Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This manifesto was written by the sociologist Gilberto Freyre on behalf of the “rehabilitation of regional and traditional values” and in support of a “new organization” in Brazil. Stating his opposition to the administrative division of the [...]

Artist René Trujillo Betancourt refutes all the controversial assertions that Puerto Rican painter Rafael Rivera García puts forth in his “Manifiesto Maximal.” In response to iconoclastic statements like “painting must destroy everything [...]

The thesis developed by Puerto Rican artist Rafael Rivera García in his work entitled Ambiente Maximal entails a representation of the “continuity of a total perceptual experience in which the composition of the planes destroys the basic initial [...]

This is the second issue of Rayado sobre el Techo, the magazine published by the visual artists and writers in the group El Techo de la Ballena (Caracas, 1961–68). Inspired by the slogan “Change life, transform society,” this issue included the [...]

In this article the members of the group El Techo de la Ballena (Caracas, 1961–68) explain what prompted them to create the group. Keeping the works of the Surrealist and Dadaist movements in mind, but with no intention of reviving them, the [...]

In this “Segundo Manifiesto”—jointly written by members of El Techo de la Ballena (Caracas, 1961–68)—the group identified the artistic movements they challenged as follows: traditional landscape painting, social realism, geometrical [...]

This proclamation criticizes the precarious state of the Taller Libre de Arte (TLA) and demands the intervention of Venezuelans cultural institutions to revitalize what was once the heart of the national artistic avant-garde. The authors complain [...]

In this manifesto, Ralph de Romero, a Puerto Rican artist born in New York, expresses his thoughts about human existence. In his opinion, social discipline imposes rules he does not care to sign on to. And he is emphatic: he must be allowed to live [...]

This forty-eight page catalogue consists of the following sections: “Manifiesto de los artistas independientes a los artistas de las Américas” [Manifesto Dedicated by Independent Artists to the Artists of the Americas] (two pages); “La [...]

In this manifesto, Puerto Rican artists Antonio Martorell, Lorenzo Homar, Rafael Rivera, Juan O'Neill, Nelson Sambolín, Antonio Maldonado, and Ángel Casiano expressed their solidarity with oppressed and exploited nations that struggled to gain [...]

The brochure begins with a part dictionary, part humorous definition of the words “Con Safo,” which is followed by an anonymous short essay that functions as a manifesto for the Con Safo artist collective. In it, the group outlines the [...]

This thirteen-point program, written in English, presents the Young Lords Party platform calling for the liberation of all oppressed people. Some of the points that stand out from the list, include a call for the self-determination of Puerto Ricans, [...]

This thirteen-point program, written in Spanish, presents the Young Lords Party platform calling for the liberation of all oppressed people. Some of the points that stand out from the list, include a call for the self-determination of Puerto Ricans, [...]

This manifesto begins by saying: “Please stop this aesthetic joke that is supposed to be profound! Stop boring us with yet another example of egocentric folk art! This is nothing but vanity.” It argues that if Jean Tinguely wants us to believe [...]

Mathias Goeritz states that he is fed up with logic and reason; with functionalism, decoration, and individualism; with the fashion of the moment, with vanity, ambition and egocentrism; with the -isms and -ists, both figuration and abstraction. He is [...]

This manifesto was written by the French critic Pierre Restany in 1978 in which he claims that nature represents mankind’s conscience and sensibility. Total naturalism recognizes only the purifying, cathartic power of fantasy in the service of [...]

In Ciudad Victoria (Tamaulipas), Miguel Aguillón Guzmán issued a fourth Estridentista manifesto in which the delegates to the III Congreso Nacional de Estudiantes [3rd National Students’Conference] affirm their “support for the Mexican [...]

Salvador Gallardo issued a third Estridentista proclamation in 1925 in the city of Zacatecas that echoed the formal language used by Manuel Maples Arce, the founding father of the trend, Estridentismo. It consisted of a repetitive litany, expressed [...]

In this manifesto, Rafael Montañez Ortiz, who was born in the United States and is of Puerto Rican descent, discusses the concept of destruction as a new mode of creating art. He validates employing “destruction art” as an appropriate [...]

This is the first manifesto of the New York Graphic Workshop (NYGW). It proposes a redefinition of the concept of engraving [...]

In this manifesto, the ¡30-30! collective of painters announced that its struggle against academism was once again alive and thriving. The reason for this was that the president’s office of the Escuela de Bellas Artes [School of Fine Arts] [...]

This book of poetry was published a year after the 1924 Pau-Brasil manifesto. The book is divided into several sections: “História do Brasil,” a parodic version of the discovery of the country; “Roteiro de Minas” [ [...]

Oswald de Andrade explains that the term Pau-Brasil [Brazil Tree, which yielded the wood that was exploited for export and gave the country its name] that he used in his 1924 manifesto was intended as a “slogan,” an invention with which [...]

This document claims that one of the fundamental tenets of the so-called Movimento Antropófago is a return to a “natural state” (understood as a kind of “beauty with natural features” that is ugly, rough, barbaric, and [...]

This appeal asks Latin American thinkers to attend the Conferencia Panamericana de Ayuda [Pan-American Aid Conference] in support of Spanish Republicans, to be held in Mexico City, February 14–17, 1940. The goal was to express solidarity with those [...]

This manifesto states, briefly, that the goal of SPAM (Sociedade Pró-Arte Moderna), the pro-modern art association, is to create an environment devoted to the “development” of artistic activities. Founded in 1932 by a group of intellectuals, [...]

In this statement—addressed to the Task Force on Hispanic-American Arts of the National Endowment for the Arts—the group Nuestras Artes describes the inequitable context in Michigan for Latinos and Latino culture (the authors use the term Raza [...]

This text describes the beginnings of the mural movement in Chicago in 1967, the initial leadership of black artists, and the involvement of community activists and artists among Latino, Chicano, and white populations. Also, it points out the [...]

This manifesto by Oswald de Andrade suggests that Brazilian art and literature should take positions vis-à-vis European culture that would privilege the cultivation of invention and an illogical, “agile and candid” attitude. The duty of the [...]

This manifesto from the Treinta-treintistas [¡30-30! mouvement] discusses the incorporation of new elements and announces the group’s purging and expulsion of old members, either for being neo-academics or for attempting to eliminate the [...]

The third treinta-treintista manifesto is a flyer written in opposition to the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes, its instruction methods, and the works produced at the school. Subdivided into eight points, the group’s statement describes the basic [...]

In the second treinta-treintista manifesto, the group declares the reason for its dispute. It states that the struggle between independent painters and the academics intensified when the presidency changed hands, since certain conservative teachers [...]

The first treinta-treintista manifesto is aimed against academics, public officials, thieves of public offices, and in general, all kinds of layabouts and rascals who pretend to be intellectuals. Using iconoclastic language, the ¡30-30! Group [...]

In 1936 the publishers of Frente a Frente [Face to Face], the journal of the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR) [League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists] published a belated futuristic manifesto by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti on [...]

Under the title “Basta de mistificaciones” [Enough with the mystifications] the Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (GRAV) [Visual Arts Research Group] signed a manifesto that would become the basis of the present-day relationship between [...]

A manifesto in which the writer Oswald de Andrade proposes the notion of anthropophagy as a possible paradigm on which to build a Brazilian cultural identy. From that point of view, he emphasizes a “pre-logical mindset” and a return to “natural [...]

The manifesto La visión elemental [The Elemental Vision] puts forth a Non-Illusionist theoretical position on the image: working with volumetric or flat forms, simple and concise, activating planes and volumes using pigmentation, the usage of flat [...]

This document analyzes the national repercussions that the Sindicato de Obreros Técnicos, Pintores y Escultores [SOTPE, Union of Technical Workers, Painters and Sculptors] had on an art scene that was then dominated by individualism. Siqueiros [...]

This is Alberto Greco’s manifesto on the nature of “Arte Vivo-Dito” [Living-Finger Art]. It is, in essence, a reality adventure, an urgent document, and a means of direct contact with things, people, and places; in other words, it is reality [...]

This text, dated June 1968, announces the split of the Rosario art vanguard from artistic institutions. This rupture would result a few weeks later with an assault at a conference given by art critic Jorge Romero Brest. At the time, the Braque Prize [...]

David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco and Xavier Guerrero signed this article in which they refute the assertions published by the Federación de Estudiantes Preparatorianos [Federation of Preparatory Students] and they list, one after [...]

This document reports on the publication of a manifesto signed by the Comunista Estudiantil de la Escuela Nacional Preparatoria [Student Communist Group at the National Preparatory School], comprised of 151 members. It explains how a small minority [...]

The artists who had called for boycotting the 1968 Premio Braque (promoted by the French embassy in Argentina) stated their condemnation of its censorship in the midst of the awards ceremony, which was carried out in the Museo Nacional de Bellas [...]

For their first presentation in the Ciclo de Arte Experimental [Experimental Practices of Art Series], this group of artists in Rosario, Argentina, printed a new flier that they all signed. The text outlined the premises and claims upon which the [...]

This manifesto implies a new rejection of the sanctioned art circuit in the city of Rosario, Argentina. The text repeats the same messages expressed in the group’s first manifesto (“Ante la cultura mermelada [Concerning the Marmalade Culture [...]

Brazenly, this manifesto categorically rejects the official forms of art and its practices in the city of Rosario, Argentina. It also stresses the marked unity and mutual understanding among the Grupo de Arte de Vanguardia when the group‘s [...]

This is one of the key documents bringing to the fore the increasingly political radicalization of the late 1960s Argentinean avant-garde artists, as was demonstrated dramatically by a number of groups in a crucial year: 1968. The document is written [...]

Francisco Reyes Palma visits the inner complex personality of Mathias Goeritz through a detailed history of the ideas that influenced the development of the culture as well as its actors during the twentieth century. An artist of his time, Goeritz [...]

The Manifesto of the Sindicato de Obreros Técnicos Pintores y Escultores (SOTPE) [Technical Workers, Painters, and Sculptors Union] was published in El Machete toward the end of June 1924. It was an attempt to warn the proletariat and the indigenous [...]

Stemming from the idea (very advanced at that time) that the media invents events, those who are writing this decide to inform—by way of social news snippets, altered photos, and apocryphal testimonies—about a happening that never took [...]