Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This is an essay by the researcher and curator Carmen María Jaramillo published in a monograph on the Colombian artist Beatriz González. The author’s goal is to shed light on how González’s work exposes and challenges [...]

In this interview, art critic Marta Traba poses ten questions to Colombian artist Beatriz González. Traba begins by inquiring about the ironic nature of González’s subjects and the kitschy character of the objects she produces. In [...]

In this newspaper article, Marta Traba asserts that Beatriz González’s art epitomizes the Colombian avant-garde. It describes the difficulty of introducing González’s oeuvre at the XI Bienal de São Paulo, and states [...]

In this article, which appeared in El Espectador (Bogotá), Marta Traba defends the portrait of Simón Bolívar (“El Libertador”) made by Beatriz González from the attacks of conservative members of the Academia [...]

In this April 1964 magazine article, Marta Traba attests to Beatriz González’s artistic talents, reaffirming the decision by MAM (Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá) to exhibit the young artist’s work in a debut solo exhibition [...]

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

In her essay “Apolonio: un objeto encontrado”—about the painter Luis Luna’s series El libro de Apolonio—the critic and curator Carmen María Jaramillo takes a long look at the work of this Colombian artist. Jaramillo scrutinizes the visual [...]

This article was written by “Eleuterio de Castro,” the pseudonym of the Colombian conservative politician who later became president of Colombia, Laureano Gómez Castro (1950?53) about an exhibition of painting by Ricardo Gómez Campuzano. The [...]

In the text “Invitación al sacrificio” [An Invitation to Sacrifice], commentator Alejandro Torres discusses the poetic quality of the staging and production in the work of the Mapa Teatro collective directed by Colombian artist Rolf Abderhalden [...]

The art critic Perán Erminy reviews and analyzes the exhibition Testimonios organized by El Techo de la Ballena in the context of an international meeting of this group. In this text, Erminy points out what he finds interesting in this exhibition: [...]

The Colombian critic Germán Rubiano Caballero ponders the theme of “re-creations” in the work produced by Beatriz González. In chronological order, he sets forth a detailed list of her main works, with special emphasis on those that take their [...]

In Venezuela, curator Katherine Chacón reviews the work of Colombian artist Beatriz González, particularly in reference to her re-creation of artistic masterpieces, in painting, drawing, and objects, since 1962. To do so she establishes connections [...]

José Ignacio Roca reviews Cimientos [Foundations], a work by Miler Lagos, for the international magazine Art on Paper that focuses exclusively on works on paper. His first observation is that, in Lagos’ work, the materials contradict their [...]

Jaime Franco, who graduated with degrees in Engineering and Computer Science, went to Paris where he gradually started producing sculpture. His study of different types of surfaces later influenced his paintings that included juxtapositions of layers [...]

In this article, the British critic Rod Mengham reviews Doris Salcedo’s installation Neither (2004) in terms of the Colombian artist’s career, identifying significant changes in her work since 2002. Up until that point, Salcedo had produced [...]

In his book El largo instante de la percepción, Miguel Huertas included a chapter entitled “La pintura de Cárdenas y el ámbito arquitectónico.” One of the specific statements the author makes about the paintings Santiago Cárdenas created in [...]

This article documents a $20,000 prize awarded to the Colombian artist Ana Mercedes Hoyos for her work in the exhibition Espacios ambientales, held by the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá (1968). The work awarded the prize was Blanco sobre blanco, [...]

This text by Eduardo Serrano introduces the work Tres Pizarrones by Santiago Cárdenas, exhibited at the XIV Bienal de São Paulo in September 1977. The catalogue [in which the text was published] provides an overview of the artwork created by Cá [...]

When a posthumous biography of Santiago Martínez Delgado was published, Álvaro Orduz León, whose field was advertising, wrote this article describing the artist’s training and activities in the fields of art and advertising in Colombia. He tells [...]

In Eugenio Barney Cabrera: Una posición ante la vida (1980), psychiatrist Álvaro Villar Gaviria analyzes the work of Colombian art historian Eugenio Barney Cabrera on the occasion of his recent death. Villar Gaviria provides a detailed overview of [...]

The text “‘Biogenesis’ (…)” by critic Carolina Ponce de León was featured in the catalogue to the exhibition BIO*. *As in ‘Biography’, ‘Biology’, ‘Biogenesis,’ held at the Colombian Center in New York (1996). In it, Ponce de Le [...]

In 1975, Colombian writer Fausto Panesso published Los Intocables, a book featuring interviews with six major Colombian artists from the 20th century. The interview with sculptor Édgar Negret addresses the artist’s private life, touching on topics [...]

In this article, the art critic Walter Engel, an Austrian based in Colombia, wrote an overview of how various contemporary artists represent the human figure. To Engel, regarding this genre, in concept “no period or country may claim [it] for [...]

In this letter to Gonzalo Ariza published in Bogotá-based newspaper El Tiempo, Austrian-born critic Walter Engel responds to statements by Ariza, a Colombian artist, published in the same newspaper a few days earlier. Engel asserts that the fact [...]

In the article “Pintando con números” published in Bogotá-based newspaper El Tiempo on October 13, 1991, art critic José Hernán Aguilar reviews a solo exhibition of work by Carlos Salas Silva. The exhibition was held at Gaula, a venue that [...]

The article “50 kilómetros de arte ‘computado’. La obra de Manzur” by journalist Alegre Levy was published in Bogotá-based newspaper El Tiempo on November 20, 1972. It is a review of the exhibition Manzur that would open the [...]

“Un sueño de ti” is the title of the curatorial text written by English critic Tom Morton for the exhibition Diva’s Life (2007) featuring work by Colombian artist Juan Pablo Echeverri. The show was held at Site Gallery in the city of Sheffield [...]

In a critical overview of the work of Colombian printmaker Augusto Rendón, Colombian art historian Álvaro Medina divides Rendón’s production into four periods. During the first period (1962-1964), Rendón’s work veered away from abstraction. [...]

This article by Colombian cultural journalist José Hernández reports the unexpected death of Colombian painter Antonio Barrera. It includes sections of an unpublished interview with Barrera that Hernández had written after visiting his apartment [...]

The introduction to this interview with Colombian artist Doris Salcedo by Santiago Villaveces provides a brief overview of the socio-political and economic situation in Colombia in the early nineties. The interview presents Salcedo in relation to the [...]

Beatriz González reviews eight miniature drawings by José Antonio Suárez Londoño. Based on formal descriptions, she links each little drawing to specific moments in European art or science and to biographical facts about the Colombian artist. Su [...]

The first chapter of the article “Rodrigo Callejas o el paisaje como obsesión” [Rodrigo Callejas or Landscape as Obsession] by the Colombian painter and printmaker Alberto González Rodríguez discusses the distinction he makes between [...]

Raquel Tibol, an Argentinean critic and art historian who has lived in Mexico City since in 1953, and artist Leonel Góngora discuss work by Góngora considered erotic because it provides a sensual interpretation of reality. Tibol invites the [...]

With this text, Colombian poet and essayist Juan Gustavo Cobo Borda introduces the exhibition of works by painter Manolo Vellojín held at Galería Garcés Velásquez in Bogotá in 1978. In Cobo Borda’s view, Holy Week (a Spanish religious [...]

In this article, artist and critic Jorge Moreno Clavijo contemplates the question of whether Colombian art is at its height or in a state of decline. To answer that question, he calls on artists Erwin Kraus, Gonzalo Ariza, Alipio Jaramillo, Luis [...]

The Colombian curator and art critic Miguel González reviews the work of the photographer Patricia Bonilla in minute detail. The review begins with an interesting sentence: “These days it is not unusual to find interrelationships used in ways that [...]

This essay was written by the artist Rosemberg Sandoval as the introduction to the exhibition catalogue Dibujos sobre lona, video e instalación, Rosemberg Sandoval that was organized by the Galería Casas Riegner in 2009. In his essay, Sandoval [...]

The article “Jaime Ávila,” written by Natalia Gutiérrez, was published in issue number 110 (June 2007) of the Revista Arte en Colombia. It was a critical and historical review of the work of Jaime Ávila Ferrer. Gutiérrez, an anthropologist, [...]

“Un exquisito ‘déjà vu’”is an article written by the critic and historian José Hernán Aguilar. It is a review of an exhibition of paintings by Carlos Salas. The article begins by describing what the author sees as a paradoxical problem [...]

The text “Negret” by the Argentine art critic based in Colombia, Marta Traba, consists of an analysis of the entire body of work of the sculptor Édgar Negret up to 1964. This is probably one of the first articles on the artist to present all his [...]

Ivonne Pini published a monograph on the work of the printmaker Luis Ángel Rengifo in which she provided a comprehensive overview of all his artwork, placing it in the context of both Latin America and Colombia. In the first section, she gives [...]

In this brief article, the historian Luis Augusto Cuervo produced one of the first known biographical sketches of the recently deceased Colombian artist Jesús María Zamora. Cuervo wrote about Zamora’s social circle, touched on certain unknown or [...]

The anthropologist and art critic Natalia Gutiérrez examines some representative works by Colombian artists in order to analyze Colombian art of the 1990s. She believes this method helps her to avoid using general theories that “pigeonhole” them [...]

“Jaime Tarazona. Subdesarrollado” [Jaime Tarazona: Underdeveloped], written by María Iovino, was published in the catalogue Nuevas Propuestas Arte Colombiano 1999 – 2002 [New Works of Colombian Art 1999 – 2002] as the curatorial essay for [...]

This is a review of works by Rómulo Rozo, written in Paris by Hugo D. Barbagelata. It begins by quoting the words written by the French sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, who was highly complimentary of Rozo’s artistic abilities: “I hope that Colombia [...]

In this article, the artist and cultural promoter Roberto Pizano writes about the solo exhibition of work by the Colombian artist Coriolano Leudo Obando in Bogotá. This was the first show in which Leudo had shown his painting. Pizano writes about [...]

In this article, the art critic Walter Engel reviews the exhibition of monotypes presented by the artist Augusto Rivera at the Galería Colseguros in Bogotá. Engel highlights the artist’s successful use of the technique, explaining how Rivera [...]

This text, written by Marco Ospina, was included in the catalog for the Exposición de pinturas de Armando Villegas en la Galería El Callejón (Bogotá, 1955). Along with the text is a list of the paintings that made up that show. In his article, [...]

In this brief article, the journalist Amparo Hurtado discusses Alicia Tafur’s solo exhibition of twelve new sculptures at the Luis Ángel Arango Library in Bogotá. Hurtado describes how the sculptures are made with materials such as bronze, rods, [...]