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 [...]

This essay examines the “proletarian” ambiguities to be found in questions of aesthetics and, more precisely, the risk involved in the production of arbitrary dogmatic statements concerning the connection between art and politics. The author [...]

In Mexico, the Lucha Intelectual Proletaria (LIP) [Intellectual Proletarian Struggle] establishes four principles. These are the same principles that required this group of artists and intellectuals, who were ready to serve the proletariat with their [...]

Golpe, the journal of the Federación de Escritores y Artistas Proletarios (FEAP) [Federation of Proletarian Writers and Artists] published an editorial in which members of the Federation expressed their opinions on the issue of socialist education. [...]

In its official publication Llamada [The Call], the Lucha Intelectual Proletaria (LIP) [Intellectual Proletarian Struggle] declares that Mexican intellectuals who are members of this group should make their work serve the proletariat in its war on [...]

Bandera de Provincias decided to “discover” José Clemente Orozco’s work, and commissioned writer Enrique Martínez Ulloa from the state of Jalisco to provide essays on his painting. The author wrote an essay in three parts on the revolutionary [...]

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 [...]

Furthering his theories about popular art, and referring to the paintings on the walls of certain pulquerías [agave sap bars] in Mexico City, Diego Rivera once again discusses the art of the proletariat. He restates his contempt for bourgeois [...]

Amaro Martínez writes about Demetrio Urruchúa’s painting as a new value in the Argentinean visual arts; nevertheless, he also uses his interpretation of the work to criticize the concept of proletarian art. Martínez believes “proletarian art [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]