Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This essay by Murilo Mendes appeared in the exhibition catalogue for work by the sculptor Maria Martins at the MAM-RJ (Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro) in 1956. Mendes thinks the uniqueness of her work arises from a confrontation at a [...]

In his essay in the catalogue for the exhibition titled Antonio Berni: oleos y collages [Antonio Berni: Oil Paintings and Collages] (Buenos Aires, Imagen Galería de Arte, 1974), Berni writes about the Surrealist influence in his work, and about his [...]

In the introduction to this catalog, César Moro (a celebrated Peruvian poet and artist) alludes to the antecedents of Surrealism within the avant-garde movements of the beginning of the twentieth century. He also identifies the contact points that [...]

Antonio Berni himself presents his works produced over a time span of three decades. Berni emphasizes that while he showed in the Sociedad Amigos del Arte [Friends of Art Society] his surrealistic production in 1932, there are many that do not know [...]

In his text on the life and work of Ismael Nery, writer Murilo Mendes asserts that, though Nery was mostly known as a painter, his true focus was philosophy. Mendes provides an overview of Nery’s “essentialism”—a philosophical system he [...]

In this article, Gyula Kosice speaks out against surrealism and reaffirms his belief in abstract art inspired by the image itself. In the author’s opinion, the latter view guarantees multidimensional harmony with no need for psychic adaptations [...]

The critic considers that the relevance of Surrealism lies in the fact that it is not an artistic but an ideological movement; it is in art where it finds itself justified. Pellegrini analyzes, among others, several aspects such as humor, desire, [...]

This is a letter from the critic Mário de Andrade to the writer Prudente de Moraes Neto. Adopting a brotherly tone, de Andrade criticizes the Surrealist nature of Moraes Neto’s article in the modernist magazine VERDE, published in Cataguazes (in [...]

This is an essay written by José R. Echevarría about Surrealism and the creative life. He believes that all creative acts are a protest against a “given” reality. He adds that dreams, delirium, fantasy, and memory are all means of accessing [...]

Olívio Tavares de Araújo introduces an exhibition of the work of Farnese de Andrade, an artist then known in Rio, but not in São Paulo. The writer brings up the strange nature of this artist from Minas Gerais, under the label of “mineiridad.” [...]

This essay by the French Surrealist poet Benjamin Péret appeared in the catalogue for the exhibition of works by Maria Martins presented at the MAM-RJ (Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro) in 1956. Péret discusses the artist’s sculptures, [...]

A text by Pellegrini which introduces the translation, which he himself wrote, of a text by the French poet Antonin Artaud. He points out that nobody other than this author has lived through the paroxysm of the most extreme questions a human being [...]

The critic highlights the fact that—in Roberto Aizenberg’s work—a process of purification was set into motion by three essential elements: space, light, and architecture. Pellegrini points out that technical perfection and impeccable detailing [...]

Julio Llinás states that Roberto Aizenberg, Osvaldo Borda, Victor Chab, and Julio H. Silva are gathered again after ten years in order to restart their dialogue. According to Llinás, their heterodoxy did not imply a formal and irrational [...]

This text by writer Murilo Mendes addresses the connections between the work of Brazilian painter Nery and the Surrealist movement. It contains an account of when, in 1927, Nery met Russian painter Marc Chagall and remarks on certain affinities [...]

The art critic José Geraldo Vieira reviews the history of Surrealism and mentions Hieronymus Bosch, Albrecht Dürer, and William Hogarth, among others. In the critic’s opinion, these artists created a “cosmogony of the absurd” centuries ahead [...]

This is the statement of the British art critic Herbert Read, interviewed by the Brazilian artist Flávio de Carvalho. Read stresses the importance of the influence of black art on international modernism and claims that art is currently split into [...]

Writer Aníbal Machado published this text on the occasion of the death of Ismael Nery. He points out some aspects of the artist’s personality and work and compares his painting with foreign artists of the stature of Max Ernest and André Masson [...]

This is the transcript of a statement made by the poet Tristan Tzara when he was interviewed by Flávio de Carvalho during the latter’s trip to Europe in 1934. Tzara speaks at great length about Dadaist methods, the movement he leads, and the [...]

Aldo Pellegrini’s text presents the centennial tribute for the death of Count of Lautréamont, Isidore Ducasse. Pellegrini highlights that Ducasse’s work uses canons, or rules, in order to break them and—by means of this mechanis— outwit or [...]

This article praises the artistic qualities of the work of Agustín Lazo, who participated in the international surrealist exhibition a few months later. Cardoza mentions the visual interpretation of the work of Giorgio de Chirico, as well as the use [...]

The protest reports on a series of cancellations and blockages that prevented André Breton from arriving at the university and other college facilities. This occurred despite his official invitation and the fact that his presentation was planned in [...]

In this article, Margarita Nelken looks back over Alice Rahon’s career. Nelken explains that Rahon, the French artist who straddled between both Surrealist painting and Surrealist poetry, had shaken off her father’s aesthetic influence [...]

Letras de México, the magazine directed by Octavio G. Barreda, devoted its May 1938 issue to André Breton and Surrealism. It published several of his essays: an excerpt of “Les vases communicantes” [Communicating Vessels], “Le merveilleux [...]

This text by Murilo Mendes was written on the occasion of the death of French Surrealist writer André Breton in 1966. On the basis of certain encounters he had with Breton in Paris in 1952 and 1953, Mendes makes observations on the work and [...]

This is a dense re-telling of Octavio Paz’s nexus to surrealism and particular link to André Breton. It tells of the role played by the poet Benjamín Péret in this long relationship, which the Mexican writer sums up as a [...]

In this essay, along with posthumous praise for the figure, André Breton, Octavio Paz establishes a new approach to surrealism, automatic writing and the concept of revelation: “The critics are saying that surrealism is no longer the [...]

Antonio Berni states his position on hyperrealism; he mentions the work of his surrealist stage in order relate the mechanisms of creation for photomontage and the collages from his Juanito Laguna series [...]

This article describes the characteristics of the works included in the exhibition Sexteto [Sextet] (Buenos Aires: Galería Lirolay, 1964) and reprints the artists’ opinions regarding the show’s classification as Pop art, a term that was used by [...]

Kenneth Kemble tackles the authorship of an idea of destructive art, which is more an experimentation than an -ism. In his view, destructive art evokes the diversity of man’s essential needs: destruction as emotion, the pleasure and the [...]

In this article, Aldo Pellegrini recognizes a link between Surrealist art and Abstract art prone to expression. In this sense, he also considers it possible to establish this same relationship with the Concrete artist. Although the latter rises out [...]

Antonio Berni writes about the development of modern art since impressionism, focusing in particular on both Paul Cézanne and cubism. In particular, his analysis of surrealism stands out. The artist likewise analyzes the dehumanization of art, pure [...]

Luis Felipe Noé comments on the exhibition by Orlando Pierri at the Galería Pizarro. In Noé’s opinion, all that remains of Surrealism is the concept of dissociation of the light now representing not what is beneath reality but what is above it. [...]

Commenting on the work of Argentine painter Juan Batlle Planas exhibited at Galatea, Noé praises the artist’s capacity for self-renewal after having completed a cycle of rigorous work in the realm of symbology. Noé also comments on the work of [...]

Luis Felipe Noé delves into the work of Carlos Torrallardona as a search for geometry within reality. Also, Noé reviewed the exhibition by five artists at the Galería Peuser to establish the nexus between surrealism and abstraction, particularly [...]

In this text, Peruvian writer Sebastián Salazar Bondy comments on the exhibition of Surrealist painting held at the Galería de Lima in July 1954. In Salazar Bondy’s view, Surrealism played a fundamental role in forming the language of modern art [...]

Cayetano Cordóva Iturburu gives a positive critique of the Destructive art exhibition due to its intelligent organization of the artworks, as well as for the expanded interpretation of art as either life blasted experience or a new poetics [...]

This text—included in the offprint “Elementos para una biografía” [Elements for a Biography] taken from the exhibition catalogue for Berni - Óleos y Collages [Berni: Oils and Collages]— points out the trajectory of Berni’s work through [...]

This is a literary article written by the artist Flávio de Carvalho, in which he describes his interview with and impressions of the French intellectual Roger Callois. During the interview, Callois states that twentieth-century science is no longer [...]

Diego Rivera denounces the “sordid sabotage” that the French poet André Breton has been subjected to at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México: as an action driven by a network of intellectuals controlled by the Soviet [...]

In this text, Pellegrini applies a critical point of view to three statements, chosen at random, authored by Jorge Luis Borges, T.S.Eliot, and William Faulkner. In his conclusion Pellegrini notes that, although the analysis of these statements [...]

A short article by the Mexican poet Xavier Villaurrutia in which he announces the opening of a film club, “16 mm Cinema,” and the projection of the “sobrerrealista” [over-realist] film by Luis Buñuel, Un chien andalou [UnPerro Andaluz /An [...]

André Breton is interviewed before his trip to Mexico, due to the great deal of anticipation caused by his forthcoming visit. The French poet declares that this trip “crystallizes a beautiful dream and a long deferred wish,” since Mexico has [...]

This essay examines the impact of Roberto Matta’s presence in the United States during 1939–1948, when, as part of a Surrealist cohort of émigrés, he established temporary residence in New York to escape the war in Europe. The authors [...]

The critic Carlos Silva wrote a study of the work of the Venezuelan sculptor Edgar Guinand, pointing out two fundamental periods in his life in art. The first is defined by the writer in the visual arts context that follows the Latin American Post- [...]

Antonio Berni writes about developments in modern art and of formalism in art. He analyzes the artists who adhere to Nuevo Realismo [New Realism] and discusses the meaning of that movement [...]

In this article César Rengifo explains why the art world is disappointed in abstract formalism, and notes a resurgence of the realist movement. He refers to statements made or positions taken by artists such as Salvador Dalí, Giorgio de Chirico, [...]

In this text, eminent Latin American avant-garde poet César Vallejo asserts that “among the symptoms of the final decline of the capitalist intelligentsia is the vice of coterie.” He argues that the crises of economic imperialism are reflected [...]

Robert Cox writes that, in the exhibition Arte Destructivo at Galería Lirolay, the artists have created a smart form of displaying destruction, as the antithesis of creation. He refers to both the sale of the works and the participation of the [...]

According to Rafael Heliodoro Valle, the distinguishing feature of the Surrealist movement is that it has “old roots” that set it apart from the rest of the avant-garde. And that, “Mexico, [which] is not a myth,” but has a mythical past has [...]