Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

Artist Nelbia Romero wrote this document on her exhibition project Bye, Bye, Yaugurú, curated by critic Alicia Haber. Written on a loose page, the text explains the aims of an exhibition that set out to reaffirm the need to engage the cultural [...]

This essay by the Spanish writer Guillermo de Torre is divided into two separate sections. The first is about the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (located in Mexico City, in Valle del Pedregal de San Ángel), a project in which several [...]

In this article, published in the magazine Buzón de Arte/Arte de Buzón nº 1 (Caracas, January 1976), the Uruguayan artist Clemente Padín describes his work/action project, “El artista está al servicio de la comunidad,” which could be seen at [...]

This is the official report on the judging of submissions to the second national competition that was organized to choose a design for a statue of Túpac Amaru II, the indigenous hero of Peruvian independence, to be erected in the Plaza de Armas in [...]

In the document Ex-situ / In-situ. Moravia: prácticas artísticas en comunidad 1 (2008), the artists Fernando Escobar, Carlos Uribe and Juan Alberto Gaviria introduce the guidelines for the project Ex-situ / In-situ in Moravia. Regarding this [...]

The chapter titled “Diario de viaje” [Travel Diary] is the first section of the essay Paisajes de la memoria [Landscapes of Memory] that Lorena Kraus wrote about her experience translating the German travel diaries into Spanish kept by her [...]

This is a card bearing the letterhead of the Museo de Arte Moderno in Bogotá and a handwritten message. It was sent to Casimiro Eiger by Alejandro Obregón to introduce José Gómez Sicre, who is very interested in the plan for a modern art [...]

This document was published in the Colombian cultural magazine piedepágina [Footer] (2004–7); it includes the artist Alberto Baraya’s account of his travels up the Putumayo and Amazon rivers on a Colombian military boat as a documentary maker [...]

The text “En asuntos de ciudad, la estética urbana sí tiene que ver con todo” by architect and urbanist Álvaro Suárez Zúñiga was originally presented at the opening ceremony of Arte para Bogotá (1995), a joint initiative of the Art School [...]

This text by curator and art critic Carmen María Jaramillo was published in the catalogue to the exhibition of Colombian artist Gustavo Zalamea entitled La ciudad y la pintura: obra reciente 1992–1994 (Bogotá: Fondo Cultural Cafetero, 1994) held [...]

Here Fernando Escobar develops the proposal for his art project De memoria. Nueva fauna y flora. Escobar concretely renders visible the conceptual sphere from which he derives his “participative, collective” research, as he categorizes it, [...]

This article is about the construction of a plaza designed for cultural activities at the new USP (Universidade de São Paulo) campus. The article is in three parts: the first part describes the plaza that has been built in front of the Rectory; the [...]

This text by Colombian artists Graciela Duarte and Manuel Santana, founders of the Echando Lápiz [Using the Pencil] Project (which has been in operation since 2000), describes the conceptual idea behind the initiative. Its goal is to reflect on the [...]

In the essay “Ciudad Kennedy: Memoria y Realidad. Proyecto colectivo de creación plástica” [Kennedy City: Memory and Reality. Visual Art Creation – A Group Project] (2000-2002) the artist and professor Raúl Cristancho discusses the Project [...]

“Lugar: A Project for Contemporary Creation / Un proyecto de creación contemporánea” is the handwritten (in Spanish) proposal that was used to create Lugar a dudas [Room for Doubt], an independent space (in the city of Cali) that promotes and [...]

“Pequeño laboratorio del imaginario social” [Small-scale Social Awareness Laboratory] is a lecture written by the artist Rolf Abderhalden and delivered at the Cátedra Manuel Ancízar (2006) at the National University of Colombia. It includes a [...]

In this text, the members of El Techo de la Ballena, a group that emerged in the sixties, in Caracas, delineated the differences between categories such as “tacky,” “unfortunate,” and “ridiculous” in the exhibition, Homenaje a la cursiler [...]

In the introduction to his book, Papaver somniferum (a research and art project based on the name of a type of poppy), Colombian artist Juan Fernando Herrán states the motives that led him to the poppy flower. Although the poppy flower had been a [...]

The subject of this chapter of Papaver somniferum, a study of the poppy undertaken by the contemporary Colombian artist, Juan Fernando Herrán, is the perception of the landscape. Herrán contends that it is anything but neutral, since both cultural [...]

In this “Author’s Note,” Syeus Mottel, a theater and film director, and a photographer, describes his experience after he was recruited to make a book adaptation of a unique project already in development by Buckminster Fuller and Michael Ben [...]

This document contains excerpts from a grant proposal submitted by Eduardo Carrillo to the National Endowment for the Humanities seeking traveling support for an exhibition of California Chicano art entitled Califas, Chicano Art and Culture in [...]

Chon Noriega states that as a central figure of the Destructivist movement, Raphael Montañez Ortiz’s (b. 1934) work—between 1957 and 1967—can be understood as a reaction to the social detachment of the postwar avant-garde, thus marking a shift [...]

This is the program for the dedication of three murals in the Puerto Rican neighborhood of Humboldt Park in Chicago. The murals were painted by artists and community residents during the summer of 1971 and speak about their history and the problems [...]

Indeed, “Redefining Displacement”, an interdisciplinary and multicultural project in the visual and performance arts, explores how individuals and communities negotiate displacement through the arts. In this instance, what is at stake is the [...]

This brochure for artist Raoul Deal includes photographs of his works from 1984–1992, biographical information, an artist statement, and teaching philosophy.  Deal outlines his artistic philosophy as one informed by popular culture. He cites a [...]

In this bilingual essay, San Diego artist Roberto Salvador Torres presents the theoretical foundations for a project that traces the development of the United Farm Workers’ Huelga (Strike) banner through a series of four drawings. According to [...]

While he was in Brussels, Fernando Gamboa stayed in close communication with the architect Enrique Yáñez, who informed him of the progress of the artists working on the Centro Médico [Medical Center]. In addition to designing the Centro, Yáñez [...]

A letter dated June 10, 1958, from Maria Luisa Mendoza to Fernando Gamboa (who was in Brussels at the time) took the form of a progress report. Mendoza, a consultant on the art integration project Centro Médico Nacional [National Medical Center], [...]

Based on a negative report regarding the state of collections of academic art kept in the galleries of the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes, the journal Forma is adamant in promoting the establishment of a “Museo de arte moderno americano” [ [...]

Appropriating headlines from South Florida newspapers, artist Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle makes a statement on immigration and the United States’ policies towards western hemisphere nations during the crucial period of 1979–1981, when increased [...]

This catalogue documents a project created by the Chicago-based artist Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle and twelve students in the Adult Education Program at the Emerson House Community Center in Chicago. Introductory text explains that this project was [...]

This is the mail art that Liliana Porter exhibited at Experiencias 69 I [Visual Practices 69 I] at the Centro de Artes Visuales at the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella (September 5–14, 1969.) Porter’s exhibit consisted of four envelopes, each with its [...]

Noticias was the newsletter of the Latin American Art Biennial. The first issue reported on Industrias Kaiser Argentina’s role in organizing the 1st Latin American Art Biennial, which would exhibit the works of artists from Argentina, Chile, [...]

Mathias Goeritz describes two projects proposed to the then-president of the organizing committee of the 19th Olympic Games, architect Pedro Ramírez Vázquez: the International Meeting of Sculptors and The Route of Friendship. The artist describes [...]

The authors—architects Ernesto Vautier and Alberto Prebisch—state that “regarding the program proposed…[to them] by the Commission of Fine Arts of La Plata, …[they have] proceeded to reasonably consider the need for a museum of modern art [...]