Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

Brazilian literary critic and essayist Afrânio Coutinho wrote this article in the late- 1960s. His article states since inception that to him the term “Latin American,” is at odds with the historical, social, cultural, literary, and artistic [...]

To start with, the newspaper’s editorial statement was very clear concerning the basic purpose of A parte do fogo [The Fire’s Part]: to take part in Brazil’s cultural process and create a space devoted to reflection and to the production of [...]

In this essay, the well-known Argentinean critic Jorge Romero Brest attempts to assess national problems as they were understood by the most famous Brazilian artists, touching on a raw nerve concerning the differences between the art produced in [...]

In this lecture, Luis Martins discusses various aspects of modern Brazilian painting from the 1920s through the mid-1930s. He describes Brazil as a “country of reflections” that passively echoes the challenges faced by the visual arts in the rest [...]

To the art critic Geraldo Ferraz, Lívio Abramo’s artwork departs from a drawing that then gradually begins to give way to “expressionist manipulations” etched on “bad” wood. Towards the end of the thirties, Abramo, who was a journalist, [...]

Eduardo Jonquieres writes from France about the political situation in Argentina and how it affects his friends. He discusses the projects and exhibitions that he’s working on, and gives Ferrari the names of some personal contacts in Europe. There [...]

The text by Brazilian author Alberto Da Costa e Silva for the exhibition “9 grabadores del Brasil” [Nine Engravers of Brazil] (Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, 1968) presents an expansive view of the history and evolution of engraving in the [...]

This anonymous article discusses the exodus of Latin American artists departing for North America and Europe. It also addresses the lack of professionalism within the local art scene especially with regard to public support for art. Mention is made [...]

In this critical text, Frederico Morais asserts that Marcos Benjamim’s work looks to childhood experiences in the province of Minas Gerais, where Morais himself grew up, turning them into a way of life. As a child, the artist was surrounded by [...]

This article, published on the last day of the Exposição de Pintura Moderna Anita Malfatti, remarks on the “crowd of onlookers” that had visited the exhibition. The author notes that this painter’s work is as personal as it is modern, and [...]

In this article, Luciano Gusmão writes at length about Lótus Lobo’s prints and her ideas for a “caipira” [rancher] style of aesthetic nationalism based on an approach that is very closely related to Pop Art. Her work presents a variety of [...]

Writer Aníbal Machado published this text on the occasion of the death of Ismael Nery. He points out some aspects of the artist’s personality and work and compares his painting with foreign artists of the stature of Max Ernest and André Masson [...]

This document presents the show A Nova Dimensão do Objeto curated by Aracy Amaral for the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo in 1986. Without attempting to collapse the difference between sculptural works and [...]

Frederico Morais reviews Opinião 66, the exhibition presented at the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro in 1966. He compares the exhibited works and the state of art in Brazil to the art being produced in France at the time, arguing that the [...]

This review of the 1940 Exposição de Arte Francesa at the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro discusses the “backwardness” of Brazilian art compared to its European counterpart. By presenting over a hundred years of French art— [...]

Hélio Oiticica presents his research into the transition from two-dimensional paintings to three-dimensional works of art, discussing some of his own projects—such as Invenções, Núcleos, and Penetráveis—and the designs for open air [...]

This document records an informal conversation between the art critic Mário Baratta and the Brazilian artist Aldemir Martins. They discuss the motives that led him to join the lengthy list of internal migrants leaving the state of Ceará [...]

In this text, Jorge Mautner looks at Brazilian artists working in different disciplines (in the visual arts, music, literature, film, and theater), and the parallels between their past and present work. His thesis is that there is a liberating [...]

This text by Murilo Mendes was written on the occasion of the death of French Surrealist writer André Breton in 1966. On the basis of certain encounters he had with Breton in Paris in 1952 and 1953, Mendes makes observations on the work and [...]

In this text presenting the exhibition Objeto de arte Brasil anos 60, Daisy Peccinini describes the research carried out for the event, placing particular emphasis on the publication of a series of critical documents, statements, and interviews with [...]

From the perspective of a practicing artist, Antonio Dias demands greater organization of the Brazilian cultural sector. He asserts that following the military coup of 1964, Brazilian culture became irrelevant on the global scene due not to a lack of [...]

This text by Nelson Brissac questions the ongoing interest in national roots in the age of globalization. Due to the current impossibility of defining any “identity,” what is at stake, in the author’s view, is the ability to take full advantage [...]

In this article, the journalist Celso Fioravante explains that the Brazilian gallery Camargo Vilaça was asked to participate in the contemporary art fair in Madrid (ARCO, 1996). Fioravante reports that this involvement in the Spanish event was part [...]

This text is a historical balance sheet of Concrete art in Brazil. The art critic, Ferreira Gullar, introduces Concrete art as a movement of “rupture” whose radical nature contrasts with the painting that predominated in Brazil in the late 1940s [...]

In this essay, Ferreira Gullar describes the context in which the Neo-Concrete art movement was created by artists in Rio de Janeiro. He outlines the movement’s evolution as he identifies key developments in its history, such as the series [...]

This essay is about the proposal of the author Gilberto Freyre about the need for teaching the sociology of art within a planned fine art curriculum, highlighting the importance of this and anthropology. In his opinion, one must try to understand a [...]

In this text, Ana Letícia Fialho analyzes the place of Brazilian art on the international art scene starting in the nineties. She argues that the “politically correct” discourse adopted by curators and other players on the [...]

The fall of the Berlin Wall, the spread of social democracy and liberalism as political, economic, and ideological models, the “westernizing” of Asia, and other facets of the process of globalization are mentioned here, among the many changes [...]

In his essay, Paulo Herkenhoff seeks to portray Brazil as though it were one country and several countries at the same time, presenting its art as though it were both a singular and a multiple phenomenon. The critic thinks of Brazil as just a point [...]

According to Hélio Oiticica, the future of Brazilian modernism depends on the creation of an artistic language that can adopt a universal critical approach that is both “permanent and experimental.” His diagnosis of the state of Brazilian [...]

Julio Plaza introduces his exhibition Câmara Obscura, fully aware of the risks involved in translating a visual language into words. The result is a prim illustration that spills over into the spectators’ terrain. This work is a [...]

This is the catalogue published to accompany Camargo, the exhibition organized by the Gimpel Fils gallery in London. The Brazilian artist Sérgio Camargo’s works were exhibited there from November 17 through December 5, 1970. The [...]

According to the poet and critic Ferreira Gullar, the essential problem concerning the “national” nature of art is directly related to the cultural dependence of the country. By way of explanation, he suggests that this question would not arise [...]

This is a poetic critique of Carlos Vergara’s work, written by Hélio Oiticica. The review posits questions concerning the history of Brazilian modern art in which Oiticica, referring to Vergara’s pieces, identifies what he calls a work of art’ [...]

The art critic Roberto Pontual wrote this text for the exhibition 3x4 - Grandes Formatos organized in 1983 by the Centro Empresarial Rio. The essay’s confessional tone is nuanced by the author’s description of the driving spirit behind the works [...]

Ever since the academic romanticism of the nineteenth century, Brazilian artists had longed to create a “national (Brazilian) art,” a goal that at times had hampered their creative development. The painters Giovanni Castagneto, Oswaldo [...]

In this essay about Brazilian art, the critic Rodrigo Naves refers, first of all, to the formal timidity of the works produced in Brazil since the modernism of the 1920s. When compared with the modern art shown on the international circuit, which [...]

The artist Lívio Abramo launches into his essay with some reminiscences about the time he spent with the journalist and writer Geraldo Ferraz when they both worked at the Diário da Noite, and about the illustrations he produced for Pelo [...]

While this analysis of contemporary Brazilian art by Otília Arantes focuses on the period that spans from 1965 to 1969, it comments as well on the fifties, seventies, and eighties. For the sixties generation, Arantes argues, making art meant [...]

In this text, Ronaldo Brito discusses artist Eduardo Sued, addressing his professional consciousness as well as his unique perception of art. Brito asserts that the power of Sued’s painting “lies beyond technical tricks and the interplay [...]

In this essay, the Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre criticizes the exaggerated and mystic academicism of intellectual works produced by Brazilian universities that distance them from the concerns of society as a whole. Describing himself as a [...]

In this review of Emmanuel Nassar’s work, Tadeu Chiarelli discusses the paintings the artist produced in the mid-1980s, in which he detects an attraction to the widespread erudite Constructivist tradition coupled with a certain discomfort, [...]

This text by art critic Regina Teixeira de Barros discusses the exhibition of work by Ernesto Neto held at the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo in 1992. She observes a division in Neto’s recent production since as it furthers the [...]

Artist Milton Machado discusses the response abroad, specifically in England, to the group show Continuum Brazilian Art 1960s–1990s, held in Essex in 1995. Machado comments on the appeal of a certain “exoticism” attributed to [...]

The French art critic Maurice Raynal believes there is an innovative school of art in Brazil that is based on an intellectual aesthetic. The painter Vicente do Rego Monteiro is a member of that group. Raynal explains that Rego Monteiro, an artist [...]

In this text, Sérgio Buarque de Holanda analyzes what he sees as a fundamental aspect of the origin of Brazilian society: the effort to import Iberian culture to America. In the text, Holanda reminds us that Iberia was an “uncertain” region [...]

As this interview by Rodrigo Naves with Raquel Arnaud explains, Arnaud first got involved with the Brazilian art scene at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) between 1968 and 1971, under the guidance of the museum’s founder and director, Pietro [...]

In this nuanced essay, the artist Fayga Ostrower writes about the theoretical aspects of the prints produced by Lívio Abramo, the Brazilian engraver, especially with regard to the representation of psychological and biographical themes. [...]

This essay sets out to analyze the evolution of Brazilian intellectual thought from the 1930s to the mid-1970s in order to identify the distinguishing traits of the transition from an aristocratic view of culture (the target of Mário de Andrade’s [...]

Manoel Bomfim begins his introduction to O Brasil na América: Caracterização da Formação Brasileira, which he wrote in 1925 and published in 1929, by identifying himself, once and for all, as a Latin American; however, he questions the beliefs [...]