Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

The article discusses the constant attacks that the newspaper Martín Fierro receives and all the conflicts and difficulties that result from these attacks. It also explains the attitude that will be assumed with regard to the situation created by [...]

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 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 [...]

In this essay the critic Mário Schenberg discusses the political and cultural changes he sees in the wake of the uprising led by Getúlio Vargas that was known as the Revolução de 1930. Schenberg believes that the agricultural oligarchy’s loss [...]

Mário Schenberg introduces PANAMÉRICA, the book by José Agrippino de Paula e Silva, whom he describes as an important figure in the new generation of Brazilian writers. In the critic’s opinion, this is a contemporary epic about the American [...]

Playwright Augusto Boal declares that all the stories contained within his book are true, and were written based on testimony overheard during different trips that occurred after he left Brazil in 1971, during the height of the military dictatorship [...]

This document is an anthology containing a collection of etridentista poems and manifestos. It includes an extensive bibliography. Luis Mario Schneider [L. M. Sch.] contextualizes their works within the cultural panorama of that time [...]

Rafael Alberti informs León Ferrari about a parcel mailed containing copies of their joint book Escrito en el aire [Written in the Air]and his book of poetry Abierto a todas horas [Open At All Time].Alberti comments that, passing through Rome, he [...]

Rafael Alberti, the poet, mentions León Ferrari’s Vietnam War pieces, and savors the irony of a possible exhibition of those political works at the Torcuato Di Tella Institute. He tells Ferrari how an artist should react, at a political level, vis [...]

In this letter to fellow Brazilian Joaquim Inojosa (in Recife), the well-known poet Manuel [Carneiro de Sousa] Bandeira [Filho] (1886–1968) provides brief news about the modernist movement (then in full swing) in São Paulo. He emphasizes the “ [...]

This [document] by Mário de Andrade is a reply, dated May 20, 1928, to the letter in which Augusto Meyer discussed the former’s controversial activity, conscience, and references to national subject matter. De Andrade outlines his intellectual [...]

Rafael Alberti wrote to León Ferrari general comments about his trips through Europe: in Italy, Perugia, Florence, Assisi, Arezzo, Milan, and in Romania, Bucharest. He mentioned his meeting with the art dealers Schwarz and Passoni, who knew Ferrari [...]

Rafael Alberti wrote about having mailed the calligraphy proofs for “our” Escrito en el aire [Our Writing in the Air]; the drawings had not been sent yet, because, in his opinion, an adjustment to achieve the exact tone was needed: an informal [...]

Rafael Alberti mentions the drawings he has received in a letter from León Ferrari. He reports on publishing issues concerning Escrito en el aire [Written in the Air], makes a few remarks, and includes an amusing drawing. In closing, he describes [...]

Rafael Alberti mentions the exhibition organized by Argentine artists in Paris, referring in particular to his meeting with the artist Antonio Seguí, from Argentina. He reminisces about the times he has spent with the Ferrari family. He describes [...]

Rafael Alberti, the Spaniard poet, discusses his literary works and their publication, particularly Sonetos romanos [Roman Sonnets] and Escrito en el aire [Written in the Air]. He muses about León Ferrari’s work, and talks about his situation in [...]

Rafael Alberti comments on León Ferrari’s work, on photographs he sent him regarding the Vietnam War. He transcribes his poem “Vietnam.” Ironic comments about León Ferrari’s political work’s possible exhibition at Instituto Torcuato Di [...]

Rafael Alberti discusses the controversy that erupted over León Ferrari’s exhibition at theTorcuato Di Tella Institute in response to critical reviews regarding the political nature of the works involved. The poet goes on to talk about Anticolo [...]

Rafael Alberti and his wife, María Teresa León, congratulated León Ferrari on the publication of his book Palabras ajenas [Other People’s Words] (Buenos Aires: Falbo Editor, 1967), reprinted in facsimile edition (Buenos Aires: El Aleph, 2003 [...]

Rafael Alberti, the Spaniard poet, remarks on how long it has been since they last wrote to each other. He refers affectionately to the Ferrari’s house in Castelar, in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, and mentions his latest poems [...]

Jorge Luis Borges answer to an opinion poll conducted by the Nosotros [We] journal of writers younger than thirty and trying to determine the existence and qualities of Argentina’s “new literary generation.” The poll consisted of seven [...]

This article examines how Rómulo Gallegos’ writing influenced Luis Guevara Moreno’s painting. The author quotes the painter’s description of producing paintings that illustrate “the setting in a Gallegos story.” Guevara Moreno explains how [...]

This essay, which appeared in the catalogue produced with research support from Gilmar de Carvalho, introduced A Nova Gravura de Juazeiro do Norte, the exhibition curated by Dodora Guimarães at the Centro Cultural da Abolição in Recife (November [...]

This brief document by writer José Armas summarizes the ideas of a group of Chicano writers and artists from the states of Washington, California, Texas, and New Mexico who met in Lubbock, Texas, with the intention of forming an artistic and [...]

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 [...]

Poet Guillermo Alfredo Cook asserts that, insofar as Gabriel Bracho’s work has rendered painting literary, it has mistaken the essence of art, reducing it to political slogans and ideological propaganda. He describes Bracho’s painting as a [...]

Mário de Andrade addresses this open letter to the writer Alberto de Oliveira, and in principle, defends the literature produced by Brazilian Romanticism, a group associated with a primitive approach to art combined with social, religious, sexual, [...]

Cobra Norato, a book combining poetry and narrative, offers a version of the Portuguese language that is more in line with its sound than its grammar. It is a symbolic construction of the Brazilian forests whose characters (Curupira, Cobra Grande, [...]

This essay, “Cordel - A Novelística Nordestina” by Geová Sobreira, suggests that literatura de cordel—the genre of published writing known as “string literature”—is an expression of an intrinsically novelistic tradition. It is a [...]

Cildo Meireles asserts that he doesn’t defend any profession or nationality, and that he instead speaks about a region named Cruzeiro do Sul  [the Southern Cross], which was divided by an imaginary line known as the Tordesillas line. He comments [...]

In this letter to Peruvian writer and journalist José Carlos Mariátegui, avant-garde Peruvian writer and poet Alberto Hidalgo thanks Mariátegui for sending him a copy of his recently published book, Seven Interpretative Essays on Peruvian Reality [...]

In 1988 the art critic Mário Baratta described the origins and performance of the group of artists and writers who produced Clã [Clan] magazine and founded the SCAP (Sociedade Cearense de Artes Plásticas) in the mid-1940s in the state of Ceará. [...]

In this essay Pedro Emilio Coll replies to Latin American critics who, “in the name of tradition and good sense” deplore what they describe as decadent representatives of the new movements that took root in the Americas in the early twentieth [...]

This address was given by the Spanish-born, Chilean-based scholar José Victorino Lastarria in 1842 during a meeting of the recently formed Sociedad Literaria, a literary society of important Chilean scholars and politicians. In his speech to the [...]

This review considers Julia Codesido’s work within the context of art and literature produced by women, noting that this genre “is uniquely attuned to feeling and expression.” Though historically recognized solely in terms of family or social [...]

In this interview with Armando J. Florez, Jacobo Borges states that an artist should have a global perspective when it comes to politics and mankind’s real values, and should be free of any limitations imposed by ideologies. The painter believes [...]

This article records a polemical debate over Argentinean national artistic and literary practices that took place in 1894 between three Argentinean artistic figures: poet and playwright Rafael Obligado; painter, critic, and scholar Eduardo Schiaffino [...]

In this article, prestigious film critic and journalist Julio Roca Baena briefly recalls the Grupo de Barranquilla active in the mid-fifties and its importance to Colombian art, literature, and journalism. At the opening of the text, Roca Baena [...]

In "El momento," Juan Marinello announces the existence of a new avant-garde movement in Cuban literature and the arts. Marinello prophesizes a coming “battle” between the new Cuban intellectual scene and the outmoded literary establishment who, [...]

“Engenho e Arte. A Fala dos Gravadores” [Ingenuity and Art: The Speech of the Engravers] is one of seven chapters of a book by Gilmar de Carvalho entitled Madeira Matriz, a subject he developed in a doctoral thesis done at Pontifícia [...]

The subject of this modernist poem is the relationship between “Fulô,” a young slave girl, and her masters: the lady (“Sinhá”) and the gentleman (“Sinhô”) of the house. Fulô is urged to [...]

This critical essay by João Luiz Lafetá examines Brazilian modernism by distinguishing the “aesthetic project” from the “ideological project” of the literary production during the 1920s and 1930s. The author creates a dialectical division [...]

This text is issue zero of Clã - Revista Trimestral magazine, in which the members introduce the publication. In their opinion Clã is not only a literary magazine; it also constitutes what they consider “a mental representation of Ceará,” [...]

After his 1924 trip to Brazil, the Swiss poet Blaise Cendrars wrote this book in which he describes the journey taken by the group of São Paulo modernists headed by Oswald and Mário Andrade. This sojourn within the Brazilian interior sowed the [...]

The article defines the characteristics of the Buenos Aires literary group “Florida”, however, in accordance with the personalities, which have been identified as protagonists, it denies the existence of this group, an adversary of the “Boedo [...]

Abguar Bastos offers his interpretation of Brazilian modernism as a “yearning for the liberation of national thought.” The writer understands modern art as a “process” that takes on various forms throughout its course. In Brazil, for example [...]

The writer Mário de Andrade reviews Feuilles de route [Leaves of the Road], the book by the Swiss poet Blaise Cendrars, illustrated by Tarsila do Amaral. The reviewer refers to the Brazilian countryside, which he compares with Cendrars’ writing [...]

This essay by Professor Raúl Antelo addresses the issue of place in a theory concerning the marginalizing of Latin American culture, more specifically within South America. This culture has always been viewed through a prism of exclusion and [...]

Brazilian poet and journalist Prudente de Moraes Neto remarks on the chance discovery of Alfonso Reyes in European magazines, remarking on how difficult it is to obtain books by Latin American authors in Brazil and the ease by which you can obtain [...]

In this document, Brazilian poet, journalist, and short-story writer, Ribeiro Couto, states that “true Americanism” rejects the idea of Indianism, yet calls on these same indigenous races to make contributions to “Iberian” man. This fusion [...]