Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

“Testimonio: El intelectual de izquierda y cierta estética revolucionaria” the editorial published in issue Nº 7 (April–May, 1960) of Revista Sardio (Caracas, 1958–61) analyzes and compares the validity and authenticity of commitment in the [...]

In this essay, curator María Luz Cárdenas provides a brief chronological overview of the work of Venezuelan artist Pedro Morales, placing Morales’s production in a timeframe that spans from 1988 to the mid-nineties. During that period, the [...]

In this chapter of the book Hacia el indio y su mundo, by the Venezuelan indigenous scholar Gilberto Antolínez, the author presents the ideas that inform his anthropological research, as well as his critique of the Venezuelan American tradition. In [...]

In his review of Casos de Cosas (Caracas: Galería Alternativa, 2004)—the exhibition of works by the artist Ani Villanueva—the art critic Víctor Guédez mentions certain precedents in the field of objectual art. He especially refers to those [...]

The artist Gabriel Morera; the writers José Balza, Jesús Enrique Guédez and Salvador Garmendia; the playwrights Román Chalbaud and Isaac Chocrón; and the graphic designer Nedo all make different statements about the relationship between the [...]

In this text, Alirio Rodríguez presents his vision of what he deems the most important forces in creative expression in Latin America in the second half of the 20th century, mainly technological discourse and humanistic art. In defense of the [...]

This text by Guillermo Meneses is a presentation of CAL magazine, which he founded. Published in the magazine’s first issue, Meneses’s text explains the meaning of the letters in the publication’s name: C refers to crítica (criticism), A to [...]

The art critic Perán Erminy reviews and analyzes the exhibition Testimonios organized by El Techo de la Ballena in the context of an international meeting of this group. In this text, Erminy points out what he finds interesting in this exhibition: [...]

In this essay, Ángel Luque, the Spanish artist who lived in Venezuela from 1955 until 1967, criticizes both the exaggerated rationalism of the twentieth century (that rejects any form of subjectivity) and the capitalist system. He also dismisses the [...]

The synopsis and the annotations in English are coming soon. However, our bilingual readers can click on “Español” to access this information in Spanish [...]

In this essay the curator Zuleiva Vivas writes about Claudio Perna. She mentions the difficulties involved in studying a body of (conceptual) work that is as vast and as varied as Perna’s. She lists the media this artist used and the series of [...]

The researcher Federica Palomero reviews the history of Venezuelan art in the 1960s, which she describes as “the prodigious decade.” She discusses the major artists, movements, works, exhibitions, salons, biennials, and exhibition spaces of the [...]

In this text, curator María Elena Ramos analyzes the decade of the sixties in Venezuelan art, addressing the various movements that emerged as well as the overall political and cultural situation in the country. She mentions specific figures, [...]

This essay by the curator Julieta González is a preface to a book published by the Museo Alejandro Otero (2000) that collected articles related to the debate about “identity” in Latin America in 1965. The debate arose as a response to an article [...]

In this critical essay, Ruth Auerbach considers the challenges represented by the 5th Bienal Nacional de Arte de Guayana (Ciudad Bolívar, 1997). Here, the writer defines the theoretical foundation of the museological and curatorial vision of the [...]

The synopsis and the annotations in English are coming soon. However, our bilingual readers can click on “Español” to access this information in Spanish [...]

In this essay, Ruth Auerbach—the art critic and curator of the IV Bienal de Arte de Guayana (Ciudad Bolívar, 1994)—reflects on the challenge of positioning the biennial as a space devoted to the promotion of emerging Venezuelan art. Auerbach [...]

In this text on the sixth Pirelli Salon by critic Luis Ángel Duque, he references the appearance of television as a mass market industry with the capacity to bring together large audiences on the basis of a global society. In his judgment, it is [...]

In this text, María Luz Cárdenas explains the curatorial vision underlying the third Salón Pirelli and she attempts to address how at that event, new forms of representing and grasping reality on the basis of visual perception [were evident]. More [...]

Critic Luis Ángel Duque presents a brief history of “vision,” defining it as the happy convergence of the retina and the brain. In his words, it is through vision that a man sees himself, but also everything else that surrounds him; it is one of [...]

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 [...]

Critic and curator Luis Ángel Duque offers an abbreviated history of the Venezuelan art salons that featured young artists and recent work; he refers to those that occurred between 1981 and 1995. The second Salón Pirelli was organized in 1995 at [...]

María Luz Cárdenas, the curator of the I Salón Pirelli de Jóvenes Artistas, explains why a new Salon was created for young Venezuelan artists. She identifies the Salon’s immediate history, justifies its creation, and describes the guidelines or [...]

In this text, María Luz Cárdenas explains the key to her curatorial approach and how it sheds light on the context in which the artists participating in the II Salón Pirelli de Jóvenes Artistas developed their ideas. Cárdenas provides an [...]

Curator Cecilia Fajardo-Hill reviews the tenth Premio Eugenio Mendoza exhibition, establishing relationships among the works that were exhibited. In this text she disclosed that the exhibition was not organized thematically, but the works were [...]

In this text, the Venezuelan artist and critic Perán Erminy reflects on the relationships between the so-called art categories of “popular art” and “non-popular art” in contemporary art and in the framework of the exhibition Confluencias. [...]

This text by Federica Palomero was written for Arte de América, the exhibition she curated in 1988 on the occasion of the anniversary of the founding of the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas. The text describes the origins of the collection of Inter- [...]

In this essay, Luis Enrique Pérez Oramas analyzes a fragment of modern Latin American art history, presented through the form of “penetrable” works. The critic describes the development of the form with respect to its representation as [...]

Hilton Kramer reviews the exhibition Latin America: New Paintings and Sculpture. Juan Downey, Agustín Fernández, Gego, and Gabriel Morera, presented at the Art Gallery of the Center for Inter-American Relations in 1969. Kramer mentions the fact [...]

Journalist Mara Comerlati interviews Omar Carreño for his exhibition at the Museo Boggio in Caracas. The show brings together work from the artist’s figurative period, before his stay in Paris (at the end of the 1940s and beginning of the 1950s) [...]

Only three members of the group were involved in the publication of the second expansionist manifesto: Omar Carreño and Rubén Márquez, both of whom were painters and sculptors, and the graphic designer Álvaro Sotillo. The text of the manifesto [...]

Drawn from the content of the three chapters in the book by Manuel Quintana Castillo Cuadernos de pintura, this selection, the text “Reflexiones sobre el constructivismo,” can be found in Chapter III. In it, the essay writer informs us that it [...]

Drawn from the content of three chapters in Manuel Quintana Castillo’s book Cuadernos de pintura, this selection, the text “América y el arte” can be found in Chapter III. In it, the writer sets forth the dispute between those who believe in [...]

This unsigned interview with Venezuelan designer John Lange, focuses on his production of books, from limited-edition artists’ books to large-run industrial editions. Lange mentions what he considers his most important books and explains the [...]

Curator Mónica Amor analyzes the exhibition, Sin fronteras/ Arte latinoamericano actual, held at the Museo Alejandro Otero in Caracas in 1996. She discusses the significance of the show in the context of the debates that had taken place in the [...]

Curator Miguel Miguel wrote this essay for the group show Sin fronteras/Arte latinoamericano actual, organized by the Museo Alejandro Otero in Caracas in 1996. In it, he asserts that the aim of the show is to demonstrate the significant contribution [...]

In this interview with Miguel von Dangel by French-Venezuelan painter Luis Pannier (b. 1953), von Dangel reflects on art as a religious activity and on the role of the natural environment of the Americas in his work. In von Dangel’s view, the [...]

In this essay, writer Ramón Díaz Sánchez presents his ideas (divided into ten sections) on the black race, their current place in the arts after the Great War, their low place in society due to the legacy of slavery, and the Western prejudices [...]

In this document, the communicator Marco Antonio Ettedgui outlines his conceptual idea behind “Feliz cumpleaños, Marco Antonio,” an informative and body art event that he staged at the GAN (Galería de Arte Nacional), in Caracas, on December 14 [...]

Arteología: serie de eventos informacionales [Artology: A Series of Informational Events], is a dossier of six texts by Marco Antonio Ettedgui, the Venezuelan performance artist, that provides information on the purpose and structure of his series [...]

This text is writer Sebastián Salazar Bondy’s response to the criticism of artistic nationalism voiced by Luis Miró Quesada Garland in El Comercio newspaper (Lima, September 25, 1955) [see in the ICAA digital archive “En blanca y negra” (doc [...]

In search of an expression that would be authentically Latin American, Alejandro Lora Risco establishes the difference between American culture and reality, the latter referring to the material facts of life on the continent. Reflecting on his [...]

Commentary by essayist Alejandro Lora Risco on the Mexican art show organized in Lima by La Crónica newspaper. From within the event’s massive audience, the author highlights the presence of the individuals most likely to read his text: Peruvian [...]

Painter Aquiles Ralli rejects the comments made by Fernando de Szyszlo that became a national scandal: “there are no painters in Peru.” He juxtaposes the work of the “good artists,” those who diligently “work in silence and never advertise [...]

The author establishes a contrast between the bourgeois “sincerity of heart” and the “sincerity of the spirit” that characterizes the avant-garde. Ramiro Pérez Reinoso believes that this concept of the heart has been plagued by a “ [...]

In this open letter from Fernando de Szyszlo to El Comercio newspaper, the artist responds to the remarks published on its pages by critic Carlos Raygada (Lima, May 29, 1951) regarding de Szyszlo’s exhibition of abstract paintings at the Asociació [...]

In this essay written for the exhibition Jump Cuts: Venezuelan Contemporary Art, Colección Mercantil, held in 2007, Venezuelan critic and curator Jesús Fuenmayor uses the cinematographic notion of “the jump cut” to formulate a vision of [...]

Julieta González reflects on the major trends in contemporary Venezuelan art, suggesting that the dominant movement among them is art derived from a particular context and involving a predetermined space and discourse that expresses local themes. [...]

Gustavo Buntinx interviews Claudia Polar, the director of the Galería Forum in Lima. They talk about the development of a market for young Peruvian art, which the gallery has been supporting since 1974. They discuss the changes in the local [...]

In this essay Rodrigo Quijano describes the period as having “contributed to the consolidation of a specific direction in Peruvian contemporary art” that, in his opinion, was characterized by “a virtual fragmentation of subjectivities” and by [...]