of the few connections among the artists, [...]

Hélio Oiticica describes the mock-up for the environmental project Cães de Caça [Hunting Dogs], a space consisting of five sets of works called “Penetráveis,” the “buried poem” by the writer and art critic [José Ribamar] Ferreira Gullar [...]

The writer considers the term “integral art,” coined by Alejandro Romualdo Valle, a rhetorical excess, certainly inapplicable to any particular work, as a general rule. It is also specifically inapplicable to the artwork by Alfredo Ruiz Rosas [...]

Robert Storr analyzes Gego’s work in the formal milieu in which it was created. The curator begins with an introduction in which he provides the essential information about her life, her late training as an artist, and the influence of Paul Klee [...]

In his interview with Professor Del Brenna, the theoretician and academic administrator Tomás Maldonado gave a retrospective reading of what was known as the “Modernism project.” This was the guideline for 20th Century art movements in the [...]

In the article, Tomás Maldonado discusses the concepts brought forth by Joaquín Torres-García and his followers against the Inventionist group postulates, published in issue number 2 of the Removedor [Thinner] journal. It refers to the following [...]

The article was motivated by the book published by Michel Seuphor, a year before in 1949, in Paris, the spirit that integrated magazine Cercle et carré two decades prior. The book aimed to formulate a brief history on European abstract art. The [...]