Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this text, Raúl María Pereira rejects the notion of sincerity—a value as arbitrary as it is ungraspable—as privileged category in artistic creation. He upholds, rather, the duty born of “today’s agonizing mindset”—the search for the [...]

In this text, art critic María Luz Cárdenas explains the concerns underlying the fifth Salón Pirelli, which in her view, is a concise reflection on the conflicts and dilemmas that new technological media have brought to artistic creation. Cá [...]

In this essay, José María Cruxent sets forth many of the fundamental concepts evident in his artwork as well as the reasons why he created certain works. The artist defines the guidelines of his own concept of “art,” stating that he regards it [...]

The Venezuelan artist Elsa Gramcko is interviewed by Teresa Alvarenga, who describes Gramcko’s house as dark and dismal. The artist tells the journalist about her creative process, and talks about her daily life and her relationship with the [...]

In this essay, Venezuelan artist Elsa Gramcko offers a very personal overview of her creative process. She describes what drives her to create and the importance of the intellectual relationship between artist and artwork. She believes art to be the [...]

In this essay, Iris Peruga analyzes most of the work created by Gego between 1955 and 1990. The curator examines the similarities between Gego’s artwork and that of her contemporaries. Examining the artist’s relationship with the trends of [...]

In this essay, Roberto Guevara gives an overview of Gego’s career, [based on a selection of works that are] on display at the São Paulo Biennial. Guevara describes how Gego’s work has evolved from her early sculptures in the 1950s to her latest [...]

With this text, Mariela Avellaneda de Luna officially presents Gego at the twenty-third São Paulo Biennial. Avellaneda points out the importance of the line in Gego’s large structures, such as the versions of Reticulárea, emphasizing the way the [...]

This analysis by Catherine de Zegher focuses on Gego’s drawing in space. After an introduction in which she describes earlier works by important artists that engage the notion of drawing in space, as well as those by Gego’s contemporaries, de [...]

In this review published in 1995 in the “Epífitas” column of the newspaper El Universal, Venezuelan poet, critic, and professor María Antonieta Flores asserts that the exhibition organized by the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Sofía Imber [...]

According to English critic and curator Guy Brett, abstract works of art, whether systematic or informal in nature, can be seen as models of the universe. It is on this premise that he studies Gego’s work. Brett maintains that the work of many [...]

This draft of a text by painter Antonino Espinosa Saldaña was for a presentation at an exhibition of his work that did not take place. In it he justifies the absence of titles or any references for the works, “because one should not impose a [...]

In this article Francisco Miró Quesada Cantuarias replies to the comments made by Luis Miró Quesada Garland (El Comercio, Lima, August 14, 1955) as part of the debate prompted by the latter’s conclusions concerning the newspaper’s survey about [...]

The text “Código fuente: tácticas de combate” (2006) was written by Esteban Rey, artist and professor of art and technology at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. It analyzes the processes involved in creating two artworks: both fuenteAbierta [...]

The law of September 22, 1867 that was passed by the Congress of the United States of Colombia created the Universidad Nacional de los Estados Unidos de Colombia, a national, public, and free university in keeping with the Humboldtian concept of [...]

This document records the passage of Law 67, on September 11, 1882, which created an Instituto de Bellas Artes [Fine Arts Institute] in Bogotá. It refers to the Colombian government initiative that was separate from the university system of the [...]

This document is an editorial page outlining the motivations for the creation of the magazine Tin-Tan. It cites its primary focus as addressing a critical absence in the print media of publications dedicated to the concerns of Mexican-Americans and [...]

The speech by the Cuban poet and essayist Juan Marinello records his position on Cuban vernacular art at a breakthrough moment in the consolidation of the island’s avant-garde. Marinello raises concerns over the country’s environment, which he [...]

In this text, Gilbertto Prado discusses the impact that internet-based interactive devices have had on artistic creation, dwelling in particular on action art projects on the web that enable and seek the direct engagement of interested individuals. [...]

In this handwritten text found in one of Carlos Rojas’s notebooks, the artist explains some of the ideas surrounding his work, specifically in relation to two major questions: his perception of the laws of nature, which he understands in terms of [...]

In this notebook, which is one of several kept by Colombian artist Carlos Rojas, the author writes down thirty-two points essential to his art.  Written like a manifesto, this particular manuscript contains ideas that Rojas considers innate to his [...]

In this article the Colombian artist Marco Ospina defines painting as the art of space, form, and color. He thus rejects the idea of art as representation, instead stressing the artist’s mental experience as the source of inspiration for a painting [...]

Journalist Margarita D’Amico introduces Venezuelan artist Roberto Obregón, asking him to reflect on his series, Crónicas de flores y Disecciones de rosas [Flower Chronicles and Rose Dissections]. Obregón states that his interest in “chronicles [...]

In this special article written in Mexico and published in the Colombian art magazine Plástica [Visual Arts], the Guatemalan artist Carlos Mérida discusses the values and processes involved in pictorial abstraction. Mérida describes abstraction as [...]

Raúl Rodríguez Porcell’s thesis in this article is that there is a clear difference between art produced in an underdeveloped society and that produced in a developed society. In the developed society, there are modern economic relationships [...]

Ralph de Romero, a Puerto Rican artist born in New York, tells us about his experiences as a painter. He says his creative experience is spontaneous and that his painting becomes the tangible evidence of that experience. De Romero also notes the [...]

In this 1972 lecture, delivered at the Primer Seminario sobre Diseño Artesanal in Bogotá, and organized by the Asociación Colombiana de Promoción Artesanal and the Artesanías de Colombia, Carlos Rojas discusses creativity, understood as the [...]

In this article, Marta Traba maintains that an artist should use a repertoire of forms from nature, without trying to copy its objective appearance. The elements taken from reality should be used as aesthetic tools that offer an artist a chance to [...]

In response to the questions put to her by Venezuelan filmmaker José Antonio Pantin, Gego remarks on the origin of her art and the processes it involves, focusing specifically on her three-dimensional work. She states that her works have been [...]

Interviewed by the filmmaker José Antonio Pantin, Gego discusses the gestation of her three-dimensional works, and reiterates her misgivings about classifying her work as “sculpture.” She also insists that “transparency” is her essential [...]

In this interview, Gego answered questions of the Venezuelan filmmaker José Antonio Pantin, describing the technical nature of the seminars she taught at the Instituto de Diseño [Design Institute] Fundación Neumann–INCE, and expressing some of [...]

These are Gego’s answers to questions about the origins and nature of her work. She explains that her art is based on the line, which is the focal point of her work and the inspiration for its structural development. Her use of line was also [...]

In this essay, Eugenio Espinoza analyzes Dibujos sin papel [Drawings Without Paper], a series of works by Gego, a Venezuelan artist of German origin. Espinoza focuses on the works from that series created in 1985 as he explores the way Gego goes [...]

Critic Mariana Figarella analyzes the series of Dibujos sin papel [Drawings Without Paper] that Gego, a Venezuelan artist of German origin, produced between 1976 and 1984. Figarella discusses the “ambiguity” of these works and the subsequent [...]

Journalist Joaquín Gabaldon Márquez praises the work La bruja [The Witch] by Oswaldo Vigas, suggesting it is imbued with profound intellectual meaning. He states that the work does not seek to reproduce nature, nor achieve pure abstraction; [...]

Poet Miguel Algarin maintains that rather than a sign of ignorance the mixing of Spanish and English words by Puerto Ricans in New York expresses linguistic creativity. He argues that Puerto Ricans in New York are forging a new language and culture [...]

In this essay, art historian Kristine Stiles provides the most comprehensive essay written to date on the work of Rafael Montañez Ortiz, who is recognized as an innovator in the destruction art movement of the 1960s. Stiles’s essay chronicles [...]

This is an important poetic dissertation by León Felipe, who discusses the artist’s invention of his world as an intimate space in his own creative process. That is, the poet reflects upon the synchronicity that exists between the work of art and [...]

The Peruvian art historian Carlos Rodríguez Saavedra defines genuine creation as an expression of truth that admits no alternatives, then goes on to state that the finest Latin American artists blend two opposites—“indigenous” and “universal [...]

Through comparative analysis, Silviano Santiago examines the “place” of literary discourse in Latin America. He describes a process of “acculturation” that began in the colonial era and has left the trace of “defamiliarization.” [...]

Antonio Berni analyzes the educational system and technical instruction and discusses the creation of an art academy in Rosario; he relates those general matters to the specific characteristics of Rosario [...]

This article explains that the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes [National Academy of Fine Arts] issued a statement in which it acknowledged that artists should be free to create works of art, but cautioned that when works of art are used for [...]

The text reproduces the inaugural speech delivered by Vordemberge-Gildewart on October 2, 1953, for the opening of the exhibition Grupo de Artistas Modernos Argentinos [Modern Artists Group of Argentina] at the Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam. The [...]

Jorge Romero Brest ponders the term “experiencia” [full-blasted experience] in regard to the 1960s vanguards. He considers that those experiences are based on attitudes, usually addressed toward a special kind of realities in order to generate [...]

William Sandberg’s presentation text analyzes the artist’s reactions in light of the events occurred and experienced by mankind during the thirty years before that “1963,” which is also the title of his text. In this sense, Sandberg considers [...]

Emilio Renart reflects upon the act of creation. He rejects the idea of “inspiration, the rapt emotions it implies,” “the established rules,” [and] paradigms. The artist then proposes to work with “truths that suffice in and of themselves [...]

In this text, written in 1959, Libero Badii expresses his own opinions concerning the nature of artistic creation, as distinct from the usual categories mentioned in the artistic discourse. He views creation as a mysterious event, inextricably linked [...]

Josep Renau believes that, to fully understand a work of art, one must know something about the artist’s chronological evolution, the artist’s work, and the artist’s milieu. He states: “a work of art should be . . . the latest expression of [...]

Rufino Tamayo expressed his ideas on the need to protect freedom of expression in the creative process. He explained that he did not belong to any group; on a personal level, however, he expressed his support for one of the “inalienable rights of [...]

The author José Renau, exiled in Mexico, summarizes the principal avant-garde art trends of the 20th century, highlighting the contradiction between the works created and their artistic value in light of the few connections among the artists, [...]