Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

An article in this newsletter announces the opening of an exhibition of works by Joe Tilson on November 26, 1971, at the CAYC. The English artist is presenting a collection of prints that rely on a wide variety of supports. These works were produced [...]

This is Ferreira Gullar’s eulogy for his friend, the sculptor Franz Weissmann, whom he calls “one of the [Brazilian] inventors of the imagined universe.” The author remembers having met Weissmann in 1952 at Mário Pedrosa& [...]

This essay is on an interview [conducted] by Gabriel Peluffo with the sculptor Germán Cabrera, the artist and performer Teresa Vila, and the painter and engraver Anhelo Hernández. He questions them on the role of the visual arts within the social [...]

This essay published in June 1959 by Grupo 8 in the Boletín N° 1 de Artes Visuales expresses the desire to create common work spaces for artists working in different techniques in order to cross skills and generate new goals for each area. This [...]

The AIAPE’s magazine published this report on the activities of Olimpia Torres, Joaquín Torres García’s daughter. In late 1936, after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Olimpia was in Madrid with her husband, the Spanish sculptor Díaz [...]

On the occasion of Bernabé Michelena’s exhibition at the Subte de Montevideo (1939), Emilio Oribe, the writer and co-founder of the AIAPE (Agrupación de Intelectuales, Artistas, Periodistas y Escritores), conducted a lecture in which he discussed [...]

Chapter V of the book Teseo Discusión Estética y Ejemplos […] by the critic Eduardo Dieste, titled “Bernabé Michelena, escultor,” is devoted to a discussion about Michelena’s sculptural work, which the author associates with a new [...]

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 [...]

Critic and philosopher J. R. Guillent Pérez reflects on the 1960s series by Alejandro Otero, Ensamblajes y encolados [Assemblages and Glued Pieces]. From his point of view, the author explains Otero’s journey through informalism, and afterward, [...]

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 [...]

In this article, the curator Bélgica Rodríguez reviews the career of the Venezuelan sculptor and draftsman Felipe Herrera, from his early training in the late 1960s to his most recent work, produced in 1996. After sketching a broad overview of the [...]

The critic José María Salvador interviews the Venezuelan sculptor José Jesús Moros. Salvador discusses the salient features of the sculptor’s recent work, mentioning the relationship between the horizontal, vertical, and diagonal arrangement of [...]

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- [...]

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 essay, Eduardo Planchart studies the specific qualities of the sculptural work of Gaudí Esté. The text can be divided into four parts. In the first, the writer analyzes the art language used by the artist, which is characterized by her use [...]

In this essay, Marta Traba presents a broad overview of contemporary sculpture. She bases her report on the writings of Werner Hoffmann, Gillo Dorfles, and Jean Clarence Lambert, who provide a breakdown of the various movements, trends, and artists [...]

This essay by José Ramón Medina studies the production of artist Marisol [Escobar]. Medina discusses specific traits of the artist’s personality pertinent to her work, among them an incisive sense of satire, a spirit of protest, and an interest [...]

In this essay, curator María Elena Ramos examines the philosophical and aesthetic implications of representations of man-animal hybrids in the history of humanity, specifically in relation to art and to the wood carvings by Venezuelan sculptor Gaud [...]

Supported by theories of folk art that are backed by authors such as Néstor García Canclini and Francisco Da Antonio, the author, Francisco Prada, defends this genre through the formulation of a definition that affords it dignity and examines it in [...]

The critic Víctor Guédez reviews the work of the Venezuelan painter, engraver, and sculptor William Stone. He structures his readings at three levels: conceptual, aesthetic, and visual. At each level, Guédez points out the distinctive feature in [...]

“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 the first part of her essay about the work of the US-born Venezuelan artist Rafael Barrios, the curator María Luz Cárdenas identifies the aesthetic and philosophical parameters that influence the artist’s creative process. These include the [...]

In this essay, Víctor Guédez reviews the work of the Venezuelan sculptor Carlos Mendoza. The critic proposes a classification of the artist’s work according to four categories, each one focused on a particular aspect of his sculptural works, as [...]

This interview by journalist Margarita D'Amico with Marisol [Escobar] begins with a brief look at the exhibition on the fish theme held at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York. D’Amico asks the artist about the most important characteristics of her [...]

Ariel Jiménez interviews the Polish-born Venezuelan sculptor Harry Abend. The resulting article focuses on the differences and similarities between the current exhibition, at the Sala Mendoza, and the one presented in 1992 at the GAN (Galería de [...]

In this essay about the work of the sculptress Marisol, the gallery owner Clara Diament de Sujo provides a brief biographical sketch of the artist’s childhood and youth, and a list of the group exhibitions in which she has participated. She [...]

In this essay on sculptor Marisol [Escobar], North American curator Roberta Bernstein provides a chronological description of her work, analyzing the vast majority of her creations and the different phases of her production. She describes the [...]

In this essay, Roberto Guevara begins reviewing the work of the sculptor Marisol [Escobar] by discussing her career as a visual artist. He focuses mainly on the iconographic aspect of her work and explains that, thanks to this feature, she has [...]

This essay by Albor Rodríguez on Marisol [Escobar] describes her personality, as well as her home workshop, located in New York City. The author offers a short biography, pointing out the most important milestones in her artistic career, her most [...]

In this essay on Marisol [Escobar], Venezuelan curator and gallery director Águeda Hernández analyzes her creative concept by drawing relationships between the works that (at that moment) were in Venezuela, in both public spaces and museums, and [...]

In this essay, the writer Antonio Fernández Molina examines the artwork of Marisol [Escobar]. The writer highlights the way the sculptor uses unconventional materials in her work, noting that her most important qualities are her personality and her [...]

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 this essay, the critic Víctor Guédez reviews Alejandro Otero’s sculptural work, basing his comments on its visual, technical, and conceptual aspects. As regards the visual aspects, Guédez identifies movement, time, space, and light as Otero [...]

In this essay, Venezuelan artist Víctor Valera discusses many of the concepts crucial to his work in sculpture. He describes, for instance, his conception of form as volume incorporated or projected into space. He mentions a number of [...]

Víctor Guédez analyzes the sculpture of Víctor Valera, in particular the artist’s retrospective exhibition held in Venezuela, in which he confronts himself. The author focuses on his most recent work, and then studies it in perspective and [...]

In this essay, the Venezuelan historian and art critic Juan Carlos Palenzuela reviews the latest work by the Venezuelan sculptor Pedro Barreto. The author points to the relationship between Barreto’s forms and their equivalents in nature and the [...]

In this essay on the fourth Bienal Nacional de Escultura Francisco Narváez (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Francisco Narváez, 1988), the critic Freddy Carreño introduces the reader to the history of sculpture from its beginnings. The writer points [...]

This essay by the curator Ana Tapias is divided into two parts. In the first part Tapias rapidly reviews the history of sculpture in Venezuela, then describes what’s going on in the contemporary Abstract art scene. In the second part she discusses [...]

This text by Venezuelan writer José Balza provides an overview of the life and sculpture of Pedro Barreto. Balza depicts the landscape of the Delta of the Orinoco River, where the artist was born, as well as his youth and relationship to his father [...]

In this essay, Roberto Guevara discusses Gaudí Esté’s visual art, acknowledging the importance of the Venezuelan sculptor’s relationship with wood, her material of choice. Guevara sees similarities between her carvings and Russian “matryoshka [...]

Curator María Elena Ramos studies the constructive-geometric nature of the work by Venezuelan sculptor José Jesús Moros, finding a series of distinctive features in his (contradictory) use of geometry, although always with the intention of [...]

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 art critic Víctor Guédez discusses the work of the Venezuelan sculptor José Jesús Moros. Guédez suggests classifying this artist’s work according to three criteria; specifically, the constructive, sign-based, and synthetic aspects of his [...]

The promoter Aquiles Ortiz Bravo states that José Jesús Moros is trying to give his sculpture a transcendent meaning in keeping with the standards of the classical school. He adds that regarding the different visual elements, the Venezuelan [...]

In his text, Pedro Briceño describes how the work of another Venezuelan sculptor, Pedro Barreto, has evolved from his early work (“totems”) of tropical and chain-like forms, to his new work. The latter is characterized by a greater preoccupation [...]

In his essay about the Venezuelan sculptor Víctor Valera’s synthesis of the arts, Ariel Jiménez discusses the concepts of “artistic integration” and “the synthesis of the visual arts,” highlighting the social and collective ramifications [...]

María Luz Cárdenas talks to the Venezuelan sculptor Víctor Valera in a three-part interview arranged in chronological order. In the “Background” section, Valera describes his early academic training in Venezuela and his art residency in Paris [...]

In his essay on the Venezuelan sculptor Harry Abend’s architectural reliefs series, the critic Carlos Villalba offers a lyrical interpretation of stone as an artistic element. Villalba praises its virtues and its material function as the qualities [...]

The researcher Iris Peruga reviews the works created by the Uruguayan sculptor Gonzalo Fonseca over the course of two decades and assembled here for this one-man show. Peruga begins by mentioning the quality of the works that allude to invisible [...]