Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this interview with Iván Navarro, Julia P. Herzberg poses questions about process and materials, the use of electricity, and art historical influences on his work from the 1990s to the 2000s. Navarro’s Blade Runner series (2004), [...]

Written for Iván Navarro’s midcareer exhibition, this essay explores his early work from the 1990s to the 2000s, enabling us to understand his evolution over time. Growing up in Chile during the Augusto Pinochet regime (1973–90), [...]

 This art magazine interview between Julia P. Herzberg and Francisca Sutil involves a conversation about the artist’s painting process in general and her recent series Mute (2009), in particular. Sutil explains that prior to initiating [...]

This exhibition essay discusses the Chilean artist Catalina Parra’s collages on view in the exhibition Catalina Parra: It’s Indisputable. It includes seven series with seventy works, which comprise collages made of newspaper clippings [...]

José Ratto Ciarlo publishes in 1943 his conversation in tandem with the Chilean artist Marco Bontà Costa and Mercedes Pardo during the opening of the exhibition of the former’s Venezuelan landscapes at the Museo de Bellas Artes in [...]

Regarding the show of Chilean painting on exhibit in Lima, Ricardo Grau states that “it can be calamitous to have an artistic past like Peru’s” since it often serves as a pretext behind which to hide defects or weaknesses. Because no such [...]

In this article, Sebastián Salazar Bondy discusses the work of Chilean painter Roberto Matta. In Salazar Bondy’s view, true art does not copy the appearance of “everyday vulgarity,” but questions conventions. That is why the run-of-the-mill [...]

“Non Serviam,” a manifesto written by Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro, records his rejection of naturalism in poetry. He declares that poets should no longer imitate or reproduce nature; instead, they should create distinct new worlds [...]

This address was given by the Spanish-born, Chilean-based scholar José Victorino Lastarria in 1842 during a meeting of the recently formed Sociedad Literaria, a literary society of important Chilean scholars and politicians. In his speech to the [...]

This exhibition catalog, Chicago Latino, was part of an intercultural dialogue initiated by two “socially-minded arts groups,” the 369 Gallery of Edinburgh, Scotland, and the Near Northwest Arts Council of Chicago, Illinois. The exhibition [...]

Chilean artist Mario Toral speaks of his experiences when he arrived in New York as an exile in 1973, immediately after the coup d'état led by General Augusto Pinochet. He compares the squandering of North Americans, who throw everything away, with [...]

In this essay, Carmen Bardeguez-Brown weighs the influence of the Berlin Dadaists (1918–22) on photomontage artist Catalina Parra. Of Chilean descent, Parra went to college in Germany where she was exposed to Dada art in 1968. She was drawn to the [...]

In this essay, Carmen Bardeguez-Brown weighs the influence of the Berlin Dadaists (1918–22) on photomontage artist Catalina Parra. Of Chilean descent, Parra went to college in Germany where she was exposed to Dada art in 1968. She was drawn to the [...]

In this catalogue essay, Victor Alejandro Sorell considers the 36-year career (spanning 1964–2000) of the Chicano artist Carlos Cortez, praising him as the “quintessential artist-reporter,” and emphasizing his virtuosity as a master printmaker [...]

This essay examines the impact of Roberto Matta’s presence in the United States during 1939–1948, when, as part of a Surrealist cohort of émigrés, he established temporary residence in New York to escape the war in Europe. The authors [...]

In this text, the artist Mirentxu Ganzaraín discusses the inadequacy of terminology in use in the United States to describe and categorize the art by artists whose ethnic backgrounds are other than normative ones. As a North American of Chilean and [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado writes about the life and work of José Balmes, taking as his starting point an exhibition of two of the painter’s works that Mellado defines as paradigmatic: No (1972) and El luche (1994), both of which are [...]

Adriana Valdés wrote this essay for the catalogue for an exhibition of works by Mónica Bengoa. Organizing her text around six themes, Valdés writes about stories, pixels, the unspeakable, “To the sound of a smooth, soft [...]

The artist Roser Bru provides a first-person account of the founding of Taller 99, specifically at the time when Nemesio Antúnez first started teaching. When he was unable to start a workshop at the Escuela de Artes Aplicadas in Santiago, [...]

The text informs the Italian press that in the meeting which took place on October 15 and 16, 1975, it was agreed among the artists representing Argentina, Brazil, Chile, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Uruguay to constitute the Fronte [...]

This is the text of the speech Gabriela Mistral gave at the special session of the board of directors of the Pan American Union in Washington, DC, in 1946, the year after she received the Nobel Prize in Literature in Stockholm. The Chilean poet [...]

This essay is Pedro Millar’s brief biography on Santos Chavez’s integration into Taller 99, in which he also gives an account on his artistic trajectory through the interpretation of his iconography. He states that in an encounter [...]

In this essay, Rita Ferrer discusses photography based on an international critique of several periods. She refers to authors such as Roland Barthes, Charles Baudelaire, and the Chilean artist Carlos Leppe, claiming that they all share a “ [...]

The essay written by Patricio M. Zárate covered the new emerging generation of Chilean artists. According to the author “customary artistic boundaries had been disregarded” with the incorporation of artistic works pertaining to [...]

“El infinito de la obra” by Francisco Brugnoli is the introductory essay in the catalogue for the exhibition Centenario Carlos Hermosilla, 1905–2005, which acknowledged the centenary of the birth of the famous printmaker from [...]

In this essay Justo Pastor Mellado discusses four works produced by Alicia Villarreal in 1996–97 that were shown at various exhibitions. He sees similarities in them, in both thematic and material terms, based on their focus on books and [...]

This essay by Alberto Madrid is the research on the evolution of Chilean engraving at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de Viña del Mar. For this the author utilized references of national geographic elements associated with printmaking, which [...]

In this essay, Enrique Lihn writes about the first period in Nemesio Antúnez’s career as an artist, ignoring what people usually say about his work in order to discuss “energetic contrasts.” It was during that early period ( [...]

This essay by Alberto Madrid is on the exhibition Fotografía: intervenciones, cruces y desvíos. His play of words “field of reference out of field” emerged in the essay questioning the bibliographic references with which [...]

This essay by Mario Soro was one of the chapters in the catalogue for the exhibition Chile 100 años (Chile 100 Years) covering the second period, 1950–73, titled “Entre modernidad y utopía” (Between Modernity and [...]

This essay is a brief text written by the historian and art critic Antonio Romera on Carlos Hermosilla’s work in the context of his participation at the IV Bienal Americana del Grabado in Santiago, Chile in 1970, whose core topic was on Chilean [...]

In this text Gaspar Galaz writes about the prints produced by Jaime Cruz. He discusses the ones from the 1960s, which are representative of Cruz’s early work in this medium. Galaz also refers to the dominant trends in art at that time, the [...]

This article was written by Gaspar Galaz on the occasion of a retrospective exhibition of works by Claudio Bravo at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Santiago, Chile. Galaz refers to a debate about art and how it should be defined that was [...]

Pedro Prado writes about Juan Francisco González after he had passed away, referring to him as “his teacher,” the teacher who taught him how to see as a painter, to find the beauty in his surroundings. Prado describes Gonzá [...]

This essay includes a compilation of statements made by members of the Tribu No, a group devoted to experimental poetry and art that was active in Chile in the late 1960s and early 1970s; it also includes statements by other individuals who were [...]

Cecilia Vicuña writes about her relationship with Juan (“Xuan”) Luis Martínez. Her memories date back to before they met, to times when they were at the same place at the same time. Vicuña mentions an occasion when [...]

Gaspar Galaz writes about the Grupo de Los Diez, describing how the group began and providing some historical context. He gives a broad explanation about how the group operated and goes on to discuss the painters in the group and their works. He [...]

Enrique Lihn imagines a dialogue between Pedro Luna’s work and what both Victor Carvacho and Antonio Romera have written about it. According to Lihn, Luna’s painting is inspired by a natural, instinctive feeling that is focused on form [...]

Luis Oyarzún writes about the body of work that the painter Carlos Pedraza produced over the course of his three-decade career. According to Oyarzún, Pedraza attained a measure of skill in the areas he explored and, like Pablo Burchard [...]

In this essay, written for the solo show of works by Patricio de la O, the art critic and curator Justo Pastor Mellado discusses the catalogue, the gallery, and the relevant demands on both the painter and the painting itself. Pastor Mellado claims [...]

Federico Galende wrote this detailed review of Las cuatro operaciones del aparato reproductor, an intervention created by Mario Soro  in a public space. Galende reflects on the kind of cartography that can provide orientation for a work of [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado writes about Los nómadas del mar, the selection of photographs taken by Paz Errázuriz. The text is divided into four sections, beginning with comments on the artist’s work as a whole, which Pastor Mellado [...]

In this text the essayist Adriana Valdés discusses the work of Alicia Villarreal, who has created a game based on the alphabet that uses images of discarded objects as vowels to be read as a text. Based on the Walter Benjamin quote (the search [...]

In 2003 Justo Pastor Mellado wrote an essay for the catalogue for La quinta del sordo, the exhibition of works by Guillermo Núñez. On this occasion Mellado looks back to the retrospective Núñez presented in 1993, for which [...]

In this text Diamela Eltit writes about Guillermo Núñez’s artwork on the occasion of a retrospective exhibition of his works. She discusses the political violence to which he was subjected during the military dictatorship (1973& [...]

In his essay about the vast subject of art criticism in Chile from 1950 to 1973, Patricio Muñoz Zárate highlights the field’s defining moments, milestones, and notable personalities. In a series of subchapters, he sheds light on [...]

In his essay “Escultura chilena 1950–1973,” the critic Gaspar Galaz outlines the main criteria that influenced Chilean sculpture from 1950 to 1973. He also highlights watershed events and trends in art and identifies connections [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado wrote this introduction to El deseo de Antígona (The Desire of Antigone), the exhibition of works by Patricia Israel. In a review of earlier projects and exhibitions, the critic explains how the artist researches and [...]

Guillermo Machuca analyzes the work that Arturo Duclos produced in the 1980s (his first period) and then in the 1990s. The artist’s work, which is indifferent to the goals pursued by language (signs and meanings), forgets past references and [...]

The curator and critic Justo Pastor Mellado wrote this essay to be included in the catalogue for Se me nubla la cabeza. Te quiero y no puedo amarte más, the exhibition of paintings by Samy Benmayor at the Galería Sur (Santiago, 1984). [...]