Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this text, Carlos Enríquez responds to the question that the editors of revista de avance posed to their readers: “What should American art be?” He specifically addresses each of the four sub-questions grouped under this larger question. In [...]

In this text, Eduardo Avilés Ramírez responds to the question that the editors of revista de avance posed to their readers: “What should American art be?” He specifically addresses each of the four sub-questions grouped under this larger [...]

According to Ceferino Palencia, the Spanish art critic living in exile in Mexico, Frida Kahlo’s pictorial art was an eloquent example of will in service to sensitivity. Palencia speaks of Frida’s lifelong rebellion against her mother’s violent [...]

The Puerto Rican writer Olga Nolla writes in-depth about some of the works produced by the Puerto Rican artist Julio Tomás Martínez. According to her, Martínez was influenced by Symbolism, Surrealism, and Futurism, which set him apart from his [...]

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 [...]

A list of the eleven artists who took part in the 1957 exhibition organized by the Surrealist group, El Mirador Azul [Blue Lookout Point], and their works: Frank, M. Espada, R. Alberty, F. del Valle, J. Jolguera, L. Maisonet, Lima, Granell, G. L. Mu [...]

The group of artists who were members of the Surrealist group El Mirador Azul [Blue Lookout Point] used to gather at the home of Adna Rodríguez in Río Piedras, Puerto Rico, where they would write down phrases and sentences on random subjects that [...]

On January 22, 1956, seven members of the Surrealist group, El Mirador Azul, including Eugenio Fernández Granell, a Galician artist living in Puerto Rico, met in the studio of the Universidad de Puerto Rico (UPR) to carry out a 14-question survey. [...]

This text introduces the work of Víctor Chab, stating that the theme of his paintings has always been the world of marvels. Starting with the magic of geometry, Chab moved toward mythic animals until he achieved complete refinement of the image. The [...]

This short article reviews the career of the artist from Jalisco, Roberto Montenegro. In Justino Fernández’s opinion, Montenegro is characterized by his “sensitivity to change, enticed by motion.” With these words, the historian celebrates the [...]

In Agustin Fernandez’s artist statement, he begins with his formal training at the San Alejandro Academy. He also discusses how he “was to be nourished by a thousand things when [he] went abroad” and was greatly influenced by both Enrique Senal [...]

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 [...]

The first chapter of the book Gestación y Advenimiento, México y el surrealismo, 1925-1950 [Gestation and Advent, Mexico and Surrealism, 1925-1950] is dedicated to the Surrealist presence in Mexico. From a literary perspective, Luis Mario Schneider [...]

In this essay, American art critic Carter Ratcliff offers a wide-ranging analysis of the diverse themes explored by Puerto Rican-born, New York-based artist, Rafael Ferrer, in his exhibition, Deseo [Desire] from 1973. According to the author, Ferrer [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

While living in exile on the Turkish island of Büyükada, Leon Trotsky writes to Diego Rivera, “a close friend of the left wing opposition,” in Mexico. In his letter, the Russian revolutionary recalls his first exposure to reproductions of [...]

The art historian Francisco Reyes Palma briefly describes the construction of an image of 1930s Mexico in accordance with the aesthetic/political strategy of Surrealism. He starts by talking about the relationships that arose among the painter Diego [...]

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 essay, Octavio Paz discusses the dreamy, surrealist nature of the work of Alberto Gironella. Paz points out that Gironella’s art is situated between the word and the image, and this is why he defines him as a poet of visual images: a & [...]

This text is a transcription of a series of interviews that Rita Eder conducted with a number of artists and intellectuals, all contemporaries of the painter Alberto Gironella [1929-1999], who debated the principal iconographic and literary elements [...]

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 [...]

In this article, the writer Mário de Andrade discusses the photomontages of poet Jorge de Lima. In the opinion of de Andrade, photomontage can be considered a new medium for lyrical expression and an introduction to modern art. He thinks that those [...]

The manifesto shown here uses the term “aesthetic revolution” to refer to the steady discarding of perception (specifically visual) in modern art, and on the other hand, to the resulting development of the “psychological and mental perception [...]

This is a review of the exhibition of drawings and watercolors by Franz Weissmann at the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes. Bonfanti detects the influence of Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and Pablo Picasso in these pieces, and sees in Weissmann’s work [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Antonio Berni chronicles the various points of view that were expressed during the exhibition of visual arts organized by Latidud [Latitude] magazine in the city of Mar del Plata in 1945. Berni’s comments range from the artistic to the political [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Un chien andalou [Un perro andaluz (1929) [An Andalusian Dog]—a film directed by Luis Buñuel, with a script written by Buñuel and Salvador Dalí—was presented in Mexico nine years after it was shot. Efraín Huerta, a writer by trade and an [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

In this final part of his lengthy essay, Juan Larrea acknowledges the reality of the Americas as the high point of the Surrealist movement. He states: “as the West flounders in the gloom, the tides of history [have] carried several representative [...]

In this section of his four-part essay, Juan Larrea discusses the creation, development, transcendence, and objectives of Surrealism, referring to a particular case to express the significance of the movement. He mentions Víctor Brauner, the [...]

Juan Larrea, the Spanish writer living in exile in Mexico, refers to an article by André Breton (“Situación del surrealismo entre las dos guerras” [The State of Surrealism between the Two Wars]), in which the leader of the movement outlines a [...]

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— [...]

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 [...]

Wolfgang Paalen claimed that Surrealism helped him to experience a total synthesis that denied any arbitrary separation between the visual arts and poetry, as well as between poetry and life. In his opinion, this movement offered the only working [...]

In this article, divided into eight sections, Wolfgang Paalen identifies the most representative image from a number of different periods, reviewing the Middle-Ages period, the Renaissance, and Modern times. He notes that, when faced with a radical [...]

According to Max Aub, by the time Remedios Varo died she had become one of the most surprising painters of her time, whose work was distinguished by a timeless quality. In Aub’s opinion, Varo’s painting expressed a struggle between good and evil [...]

Alfonso de Neuvillate reviews the life and work of Remedios Varo, in a tribute to the Spanish painter who had died a few days earlier. Neuvillate believed that Varo, an exponent of Surrealism, had long since staked out an important space in the [...]

Antonio Berni organizes the works he exhibited at Amigos del Arte [Friends of Art] in 1932 into the following groups: Plastic art, subjective realist compositions, nightmares, and objective realism. Berni created these works between 1928 and 1932 [...]

The critic writes about Marcelo Bonevardi’s artworks, comparing them to the fragments or the friezes on the walls of an immemorial temple, stating that they propose a profound contemplative attitude. Aldo Pellegrini mentions the importance of the [...]

The director of the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires [Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art], Hugo Parpagnoli writes about the selection criteria and the organization of the Argentinean painting exhibition in Caracas (1963), a proposal in eight [...]

The article mentions several of the traits that make Frida Kahlo quite unique, even today, and combines some of them with certain elements that gave her production its distinct quality. Kahlo’s work, according to Cardona Peña is distinguished by a [...]

The critic airs his views on Leonora Carrington’s work on the occasion of her retrospective at the Palacio de Bellas Artes Museum. According to Palencia, at this point in Carrington’s career her œuvre is widely acknowledged and acclaimed; he [...]

Romualdo Brughetti presents the exhibition of works created between 1938–48 by Orlando Pierri (Galería Rubbers, Buenos Aires, July 1969), pointing out a sort of Surrealism with metaphysical approach. Brughetti goes on to explain that, that same [...]

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 [...]