Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

The first part of the interview covers the start of his career and his training in Europe. After living in Buenos Aires (where he returned to his art studies), he returned to Peru in 1919. Sabogal states that “the Cuzco area cast a powerful spell [...]

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

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

This letter by Mariano Ibérico was written at the request of painter Antonino Espinosa Saldaña. More specifically, Ibérico was asked to share his opinion on the polemic surrounding the course on Incan art given at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas [...]

This is a letter that was sent by José Sabogal in response to his colleague, Antonino Espinosa Saldaña, who requested his opinion on the polemics surrounding the course on “Inca Art” that was being offered at the ENBA (Escuela Nacional de [...]

Gertrudis Chale writes to Libero Badii about her stay in the Peruvian city of Arequipa. She mentions the Indianist Peruvian artists José Sabogal and Julia Codesido, commenting sensitively on the native and popular art, seminal concerns of her work [...]

Gertrudis Chale writes to Libero Badii about her stay in Quito, Ecuador, and the impact of Quito's landscapes, architecture, and painting on her. She mentions the Peruvian artist Julia Codesido [...]

The anonymous author of this article contrasts the favorable response on the part of Peruvian intellectuals and artists to the work of Spanish artist Victorio Macho and their response to María Izquierdo, considered “ambassador of a hypothetical [...]

The author, Antonino Espinosa Saldaña, proposes to replace the course name “Arte incaico” [Incan Art]—used by the ENBA beginning in 1930, with “Arqueología pre-incaica y su aplicación a las artes decorativas” [pre-Incan archeology and [...]

The author, Augusto Aguirre Morales, questions the stance of painter Antonino Espinosa Saldaña, who does not believe Peruvian precolonial art is “art.” He challenges Espinosa’s premise that cultural differences among men are an obstacle to the [...]

Painter Antonino Espinosa opens this letter questioning the pertinence of the “Arte incaico” [Incan Art] course at the ENBA—to be offered by writer Augusto Aguirre, author of the novel El pueblo del sol [The People of the Sun]—arguing that [...]

The author, Augusto Aguirre Morales, (who was selected by the ENBA to teach the controversial course) defends the existence of “Incan art,” using the examples conserved in museums and the testimonials of historians. He asserts that it was the [...]

The introduction to this essay rejects the possibility of defining Brazilian art by clearly describing the parameters of such a process which, usually, refers to cultural policies based on folkloric and anecdotal visions of national reality. [...]

In this essay published in the exhibition catalog, Remerica! Amerika, artists Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gomez-Peña contend that the origins of dada events and performance art date back to the 1500s when native peoples from Africa and the Americas [...]

This text is an article written from Paris by painter Enrique Domingo Barreda, in which he attacks the prevailing indigenous art trend in Peruvian art. He states that “motivated by a ridiculous vanity, everyone in Peru paints natives and believes [...]

The well-known member of the avant-garde, Arturo Uslar Pietri, tracks the evolution of the portrayal of the Indian since the idyllic vision proposed by Columbus and Father Bartolomé de las Casas (both of whom were inspired by the myth of the Noble [...]

This essay was written by Elvira de Gálvez on the artist Alicia Bustamente on occasion of her death. The author highlights above all Bustamante’s work in the promotion and defense of Peruvian Popular Art. The author states that Bustamente “found [...]

Amalia Mesa-Bains’s essay proposes a historical lineage of heart imagery and the concept of “lo del corazón” [that which comes from the heart] that begins in the Mexico’s Aztec ritual of human sacrifice and culminates in public and popular [...]

This article by José Sabogal is about the recent work produced by the Indigenist painter Camilo Blas. The author discusses Blas’ two scenes of Cajamarca that are to decorate the new Salón de Palacio, which opened in 1924 in celebration of the [...]

In this article the writer and journalist José Eulogio Garrido discusses the indigenist painting of José Sabogal. Garrido describes the painter as “a man with a voice and vision of his own who expresses that voice and vision in visible ways that [...]

In this review “Juan Eye” (the pseudonym used by the writer Sebastián Salazar Bondy) discusses the José Sabogal exhibition at the SAP (Sociedad de Arquitectos del Perú, Lima). The author states that Sabogal deserves to be acknowledged in the [...]

In this article, José Sabogal discusses Peruvian traditional art, which in his opinion, is “the key point, in the Americas, where Hispanic America began. When indigenous cultural expressions were combined with the invasion of Mediterranean visual [...]

Though he does not mention a change as such in José Sabogal’s latest paintings, the author detects the presence or hint of certain nuances he had not noticed before. Carlos Raygada compares Procesión del Señor de los Milagros—painted in 1923, [...]

In this text, Luis Fernández Prada asserts that Ricardo Grau’s show of painting is “worthy of note” in a prudish Peruvian art scene characterized by unremarkable shows. In his view, the show “constitutes a resounding reaction against [...]

Aracy Amaral comments in this essay on the term “Latin American” as an aesthetic category, which would suggest being identified as something different and also the need to search for universal values. This would be one of the paths: the denial of [...]

López Merino begins his article by remarking on the success of Sabogal’s exhibition in Buenos Aires, “where the most discerning critics acknowledged the respect he enjoys in Latin America.” The writer describes the exhibition of prints as a [...]

In this document, the author, Mercedes Gallagher, had offered assessments similar to those of painter Enrique Domingo Barreda—that is, against indigenous art—except for the indigenous scenes painted by Francisco Laso. She asserts that “there [...]

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 this text, Sebastián Salazar Bondy argues that the post-romantic generation, which was held in high regard at the time, is not essential to Peruvian art history because it is anachronistic; such art has neglected its “true” national and [...]

Article written by Ernesto More, signed with the pseudonym Jerome, in which he criticizes the direction adopted by the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes (ENBA), based in Lima, Peru. The author affirms that ENBA was created by an oligarchic government [...]

Franklin Urteaga conducted this lengthy interview with Julia Codesido on the occasion of her recent exhibitions overseas. Referring to the first of these, at the recently inaugurated Palacio de Bellas Artes (Mexico City, 1935), Urteaga notes the [...]

Well-known avant-garde author Ricardo Peña recounts the cosmopolitan education of Ricardo Grau, whom he describes as a “concertmaster of international figures.” In his paintings, he notes a tonal atmosphere that is austere and excessive. He [...]

In this text, Raúl María Pereira reflects on the history of painting in Peru, affirming that the Incan “genius in form and color” lived on despite the Spanish conquest, not as a parallel or marginal entity, but as a force that acted on “the [...]

This article, written in 1919, was published several months after José Sabogal’s first exhibition due to, as the author explains, “the congestion of opinions, appraisals, and enthusiasm” that circulated at the time. Elvira García y García [...]

This is Antonio Berni’s essay on four Peruvian painters,José Sabogal, Julia Codesido, Camilo Blas, and Teresa Carvallo, in which he describes both their technical abilities and the subject matter of their works. Berni stresses the importance of [...]

This article discusses the first exhibition in Lima (at Casa Brandes, in 1919) of the work of José Sabogal, who, after many years of study in Europe and Argentina, speaks out against the prevailing academicism in Peru and the art “of likeness” [...]

In his critical review of Alicia Bustamante’s 1944 exhibition, Fuentes Ibáñez explains that the artist manages to harness “emotional and harmonious moods” to express “the feelings inspired by her surroundings.” He explains that Bustamante [...]

Óscar Fritz compares José Sabogal’s influence on the Peruvian visual arts to Martin Luther’s impact during the Reformation: a process that “sought to return to an earlier simplicity, to embrace a form of evangelical speech that mimicked the [...]

In this text, art critic Carlos Raygada asserts that, though Mario Urteaga has never before shown his painting in the capital, his work is not that of a beginner. Raygada describes Urteaga as a self-taught artist who, because he began painting in the [...]

Referring to the visual art he saw in Mexico, José Sabogal says that contemporary Mexican painting is already “the most serious American movement in art. It represents something truly national, truly American.” Its exponents (he mentions José [...]

In this first chapter of his book Del buen salvaje al buen revolucionario, Carlos Rangel Guevara presents the Europeans’ mythical view of the Americas. He emphasizes that even today, the myth of the “noble savage,” associated with a Golden Age [...]

In his interview with Carlos Raygada, Héctor Velarde explains that his work “has consisted of coordinating and realizing the original concept” for the Basílica de Santa Rosa de Lima, while abstaining as much as possible from any alteration of [...]

This text contains the polemic statements that Fernando de Szyszlo made on the occasion of his exhibition of abstract paintings held at the Asociación de Arquitectos del Perú in Lima in May 1951. He starts off by provocatively asserting that “ [...]

Carmen Saco, the Peruvian sculptress and essayist, believes that the roots of Julia Codesido’s painting can be found in “blocks of stone that have been overwhelmed and penetrated by life and pain.” She believes that Codesido’s art expresses [...]

Luis Alberto Sánchez wrote this article on the occasion of the closing of José Sabogal’s exhibition at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (Lima, 1931). According to Sánchez, “Sabogal is a painter who represents all of Peru,” and [...]

In 1937, Ricardo Peña wrote about José Sabogal’s work on the occasion of his exhibition at the Sociedad Filarmónica, suggesting that the paintings on display could be classified, in terms of “his ethical and artistic approach,” into three [...]

This article by Alberto Gerchunoff, a Russian writer and journalist based in Buenos Aires, criticizes “los predicadores del americanismo, (…) a la vez nacionalistas y continentalistas” [the preachers of Latin Americanism, (…) who are both [...]

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 [...]

This article was written by the Peruvian politician and writer, Magda Portal, focusing on the work of the artist, Elena Izcue. In Portal’s opinion, looking at the past would not represent a step backward, since the past is where we find the promise [...]

Ventura García Calderón asserts in this prologue that, in Latin America, the Spanish and Indian races did not mix and that the former ignored the latter even though it was, in his view, “one of the most perfect civilizations in the world.” He [...]