Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

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 [...]

This article provides an account of the life of painter María Villa. The daughter of a peasant woman, Villa moved to Medellín where she worked as a domestic servant and as a salesperson in a shop. Later, she managed a boardinghouse and local stores [...]

In June 1960, the exhibition, 3000 años de arte colombiano [3000 Years of Colombian Art], was held in Miami and Washington. The journal Lámpara [Lamp] (Bogotá, published 1952–85) printed a supplement with writings by the curators who performed [...]

In this catalogue in booklet format from the exhibition Barranquilla, Cali, Medellín (1974), Eduardo Serrano asserts that the idea of the province has ceased to be relevant to the visual arts. He attributes this partly to the rise of the mass media [...]

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 [...]

This article is structured around the curatorial criteria employed by Carolina Ponce de León— curator of Colombian artist Beatriz González’s first solo exhibition in New York—specifically the way she divides González’s work from 1965 to [...]

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 [...]

This article provides a chronological and critical review of the work of Beatriz González from the early 1960s through the end of the 1980s. In the introduction, Carolina Ponce de León discusses the artist’s personality and her origins in [...]

After discussing the artistic development of Colombian painter Epifanio Garay, and mentioning his time at the Académie Julian in Paris and his interest in and knowledge of the works in the Louvre, the author turns to Garay’s portraits. Manrique [...]

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 this review, the Argentine art critic Marta Traba discusses the exhibition of works by the Colombian artist Fernando Botero at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC. Traba describes the exhibition as a fitting tribute to the artist who “ [...]

“Los nuevos materiales” is the third chapter in a long book by Galaor Carbonell entitled Negret. Las etapas creativas. The book is one of the most thorough and sound studies of the life and work of Colombian sculptor Édgar Negret. In this [...]

The title, “Cardoso: entre lo refinado y lo siniestro” [Cardoso: Between the Refined and the Sinister] reflects the point of view of Javier Gil, a Colombian critic, on the work of his interviewee, María Fernanda Cardoso, a young artist who won [...]

In this interview, artist Doris Salcedo and critic Carlos Basualdo—who is from Rosario, Argentina—analyze Salcedo’s career from her student days in Colombia in the late 1970s to the present—the late 1990s—when she had gained considerable [...]

Scientist and humanist César Uribe Piedrahita delivered this speech at the opening of the 1938 exhibition of painter Carlos Correa held at the Sociedad Colombiana de Ingenieros [Colombian Society of Engineers] in Bogotá. Uribe Piedrahita described [...]

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 obituary of Pedro Alcántara Quijano Montero was written by his friend and colleague at the Escuela de Bellas Artes of Bogotá, Miguel Díaz Vargas. The text highlights the romanticism, ornate style, and meticulousness of Alcántara Quijano [...]

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 [...]

This document reproduces the introduction to Colombian painter Ignacio Gómez Jaramillo written by poet and critic Gilberto Owen on the occasion of Gómez Jaramillo’s first solo exhibition in Bogotá (1934). Owen’s text mentions the revelatory [...]

In this article, Marta Traba reviews the solo exhibition that Cecilia Porras presented at the El Callejón gallery in Bogota in November 1956. Traba is pleased to see progress and major improvements compared to the work the artist exhibited the [...]

In this text, the Austrian art critic based in Colombia, Walter Engel, discusses the exhibition by the painter, Cecilia Porras, at the gallery El Callejón in Bogotá (July 1955). Engel begins by remembering 1948 as an important year in terms of [...]

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 curator, critic, researcher, and educator Jaime Cerón was  director of the Visual Arts Department of the Instituto Distrital de Cultura y Turismo of Bogotá (the branch of the mayor’s office in charge of supervising art-related events) when [...]

In this text, Colombian writer Darío Jaramillo Agudelo voices his assessment of works included in an exhibition held at the Museo de Arte Moderno of Medellín in 1983. In his view, these works represent a new form of academicism in Colombia, one [...]

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 [...]

Published in Revista Post, this article brings together the reflections that curator José Ignacio Roca formulated in issue number eleven of “Columna de arena,” a biweekly forum for criticism of art and contemporary culture (http://www.universes- [...]

Professor Nicolás Bayona Posada, who was also a journalist, interviews the caricaturist Ricardo Rendón, who states that “the essential element in a caricature is not the drawing; it is the model.” Rendón also says that to capture the spectacle [...]

In this article, critic and art historian Charles Merewether points out that works like those of Doris Salcedo have an ethical and social role to play in societies where violence is a daily event. In such societies, the pain of the victims and their [...]

“Con la derecha” [With the Right], an article included in the book Cu4rto Nivel arte contemporáneo [Fo4rth Level Contemporary Art] and written by the Colombian curator Ana María Lozano, is a very detailed review of the work by the same name [...]

Doris Salcedo gave this lecture in 2003 at the National Museum in Colombia. She discusses three of the projects she presented in the1990s in Colombia, Holland, Turkey, and Germany: Atrabiliarios [Defiant] (2), Un acto de memoria [An Act of Memory], [...]

On July 30, 1999, artist, critic, and curator Álvaro Barrios interviewed Ramiro Gómez about his participation in El Sindicato group. In the interview, Gómez discusses the exhibitions in which El Sindicato participated from the time of its creation [...]

This text is a criticism written by Natalia Gutiérrez of the work, Corte en el ojo [Cut in the Eye](2000), by Miguel Ángel Rojas. She develops it based on ideas of “place” and “no place,” as well as the paradox between them established by [...]

This text is a report submitted to the Archbishop of Bogotá in 1942. It was prepared by three priests sent to visit the III Salón Nacional de Artistas held at the Biblioteca Nacional in Bogotá and to report on the painting Anunciación [ [...]

This text consists of reproductions of some pages from a notebook where painter Débora Arango jotted down information and impressions during her stay in Spain in 1954 and 1955, as well as comments by Colombian curator and artist Santiago Londoño V [...]

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 [...]

This biographical overview—the first one ever published in Antioquia on an artist from the region—begins by describing Colombian artist Francisco Antonio Cano’s humble background and difficult childhood. From a young age, Cano took an interest [...]

In “De cómo se expresa en arte el pueblo colombiano” [On How Colombians Express Themselves in Art] (1934), the Colombian intellectual Luis López de Mesa reviews the history of Colombian art during the colonial period. He describes this period [...]

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 [...]

Elementos de geometría aplicados al dibujo [Elements of Geometry Applied to Drawing] (1859) by the Colombian artist Manuel Doroteo Carvajal is possibly the first drawing manual ever published in Colombia. This document refers to the eighth and final [...]

In an interview for Bogotá-based newspaper El Tiempo, Colombian artists Álvaro Barrios and Luis Caballero discuss their expectations for the art scene in the new decade (the eighties). They address specifically the lack of art criticism in Colombia [...]

This is an interview, complete with editorial comments, that was published in the newspaper El Heraldo de Antioquia on the occasion of the exhibition of works by the Colombian painter Débora Arango in Bogotá in 1940. Arango mentions the reactions [...]

This document is Edgar Negret’s response to the press release from the Ministry of Public Works in which he set forth points related to the controversy generated about Abstract art in Colombia based on the monument to Bolívar, a sculpture the [...]

In this article Danilo Dueñas discusses the work of the Colombian artist Manuel Hernández in terms of its local context. Dueñas, who is also a Colombian artist, refers to the Argentine curator Carlos Basualdo’s definition of modernism and to [...]

The art critic Marta Traba wrote the introductory essay in the catalogue for the exhibition of works by the artist Hernando del Villar that opened at the Galería Belarca April 29, 1975. Traba describes the paintings as festive, decorative, and [...]

In the opinion of the artist and art critic, Roberto Pizano, the trip undertaken by the artists, Ricardo Gómez Campuzano and Domingo Moreno Otero, to Spain was an opportunity to take advantage of the Spanish art culture. However, Pizano thinks they [...]

This article by artist and critic Leonel Estrada discusses the most recent exhibition of works by Colombian artist Saturnino Ramírez held at Galería Partes in Medellín in September 1977. Ramírez presented drawings, oil paintings, and pastels that [...]

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 [...]

With the support of José Hernán Aguilar, in 1989 Carolina Ponce de León published avant-garde reflections in a style suitable to the mass media in the cultural section of the newspaper El Tiempo. This text addresses the visual arts scene of the [...]

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