Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this article, Juan F. Ballón discusses the recent revolutionary process that began in Arequipa and went on to overthrow the dictator Augusto B. Leguía. In Ballón’s opinion, it was a “total” revolution that involved “all the events, all [...]

In the prologue to the book Anotaciones políticas sobre la pintura colombiana (1975), artist Clemencia Lucena questions the culture of a country like Colombia, a culture that, in her view, is imposed by the landowning and bourgeois classes. She [...]

In the words of Diego Rivera, certain artists made use of the concepts of jingoism and patriotism in a manner that led to the creation of a completely bourgeois art form. He sees, as an example, the ghost of Nazism and the persecution of the Jews in [...]

In this long article, Diego Rivera summarizes his beliefs on what revolutionary art ought to be within the context of modern art, and offers a historic journey through the 19th century, underscoring the work of Daumier, Courbet, and Paul Cézanne. [...]

With subtle irony (but without sarcasm or mockery), the writer talks about the excessive pampering and preferences of “niños ricos” [rich children] in a society “acostumbrada [a que] un chico duerma con veladora, tapadas las rendijas; que se [...]

In this brief article, Siqueiros, the secretary of the Sindicato de Pintores y Escultores [SOTPE, Painters and Sculptors Union], reports that the painters laid off from their work on public buildings due to the machinations of “reactionary” [...]

The author appeals to workers and peasants so that they may learn to carefully elect their representatives to the Lower House, and eliminate the thieves and lawmakers bon vivants who squander for their own benefit six and a half million pesos of [...]

In this document David Alfaro Siqueiros reflects upon the nexus between society and its aesthetic production, particularly with regard to the status of architecture under the bourgeois order. The article is directed toward the officials in charge of [...]

The author reflects on a comparison between abstraction and realism, presenting it as a grave problem of the era. For José Renau, the main trend of the “bourgeois” culture is based on the abstract and trivial aspect of intellectual creation. He [...]

Leopoldo Méndez not only contributed images for the magazine Horizonte, he also voiced his ideas, as in this text. In it he emphasizes the rebellious, antibourgeois, and anti-art for art’s sake aspect of mural art, describing it as that “ [...]

David Alfaro Siqueiros, writing in El Machete, invites the proletariat to discuss their problems. His goal is to counter the middle-class press, where the disenfranchised are unrepresented. The article explains that the walls of public buildings have [...]

This document lists the activities of José Muñoz Cota, the director of the Department of Fine Arts for the SEP (Secretaría de Educación Pública) [Ministry of Public Education], as well as his aesthetic criteria for the visual and literary arts. [...]

The editorial section of Mundo nuevo [New World], an anarcho-syndicalist magazine, presents a defense of socially committed art, in accordance with the ideology of the workers’ movement. The editor maintains that art should serve the class struggle [...]

The Argentinean painter Antonio Berni harshly criticizes the artists linked aesthetically to Horacio Butler (the Paris Group as widely known in Argentina) as well as those linked to Atilio Chiappori (Fernando Fader, among others). Berni believes them [...]

Response of writer Nydia Lamarque to the survey sponsored by the magazine Contra [Against]: “Should art serve social problems?” In her judgment, art, as a product and synthesis of social factors, reflects the reality of society; moreover, she [...]