Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

The presentation of the Premio Torcuato Di Tella 1964, written by the French critic Pierre Restany, states that art should be de-mystified. In his judgment, the divorce between art and myth was emphasized during the Renaissance and easel painting, [...]

The researcher Irma Arestizábal comments on the placement of Argentinean avant-garde art, (always at the margin) in relationship to the hegemonic art centers. She writes based on a selection of works of Argentinean artists that appear in Venezuelan [...]

This text by journalist Mario Castro Arenas comments on the controversy surrounding the work Motociclista No. 3 by Luis Zevallos Hetzel, first prize winner at the painting competition organized by the Festivales de Ancón. The debate had widened [...]

This article is a review of the Premio Torcuato Di Tella 1966 [The Torcuato Di Tella Prize of 1966]; it describes the panorama and points out that on this occasion the Pop artists have rediscovered the attitude of creation; within it the personal is [...]

Lawrence Oliver expresses his opinion here on Jorge Romero Brest’s methods at the Premio Torcuato Di Tella [Torcuato Di Tella Prize], specifically in terms of the support provided to the most talented artists that enabled them to present works they [...]

The jury appointed to judge the 1964 Premio Instituto Torcuato Di Tella [Torcuato Di Tella Institute Prize]—whose members included the critics Jorge Romero Brest (Argentina), Clement Greenberg (United States), and Pierre Restany (France)—decided [...]

The foreword to this catalogue was written by Hugo Parpagnoli—the director of the Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires, at that time—highlights the important role played by Dr. Isidoro Slullitel, the private art collector. He was a rare [...]

Oscar Masotta wrote to Luis Felipe Noé a letter of apology for his mala fe [bad faith] and pedantería [piece of pretentiousness], and made a promise to respond, by carefully reflecting on the letter sent by Noé at the end of 1967 from New York, [...]

This programmatic statement by the Grupo Arte Nuevo was included in the catalogue for their second exhibition, which ran from October to November 1966 at the MALI (Museo de Arte de Lima). Faced with “a world molded by the dramatic evolution of [...]

This essay by the critic and curator Roberto Guevara appeared in the catalogue for the exhibition 10 pintores venezolanos de la nueva figuración. In his opinion, figuration has gone down the same cyclical and unstable path as all the other [...]

This introductory text by Otto Hahn analyzes some of the consequences of modern life within an industrialized city, such as uniformity, anonymity and the acceptance of triviality. He places the work of Robert Rauschenberg within this framework, as [...]

In this interview Daniel Más asks the artist Carlos Vergara about the works he showed at the Petite Galerie in 1969. He discusses the significance of certain materials in his work; cardboard, for example, which he describes as a poor material that, [...]

The art critic Frederico Morais maintains that the print is “one of the last refuges of the visual arts” from the emergence of the new avant-gardes throughout the 1960s, in particular, Pop art. In this text, the print turns out to be the [...]

In this article, Luciano Gusmão writes at length about Lótus Lobo’s prints and her ideas for a “caipira” [rancher] style of aesthetic nationalism based on an approach that is very closely related to Pop Art. Her work presents a variety of [...]

This document is a conversation between the painter Jorge Guinle and the critic Ronaldo Brito; the artists Carlos Vergara and Tunga are also part of the conversation. Focusing on the area he addresses in his ideas, Guinle discusses general aspects of [...]

In this text, architect and set designer Flávio Império asserts that new painting, characterized by direct and shameless objectivity due to a consumerist middle class, has broken with the subjectivities of Informalism and of Tachisme. He argues [...]

This text introduces the conferences organized by Eduardo González Lanuza at Galería PROAR. His intention is not to speak from an aesthetic point of view on La Menesunda [Hodgepodge] but rather of Jorge Romero Brest’s conference held on June 11 [...]

This document, written in 1977 by the Colombian artist Alicia Barney, is a mimeographed copy of the introduction to the installation Diario-objeto [Diary-Object] (1978) shown at the exhibition held at the Extensión Cultural [Cultural Extension] [...]

The artist Emilio Hernández Saavedra adds his ironic comments to the discussion about Motociclista No. 3, the controversial painting by Luis Zevallos Hetzel that won first prize at the competition organized by the Festivales de Ancón (1969). [...]

In his presentation of the exhibition 63/66: Figura e Objeto, Casimiro Xavier de Mendonça asserts that the sixties witnessed an explosion of utopias and changes with the advent of a new generation of creators. Regarding the exhibition, he attempts [...]

In this text presenting the exhibition Objeto de arte Brasil anos 60, Daisy Peccinini describes the research carried out for the event, placing particular emphasis on the publication of a series of critical documents, statements, and interviews with [...]

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 [...]

Augusto Ortiz de Zevallos responds to Juan Acha’s arguments, which were published a week earlier in El Comercio. Both articles were key elements in the debate concerning Motociclista No. 3, Luis Zevallos Hetzel’s work of art that was awarded [...]

Flávio Motta acknowledges that the diverse biennials that took place in São Paulo established a new phase which sought out art from abroad; although they also resulted in the puzzling [concept of the] “happy native.” They lacked the ability to [...]

Under the heading of Arte pobre, with its implicit subtext of l’arte povera, Flávio Motta presents a small object he created: Gato encaixado [Embedded Cat, 1973]. This sculpted feline figure is mounted on a little box engraved with a humorous text [...]

This text by Juan Acha is an important contribution to the debate that arose when Luis Zevallos Hetzel’s work, Motociclista No. 3, won the grand prize at the painting competition organized by the Festivales de Ancón. Acha questions the accusation [...]

In response to J. R. Guillent Pérez, art critic Marta Traba defines the term “apocalypse”—used by her in an article that unleashed a great controversy in Caracas—as the chaos and dissolution of existing social structures, as well as the [...]

The text describes the environments presented in La Menesunda [Hodgepodge]. It emphasizes its scandalous nature, judging it to be an art fraud committed against the public. It refers to a survey conducted by the journalist on the attending public, [...]

This text relates to the exhibition 6 artistas en Lirolay [Six Artists at Lirolay]. Sexteto [Sextet] held at Galería Lirolay (Buenos Aires) in January and February of 1964. It asserts that works by “exponen los campeones nacionales del pop-art, [...]

Marta Traba wrote an exhaustive chronicle on “the high and low points” of the Festival de Arte de Cali (1964). She highlighted the performance of the actress Fanny Mikey, the enthusiastic organizer of the event, who became “Califanny” for the [...]

This article about the installation Mimuy (1965) appeared in Última Hora, a popular national newspaper. Published two days after the opening of the exhibition, the article notes the large number of comments received so far. It also mentions the [...]

In this essay, the Venezuelan critic Roberto Guevara not only addresses the Pop art work of the Venezuelan-North American sculptor Marisol [Escobar] but also the varied characteristics of her personality. Guevara examines the underlying true [...]

In her essay about the work of the Spanish-born Venezuelan artist Gabriel Morera, Iris Peruga provides a chronological timeline of his career, analyzing most of his works of art and suggesting that his work should be divided into four different [...]

According to Mário Pedrosa contemporary art is characterized by “objectivism” or by a rejection of self-expression. In this essay he refers to the symbolic objects suggested by Salvador Dalí and to “the crisis of the object” identified in [...]

This text by Carlos Gorriarena focuses on Pierre Restany’s report published in the catalog for the Premio Torcuato Di Tella[1964 Torcuato Di Tella Prize] 1964, in which the French critic points out that Nuevo Realism [New Realism] is an art of [...]

According to Mathias Goeritz , José Luis Cuevas is “one of the greatest artists that Mexico has ever produced.” His talent has, in fact, been widely acknowledged by artists and intellectuals. But Goeritz believes that, in addition to his [...]

Looking through the prism of her philosophical education, Otília Arantes explores the different approaches taken as a result of the Brazilian political situation⸺following the military coup d’etat that installed an iron-fisted [...]

In this article Aitor Castillo talks about Pop Art in connection with the exhibition of works by Luis Zevallos Hetzel at the gallery of the Fundación para las Artes (Lima, 1969). Without directly mentioning it, Castillo refers to the controversy [...]

This article was written by the journalist and art critic Luis Freire Sarria, following his visit to the Museo de Arte de la Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, in Lima. There, he would discover, among the collections, a great quantity of Pop- [...]

This text is a transcription of a conversation between Carlos Squirru, Dalila Puzzovio, Count Jaime Mora y Aragón, and Jean Cartier that took place during an informal meeting. One may perceive the doubts then being awakened by Pop Art through the [...]

In this document, excerpted from the “Colombia pregunta” [Colombia Asks] section of La Nueva Prensa [The New Press] magazine, Arturo Bastidas, from the city of Pereira, asks for a definition of Pop Art. The magazine editor replies to his question [...]

This text summarizes the concepts raised by Jorge Romero Brest in relation to the debates provoked by the Premio Torcuato Di Tella [Torcuato Di Tella Prize]. It establishes rules to be followed for the analysis of those who paint or sculpt images, [...]

Luis Felipe Noé writes an assessment of the artistic scene in New York in 1966. The city is the commercial center of the art world, although he judges it to be not the international center, but the national center of the world’s most important [...]

Pellegrini's text remarks that during the nineteenth century, Argentine art mainly adapted to academic patterns. For the later evolution of Modern art, the critic adopts a division based on three fundamental periods: first, the artists who absorb [...]

The university professor Christiane Dimitriades studies the assemblages (“boxes”) by Gabriel Morera, analyzing the main features—such as their varied contents and three-dimensional nature—which make them so much more than simply painting and [...]

The visual artist Rubens Gerchman writes his own autobiographical profile, including details about his most recent work. He mentions the early challenges he faced, when his work was not understood and was sometimes considered to be unfinished [...]

In his work, Juan Camilo Uribe makes use of the language of Pop art to formulate a reflection on Colombian popular and local culture. In this interview, Uribe discusses different facets of his production such as humor, which he considers fundamental [...]

While in Warsaw, Poland, the journalist Alberto Valero interviewed the Venezuelan artist Alirio Palacios as a student at the Polish Academy of Fine Arts. Palacios recounts his experiences and how his vision of poster design had been enriched, and [...]

In this text, Joaquín Aroztegui reflects on new tendencies in Uruguayan art, whether in the form of writings or exhibitions, such as happenings, concretism, Op Art, and kinetic art. Those new tendencies are described as new languages born of [...]

This brief anonymous article addresses the debate on the subject of Motociclista No. 3, by Luis Zevallos Hetzel, winner of the first prize at the painting competition organized by the Festivales de Ancón (a resort on the outskirts of Lima). The [...]