Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This exhibition essay overviews the trajectory of Arturo Cuenca’s photographic practice from his time spent in Cuba in the 1980s until his arrival in New York in the early 1990s. In the late 1970s, he transitioned from making Photorealist/Pop [...]

In this article, which appeared in El Espectador (Bogotá), Marta Traba defends the portrait of Simón Bolívar (“El Libertador”) made by Beatriz González from the attacks of conservative members of the Academia [...]

In 1991, María Fernanda Palacios analyzes the work of Mercedes Pardo. In “Landscapes: Soul and Geography,” the first section, she reflects on the role that they take in Pardo’s œuvre, arguing that her work is “ [...]

In this brochure produced for the exhibition of works by prizewinners at the 1960 Prêmio Leirner de Arte Contemporânea, Gerardo Ferraz discusses how Anatol Wladyslaw’s work transitioned from the “mathematics and geometry&rdquo [...]

At an exhibition of works being considered for the Prêmio Leirner de Arte Contemporânea at the Galeria de Arte das Folhas in 1959, the art critic and businessman Wolfgang Pfeiffer discusses the parameters of Tomie Ohtake’s work. [...]

In this essay, which appeared in the brochure for an exhibition of the 1948–58 work of Samson Flexor, Luis Martins claims that the painter experienced a transitional phase in his career when he stopped producing figurative art. In fact, as the [...]

The magazine Mensaje, dedicated to the dissemination of Brazilian culture in Uruguay, devoted its twenty-fourth issue, published December 1948, to an analysis of work by Candido Portinari, just at the conclusion of the Brazilian artist’s one-year [...]

In this article, the Catalan writer and journalist Martí Casanovas assesses some work by the Belgian painter Pierre Flouquet that had been brought to Cuba by the poet Mariano Brull. This work was presented at an exhibition promoted by the journal [...]

This document is the catalogue to Cementerio de automóviles, an exhibition of work by hyperrealist painter Bill Caro held at Galería Enrique Camino Brent in Lima in late 1976. In a synopsis, architect Héctor Velarde states that beauty is “ [...]

The author of this text, signed “Savonarola,” affirms that he and painter Enrique Domingo Barreda are old friends, and he remarks on Barreda’s outstanding personal qualities. Notwithstanding, the author believes that, due to his prolonged [...]

This article by José Sabogal is about the recent work produced by the Indigenist painter Camilo Blas. The author discusses Blas’ two scenes of Cajamarca that are to decorate the new Salón de Palacio, which opened in 1924 in celebration of the [...]

After seeing the exhibition of works by Juan Manuel Blanes at the Teatro Solís in Montevideo (1941), Joaquín Torres-García noted that there were pictorial qualities in the artist’s sketches that were lost in the final [...]

Carmelo de Arzadun stresses the importance of creating intellectual groups in Montevideo, explaining that their conversations about their various aesthetic preferences would enrich the debate in local art circles. On the whole, the article does not [...]

In this article, the Argentinean-Uruguayan artist Héctor Ragni expresses his admiration for Joaquín Torres-García’s ideas and work. Ragni lauds the maestro’s motivational skills and recalls the first time he saw his [...]

This essay by José Cuneo is on the analysis of the work by Rafael Barradas who died in Montevideo in 1929. Of interest was the artistic reflection and the views by a renowned Uruguayan artist, as Cuneo was in 1930, on another artist that [...]

Here, Edgardo Pérez Luna praises the mural by Teodoro Núñez Ureta executed in the building that housed Peru’s Treasury Department. The writer argues that the allegories created by the painter in the mural elude the conventions of the genre and [...]

The author outlines his convictions on “artistic creation,” associating them to searches that are transcendent and tragic in character (as manifested in the title of the article). He conceives that the act of creating derives from spiritual [...]

The (unknown) author of this article reports and comments on the exhibition of works by the Argentinian painter, printmaker, and muralist Demetrio Urruchúa at the Ateneo de Montevideo. The article specifically mentions certain iconographic aspects [...]

Joaquín Torres García discusses the Uruguayan painter Carmelo de Arzadun’s change of course. Writing in a style that is rife with irony and veiled criticism of the local milieu, Torres García singles out Arzadun for having opted for [...]

In chapter IX of his book Teseo Discusión Estética y Ejemplos […], published in 1925, the critic Eduardo Dieste discusses the work of Pedro Figari as a painter in the costumbrismo style. Dieste mentions Figari’s unique ability to portray scenes [...]

Revista Nacional was a quarterly journal published by the Academia Nacional de Letras del Uruguay [National Academy of Letters]. This article refers to one of the most important figures in the intellectual history of the River Plate [region], Pedro [...]

In chapter six of his book Teseo: Discusión Estética y Ejemplos, Eduardo Dieste analyzes the landscape work of José Cuneo who was an intern while in Europe, and his trajectory then continued in Uruguay during the early twenties. It was divided [...]

The Argentinean visual artist Antonio Berni frequently visited the city of Montevideo from 1938, producing various exhibitions; in this article, he expressed his social and political vision of mural art, attributing it with a “constructive” [...]

This essay is a chapter from the book by Eduardo Dieste, Teseo, discusión estética y ejemplos, published in 1925. Many of the chapters were articles that were published since 1923 in the magazine produced by Teseo (Agrupación de Artistas y [...]

In this article, Luis Eduardo Pombo reveals himself as the first Uruguayan art critic to ideologically wrap himself in the aesthetics of David Alfaro Siqueiros. Generally, even the commentaries made by those intellectuals closest to the Mexican [...]

By illustrating the work of the Peruvian artist Cossio del Pomar, the author exposes his concept of the artist as “the laborer of the idea,” a cultural humanistic model and an agent in pursuit of new forms of social consciousness. In a way, this [...]

“En la sociedad burguesa ganan los banqueros y pierden los artistas” (In Bourgeois Society, Bankers Win and Artists Lose) is the name of an article by Norberto Berdía on painter Joaquín Torres García. More specifically, the text discusses how [...]

The curator María Elena Ramos provides a broad overview of Alejandro Otero’s oeuvre on the occasion of a retrospective exhibition of his work. Ramos reflects on the Venezuelan painter and sculptor’s essential concerns which, in her opinion, wove [...]

Writer Elizabeth Schön critiques the Coloritmos series by Alejandro Otero, and speculates that the intention of the series is its potential for producing visual-chromatic emotions. In this regard, Schön examines the theme of the Coloritmos, whose [...]

The sculptor Pedro Briceño writes this critique about Iván Petrovszky, the Venezuelan painter of Hungarian descent. The text is introduced with a general appreciation of his artistic personality, highlighting, among other things, the seriousness of [...]

In this text, journalist Sergio Antillano examines the life of his friend and contemporary, artist Héctor Poleo, commenting specifically on his studies at the Academia de Bellas Artes in Caracas and the Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City. [...]

Poet and critic Carlos Augusto León envisions the exhibition of work by Venezuelan painter Rafael Monasterios reviewed in this text as part of a process of discovering the country through art. As precedents for the work of Monasterios, he cites [...]

In this text, critic Carlos Silva places emphasis on Hugo Baptista’s skill as a painter. Baptista’s work is characterized by a lyrical use of color and an expressive approach to painterly material. It is with good reason, Silva asserts, that [...]

Researcher and historian Bélgica Rodríguez analyzes the work of Hugo Baptista in a biographical text with quotations made by the painter; beginning with the artist’s move to Caracas in 1951 so that he could enroll in Vicente Emilio Sojo’s [...]

Here, the art historian Rafael Delgado develops a biographical and critical sketch of the Venezuelan painter and draftsman Pedro Centeno Valenilla. The article includes notes on his academic background as well as his early group and individual [...]

The Venezuelan critic Roberto Guevara discusses Vertical vibrante—the work by the Venezuelan painter and sculptor Alejandro Otero—which he considers to be a seminal achievement in the Venezuelan visual arts. Guevara ponders the different stages [...]

In this text, researcher Mariana Figarella reflects on the Las cafeteras series (1949) by Venezuelan painter and sculptor Alejandro Otero on exhibit at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas. On the grounds of certain characteristics of Otero’s work [...]

In this article, the Venezuelan critic Roberto Montero Castro talks about the question of “identity” in art, the role of professional art criticism in Venezuela, and the underlying inspiration for the work of Oswaldo Vigas, with whom he discusses [...]

In March 1983, members of the Research Department of the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas interviewed the painter Ivan Petrovszky about his exhibition at the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington, DC (that same year). By way of introduction, the [...]

Painter Bernando Monsanto Cocking analyzes the life and work of Armando Lira. In this text, he succinctly recounts the work of the Chilean-Venezuelan artist as an exponent of Venezuelan culture beginning with his arrival in the country through the [...]

In this article, Enrique Planchart, the Venezuelan man of letters, discusses César Prieto’s paintings. Planchart reviews the Venezuelan painter’s life, from his early days at the old Academia de Bellas Artes (when it was in the Mijares de Soló [...]

In this text, critic Federica Palomero explores the development of Venezuelan painter Víctor Hugo Irazábal, from his formative period (the early sixties) and subsequent experimentation with various media and genres through his encounter with the [...]

In his critical review, Roberto Guevara addresses the roles of “process” and experimentation in the painter Ismael Mundaray’s work. Guevara evaluates Mundaray’s expressive resources and discusses the dynamic that allows the artist’s [...]

In this essay, the critic Roberto Guevara discusses the Cuban-born Venezuelan painter Rolando Dorrego’s career and latest work. Guevara begins with a review of the art movement of the early 1970s (in which Dorrego was an active participant), which [...]

The critic Juan Carlos Palenzuela interviews the visual artist Luis Alfredo López Méndez. The conversation yields information about the latter’s work as a painter, teacher, diplomat, congressman, TV program producer, journalist with the Cí [...]

The art critic and researcher Eliseo Sierra reviews a decade of the life and art of the Venezuelan painter Susana Amundaraín, from her beginnings in the 1980s through 1992. After reviewing the art world at the time she began to produce art, the [...]

“Time” and its “behavior” are the ideas used by the Venezuelan curator Ernesto Guevara as a starting point for his analysis of the artwork of Alejandro Otero (1921–1990). After focusing on this concept and its relationship to life and other [...]

In this text, critic José María Salvador examines Paul Klose’s career from his first abstract works, produced in the late fifties, to his most recent exhibition, held in 1992. Salvador identifies three distinct stylistic approaches in the work of [...]

This text, entitled “Lo inactual como posible,” by curator Lía Caraballo was written for the catalogue accompanying the exhibition of work by Emerio Darío Lunar held at the Museo de Arte de Coro in 1991. The text begins with brief descriptions [...]

In this text, essayist José Balza places the early work of Marco Miliani in the context of the stimulating artistic and intellectual scene in Venezuela in the fifties and sixties. Balza cites writers and art critics who have followed Miliani’s [...]