Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this pocket-sized catalogue for an exhibition of recipients of the Leirner Prize for Contemporary Art in 1958, Geraldo Ferraz describes the current work of Paulo Rissone, “a phase of great maturation.” Rissone, who had arrived in Santos, [...]

In this brochure produced for the exhibition of works by prizewinners at the 1958 Prêmio Leirner de Arte Contemporânea, José Geraldo Vieira describes Anatol Wladyslaw’s work as a “painting of separations.” Having [...]

This text includes a few excerpts from the six lectures that Jorge Romero Brest gave in São Paulo in 1948. At that time, Romero Brest held an academic position at the Universidad de Montevideo and was the director of the magazine Ver y estimar [...]

In this brief essay, which was published in the brochure for the 1960 Prêmio Leirner de Arte Contemporânea, Wolfgang Pfeiffer discusses the spontaneity and imagination he sees in the work of Niobe Xandó. A self-taught painter, Xand [...]

In this brief review, Bill Caro discusses his own career, ranging from his 1972 exhibition (focused on Lima shantytowns) to his interest in light that became one of the key facets of his work in the 1980s. Caro states that “photographing is as [...]

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 “ [...]

In this letter to painter Bill Caro, Emilio Harth-Terré asserts that the views of the neighborhoods of Lima Caro painted constitute “artistic expression” that goes beyond any attempt at social protest. The painter formulates, in Harth-Terré’s [...]

In his introduction, Juan E. Ríos—the author of this overview of Peruvian painting from the first half of the twentieth century—describes Peruvian art as “the creation of a visual equivalent of reality, rather than a mere copy of it” denying [...]

In this essay, Peruvian art critic and diplomat Raúl María Pereira provides an overview of Peruvian painting from the first half of the twentieth century. While the author praises the first generation of academic painters, he believes that their [...]

In this text, poet Emilio Adolfo Westphalen considers the series of paintings produced by Fernando de Szyszlo on the basis of the Quechua poem Apu Inca Atawallpaman written during the colonial era. Westphalen asserts that the relationship between [...]

Juan Acha discusses the exhibition of Fernando de Szyszlo’s series of paintings inspired by the indigenous poem “Apu Inca Atawallpaman,” an event that was organized by the Instituto de Arte Contemporáneo (IAC) in Lima. Acha finds the [...]

In this text, Peruvian art critic Carlos Rodríguez Saavedra comments on a show of the series of painting by Fernando de Szyszlo based on Apu Inca Atawallpaman, a colonial-era Quechua poem translated into Spanish by writer and anthropologist José [...]

Javier Sologuren reviews the abstract oil paintings by Fernando de Szyszlo exhibited at the Instituto de Arte Contemporáneo (IAC) [Institute of Contemporary Art] in Lima. The author praises the quality of the works, whose values express “visual [...]

In this text, José Eulogio Garrido speaks of his journey to Lima in order to see José Sabogal’s art in his home. Indeed, that was “one of the basic reasons I undertook the pilgrimage to Lima.” But Garrido saw only two works in the artist’s [...]

Juan Ríos discusses the I Salón Municipal de Lima, which in his opinion, was a failure because most Peruvian artists decided to boycott the event due to widespread mistrust of the jury, which was made up of “distinguished civil servants or [...]

In this text, Raúl María Pereira rejects the notion of sincerity—a value as arbitrary as it is ungraspable—as privileged category in artistic creation. He upholds, rather, the duty born of “today’s agonizing mindset”—the search for the [...]

In this article, José Sabogal discusses Peruvian traditional art, which in his opinion, is “the key point, in the Americas, where Hispanic America began. When indigenous cultural expressions were combined with the invasion of Mediterranean visual [...]

In this article, the editor of the newspaper Noticias de Arequipa interviews José Sabogal on the occasion of the artist’s visit to Arequipa, and they talk about contemporary Peruvian painting and traditional art. On the former topic, Sabogal [...]

Juan Acha argues that national identities are based on the sense of belonging to a tradition, one which transcends and regulates the adoption of foreign models. Therefore, “nationality” rests on a balance between the continuity of what is [...]

This letter from Joaquín Torres García to his Uruguayan compatriot, the renowned writer José Enrique Rodó, suggests that both men agreed on the need to encourage the emerging art in their country by exposing young Uruguayan artists to what was [...]

In this essay, Joaquín Torres García speaks about “Lesson 50,” which was later published in his book Universalismo Constructivo (1944). In it there are some comments referencing selected paragraphs from another conference under the same title [...]

This unsigned interview with Argentinean critic Jorge Romero Brest published in the weekly Jaque is somewhat alarmist. The main topics addressed—the decline of easel painting in the world over, the avant-garde experience at the Instituto Di Tella [...]

This essay is on the informative publication by the newspaper El Plata on the II Salón de Pintura Moderna [Second Hall of Modern Art], organized in Montevideo by the IGE (Instituto General Electric [General Electric Institute]). It is with regard to [...]

The art critic Fernando García Esteban discusses the XVI Salón Nacional de Artes Plásticas, closely inspecting the paintings presented by each of the participating artists. He describes what he sees as the “epigonal poverty” of Uruguayan [...]

In this letter Guillot Muñoz, the distinguished writer and journalist, tells his friend Pedro Figari about the critiques that his paintings were receiving in Montevideo at that time, and about the unconditional support for Figari there was among a [...]

This is a typewritten copy of the lecture given by David Alfaro Siqueiros at the John Reed Club in Hollywood on September 2, 1932. Siqueiros talks about the creation of what he called the Los Angeles “Mural Painters’ Block” [BPM: Bloque de [...]

The Comisión de Cultura del Centro de Estudiantes de Humanidades (Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias, Montevideo, Universidad de la República, Uruguay) produced this leaflet as the invitation to their exhibition of works by “cutting edge” [...]

José Cúneo’s text entitled “Arte Abstracto” was read at a lecture that he gave in Montevideo. Although the exact date when it was written is unknown, the lecture appears to have been given in 1956 or 1957 at the Escuela de Bellas Artes in [...]

Pedro Figari wrote this letter to José Cúneo, who had recently shown his paintings at a joint exhibition with Bernabé Michelena in Montevideo (1918). The letter, published in the newspaper La Mañana, was Figari’s public recognition of the young [...]

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 [...]

These documents are the invitation to and the program of the Third Exhibition of the Atelier-Abstração, held in São Paulo in June 1956. The Atelier-Abstração was a studio set up by the Brazilian artist Samson Flexor [...]

The exhibition De David a nuestros días was held in Montevideo in 1941 as a result of the efforts of a number of French museums. Art historian René Huyghe, conservationist at The Louvre museum in Paris, oversaw the event. In the first chapter of [...]

In this text, Jorge Páez Vilaró analyzes the pictorial work of Juan Carlos Figari Castro, son of painter Pedro Figari, pointing out his talent as a draftsman and the overall merit of his art. Páez Vilaró, himself a painter, understands that the [...]

In this article, the author speculates on the criteria adopted for judging artistic competitions and the difficulties encountered in having to provide critical judgement on the diverse and “contradictory” work presented by Joaquín Torres García [...]

This article is by Hans Platschek who was living in Montevideo between 1939 and 1953. The German artist makes a self- analysis on the resulting situation of postwar modernism, specifically the debated notion of “Art Nouveau or young art” both in [...]

This article is a reflection on the shifting opinions recorded on Pedro Figari’s work throughout his artistic trajectory and the influence this critique, that stemmed from Europe, had on both the Uruguayan public as well as on local art critics. [...]

This essay on Rafael Barradas, by the writer Clotilde Luisi, emphasized the various aspects of the landscape works produced by the Uruguayan who had, for a very long time, been associated with the Spanish avant-garde movement of the 1920s. Luisi [...]

This essay, is on the art critic Fernando García Esteban and on his noted intellectual presence in Montevideo during the fifties and the sixties. The art critic echoes the difficulties encountered when critiquing local art and the differences in [...]

In this interview, Romano Espinoza Cáceda classifies Peruvian art into three major periods: ancient (decorative, with its own characteristics), colonial (marked by “natural” European influences) and modern (attempting to pinpoint what makes art [...]

In this article, the writer responds to the comments of Luis Miró Quesada Garland, defending the use of the category “integral art.” He defines this term as a fusion of different trends into “a new creative orientation” structured under a [...]

In this interview with Fernando de Szyszlo, the painter states that he is misunderstood within the Lima arts scene. He refutes the notion that an artist must be socially engaged because, in his judgment, “a painter’s only duty is to be a good [...]

Alejandro Romualdo Valle critiques the III Salón de Pintura Manual Moncloa which, in his judgment, posits “abstract art as a complete substitute for art,” arguing that abstraction divides man from art, thus debilitating the latter. [He states] [...]

In this text, Luis Miró Quesada Garland responds to the letter from critic and playwright Edgardo Pérez Luna published on November 7, 1954. To counter the opinion that abstract art has no “meaning,” Miró Quesada Garland cites Hegel, Schiller, [...]

Fernando de Szyszlo was interviewed following his success at the III Salón Moncloa. After presenting a brief biographical sketch of the artist, the anonymous interviewer records his opinions on the subject of contemporary art: “the fruit of a [...]

In the opinion of Alejandro Romualdo Valle, the work created by Alfredo Ruiz Rosas that recently won a first prize is evidence of a significant improvement in Peruvian art. He sees it as a result of the consolidation of several art trends that are [...]

This essay is on the article written by the psychiatrist Isidro Mas de Ayala in reference to one of his patients, Emilio Mas, the Spanish artist who had arrived in Montevideo towards the end of the nineteenth century. In the 1920s, the artist, who [...]

Víctor Bacchetta was part of the board of directors of the magazine CLINAMEN up through its third publication along with Manuel Claps, Ángel Rama and Ida Vitale. The second issue of the magazine published a brief notification on the appearance of [...]

Sarandy Cabrera, the author of this article, seeks to make an apologetic review on the life and work of Joaquín Torres García on occasion of his recent death on August 8, 1949. Cabrera (who was a member of the Torres García Workshop) highlighted, [...]

This article was written around the time Joaquín Torres García was giving his lecture on “Mística de la Pintura” and reviewing the main points supporting his conception of “art,” that is, immanentism [God or an abstract mind or spirit [...]

This article aligns itself among the critiques in 1947 on the work by the artist Cândido Portinari during his stay in Uruguay. They were carried out mainly by the TTA [Taller Torres García]. Alfonso Domínguez was opposed to the deformations and [...]