Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this text Francisco Brugnoli writes a first-person account of his first meeting with Alberto Pérez and records his opinions of him as an artist and an art history teacher. Brugnoli thinks back to when he originally met Pérez, who was [...]

Roberto Merino writes about the early career of Juan Pablo Langlois Vicuña, discussing the artist’s background in terms of both his embrace of art and his works. Following his professional training as an architect, Langlois Vicuña [...]

Miguel Rojas Mix writes about Rodolfo Opazo’s painting, discussing the artist’s teratological world in which his imagination creates anthropomorphic beings. The author notes that Opazo’s painting combines dreams, an indirect way to [...]

In this essay, José Balmes discusses the work of Patricio de la O, reflecting on his painting and how it connects to the viewer. Balmes ponders De la O’s work, exploring his inspiration and his subject matter. The well-known Catalonian [...]

In this text written for an exhibition of works by Patricio de la O, the art critic and curator Justo Pastor Mellado reviews the artist’s painting from his student days until his return to Chile after living in exile from 1974 to 1978 during [...]

Shifra M. Goldman writes about Patricia Israel’s painting in the early 1990s. She shares her thoughts on conditions in Latin American and their historical roots, focusing on how the discovery of America continues to be problematic five [...]

In this essay “El caso Simón Bolívar o el arte como zona de disturbios” (The Simón Bolívar Case, or Art as a Site of Civil Unrest), Nelly Richard addresses the outrage expressed in the Santiago press and by the general [...]

In this article, the critic and curator Justo Pastor Mellado reviews SEMI YA [a phonetic pun on the Spanish word for ‘seed’], the exhibition of works by the Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuña at the Galería Gabriela Mistral in [...]

The art critic Antonio Romera identifies the uniquely Chilean aspects of Chilean painting in his study of four constants that, in his opinion, are repeated throughout its history: landscape, color, French influence, and character. Similarly, the [...]

In this article Milan Ivelic discusses conditions in Chile for the benefit of Spanish visitors to the exhibition Chile Vive that was held at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid. One of the main things that stands out about Chile, as seen [...]

This article by Ana María Risco was included in her book Crítica situada. It was originally written as an academic thesis in which she explored the network of authors with whom Enrique Lihn communicated in the field of the visual arts. [...]

In this article, Justo Pastor Mellado explores the immediate connections that Nicanor Parra created for objectual (object-based) drawing in his Trabajos Prácticos series on the occasion of his exhibition in Madrid. The author raises [...]

Ronald Kay published this collection of works by Nicanor Parra in News from Nowhere, in the only issue of Manuscritos magazine (Santiago: Departamento de Estudios Humanísticos, Universidad de Chile, 1975). Kay underscores the value of these [...]

This was an interdisciplinary poetry project produced by Nicanor Parra in 1952. Parra worked with Enrique Lihn and Alejandro Jodorowsky to create Quebrantahuesos, a sheet of paper measuring 55 x 40 centimeters which they covered with newspaper [...]

In her essay “La narrativa de Diamela Eltit: un nuevo paradigma socio-literario de lectura” (Diamela Eltit’s Narrative: A New Socio-Literary Paradigm for Reading), Eugenia Brito discusses Eltit’s “writing” (l&rsquo [...]

In this essay, Eugenia Brito discusses three works by the writer, poet, and artist Raúl Zurita: Purgatorio (Purgatory), Áreas verdes (Green Areas), and Anteparaíso (Anteparadise). Through these works, the author created an impact [...]

After the 1973 coup d’état in Chile, the country’s literature underwent a process of transformation that prompted a redefinition of concepts such as, among other things, the roles of writers and readers as well as their limits and [...]

Alberto Pérez was a member of the Grupo Signo and writes about the group in this text. He discusses what originally led to a form of art whose exponents sought to explore the global sociopolitical situation. He classifies the group’s [...]

In this essay Antonio Romera discusses the collection of works by Chilean artists that was sent to the Primera Bienal Americana de Arte in Argentina. He states that the roots of current Chilean painting in the 1960s can be traced back to three [...]

Enrique Lihn introduces an exhibition of Chilean painting that includes modern works. He discusses what it means for a viewer to relate to figurative or non-figurative (abstract) works. He claims that, when faced with a work of art that “ [...]

Pedro Prado discusses some of the basic principles that were shared by the members of the group known as Los Diez, outlining some ideas in this poetic text. He explains that there is a certain type of man who is endowed with a range of moods or [...]

In this essay, Antonio Romera discusses Hernán Gazmuri’s art career. Despite its merits, Gazmuri’s work has been ignored or forgotten. Romera mentions the artist’s referents, his teachers in Chile, and André Lhote& [...]

Dámaso Ogaz writes about a retrospective exhibition of works by Hernán Gazmuri, focusing on the man and his work. He refers to Gazmuri as “one of the most complete contemporary Chilean artists,” and describes his work as an [...]

Jean Emar and José Perotti cowrote a dialogue in which they delivered a scathing commentary on Nathanael Yáñez Silva’s critique of the Grupo Montparnasse’s first exhibition. The barbs in their published text made it [...]

In this essay, Jean Emar writes about the Grupo Montparnasse’s first exhibition and its origins. He discusses the group’s name, which, for its five members, was neither a painting trend nor an objective; it was simply a referent. He [...]

In his review of Quadrivium, the installation by Gonzalo Díaz, Alberto Madrid claims that it consists of didactic sheets that can be interpreted as a display of different “lessons about things.” The project, which was dedicated to [...]

This document includes excerpts from the personal travel log of the Chilean experimental photographer Julio Bertrand Vidal, who died at an early age. The texts range from 1907 to 1911, and the log tracks his travels in Europe, noting the places he [...]

The text, “Arte Suramericano” [South American Art], by Jean Emar, is one of his “Notas de arte” [Art Notes] written in the daily newspaper, La Nación between 1923 and 1925. In this text, Emar, in his capacity as an art [...]

Antonio Romera writes about the emergence and characteristics of the Rectángulo group. He explains that it was the first Chilean art group in which members shared a philosophy, an ethic, and an aesthetic. He reviews the career of Ramón [...]

Milan Ivelic and Gaspar Galaz developed this questionnaire to be used in their conversations with Mario Carreño, Carmen Aldunate, Rodolfo Opazo, and Ricardo Yrarrázaval about their painting and what they were working on at that time ( [...]

This text is a letter from the painter, muralist, printmaker, and architect by training Nemesio Antúnez to his son Pablo. It is written in the first person, in an innovative narrative style that was in vogue in Chile at the time. In this sort [...]

Nemesio Antúnez shares his thoughts and discusses his printmaking experiences and his training under William Hayter. He recalls incidents with famous artists at the Atelier 17 and the circumstances that led him to set up the Taller 99 in his [...]

Guillermo Machuca wrote “Ora pro nobis” about the exhibition of works by Arturo Duclos by the same name. In his essay, Machuca discusses the iconography of the works and the imagination that inspires them, making a distinction between & [...]

This exhibition essay by Julia P. Herzberg discusses twelve Chilean artists working in experimental and avant-garde modalities (from the late 1970s to early 1990s). These artists are lesser known outside Chile because they stayed in the country [...]

Ronald Christ mentions a number of events that influenced the Chilean artist Catalina Parra’s creative development over the course of her life. Christ begins by discussing Imbunches, one of Parra’s first solo exhibitions, held at the [...]

In this fourteen-point manifesto, Eugenio Dittborn outlines his ideas about drawing. He identifies to whom the artist is indebted when he is drawing, referring to himself (“the author owes his drawings to…”) and explains what [...]

In this essay Ricardo Richon Brunet reviews the evolution of Chilean art since the arrival of Raymond Monvoisin in the mid-nineteenth century. He describes the kind of work that was produced by the early artists, especially those who trained at the [...]

In this essay Gonzalo Díaz discusses his association with Adolfo Couve, his drawing and painting teacher. The Chilean artist describes his mentor, recalling a series of vignettes from Couve’s life, such as: his studio (where Díaz trained in 1964 [...]

Nelly Richard discusses the work of the following Chilean photographers: Gonzalo Díaz, Eduardo Vilches, Alicia Villarreal, Enrique Zamudio, and Alfredo Jaar. Richard explains how each of these artists uses and contextualizes photography, and [...]

In this short text, members of C.A.D.A. (Colectivo Acciones de Arte) describe the group’s project, Residuos Americanos [American Residues]. They explain that the installation suggests a connection between “American clothes” ( [...]

This document includes three texts, each one written from a different perspective. The first is Lynda Kahn’s very short review of The Laughing Alligator, the video by Juan Downey, the Chilean artist who lived in New York. The second is a [...]

In this poetic, thoughtful essay, Juan Downey discusses his ideas about decadence based on a description of conditions and feelings. Downey, the Chilean artist who lived in New York City, explains that, from a third-world perspective, the decline of [...]

In this essay Pablo Oyarzún explains that Chile lacks the critical space needed to accommodate a public and autonomous line of argument. He condemns the absence of an institution devoted to the production, circulation, and reception of [...]

"El día de Díaz" is a text written by Pablo Oyarzún on the subject of Biografía, a work by Gonzalo Díaz. Oyarzún provides a detailed description of the piece, a triptych in which each part [...]

This essay is by the artist Mario Soro, who was educated at the Escuela de Arte de la Universidad Católica in Santiago, Chile where he studied under the printmaker Eduardo Vilches. Soro describes his teacher in terms of his experience as a [...]

Pablo Oyarzún’s short essay “Virginia Errázuriz. Pequeña poética de sus instalaciones” (Virginia Errázuriz. A Brief Poetics of her Installations) was inspired by the installation of Errá [...]

This is the essayist Pablo Oyarzún’s review of Francisco Brugnoli’s installation Cadáver exquisito (Exquisite Corpse), a reference to the game played by early Surrealists in the 1920s, Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau [...]

This is Lotty Rosenfeld’s written commentary on her video-performance Proposiciones para (entre) cruzar espacios límites [Proposals for Intertwining/crossing Borderlands], which refers to the two frontiers involved in her project. First [...]

This is Lotty Rosenfeld’s written commentary on her video Una herida Americana [An American Wound]. She refers to the three interventions she performed, two of which involved painting crosses on roads. The first of the latter two took place in [...]