Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

From a Uruguayan perspective, visual artist and performer Clemente Padín discusses the importance of Mail Art in Latin America, as well as the problems it faces. In this article, he explains the origins of Mail Art as a movement for international [...]

Clemente Padín describes and discusses his vision as a creator and promoter of Mail Art in the 1970s in Uruguay. He approaches the subject from the broad perspective of the movement’s worldwide activities, providing a comparative analysis that [...]

Mail Art was started in the United States in the 1960s and quickly caught on in the rest of the world. Clemente Padín—the author of this article and one of the artists who worked in this style among many others (he was a performer, poet, and was [...]

Published in the first issue of Buzón de Arte/Arte de Buzón (Caracas, January, 1976), in this article, Argentinean artists Edgardo Antonio Vigo and Horacio Zabala analyze the interaction that exists between two traditionally different systems of [...]

This is the first issue of Buzón de Arte/Arte de Buzón, the Venezuelan bilingual (Spanish-English) (tabloid) magazine managed and edited by Diego Barboza as a vehicle for mail art. It includes reproductions of works by artists from several [...]

This document is an example of a Xerox mail art by Harry Gamboa, Jr. and Patssi Valdez of the East Los Angeles-based Asco Collective. Titled Pistol Whippersnapper, the piece stems from a Chicano Cinema No Movie created by Gamboa in 1976 as part of [...]

In his text presenting the special section on Mail art at the XVI São Paulo Biennial, Walter Zanini explains the reasons for including this art form in the event he curated. He asserts that Mail art played a central role in the dematerialization of [...]

In this text, Paulo Bruscky discusses the artistic use of Xerox copies. He begins by explaining the physical principles at play in the invention of a process that yields dry copies and does not require photographic paper or chemical substances. He [...]

In a chapter in her book Poéticas do processo: arte conceitual no museu, Cristina Freire argues that Mail art produced in the seventies—of which the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo (MAC-USP) has a large collection— [...]

In this essay, Professor Walter Zanini discusses the impact caused by the use of computers and digital images, noting the profound changes in the creation and perception of “artistic events” that this new tool designed for creativity and [...]

Paulo Bruscky, the artist from Pernambuco, discusses the changes brought about in the art field by the emergence of Mail Art. He notes that, over and above the communication aspect, other factors are involved, such as the use of means of distribution [...]

Julio Plaza introduced the Mail Art exhibition at the sixteenth Bienal de São Paulo. He drew special attention to what he considers to be a synchrony in contemporary art production, going so far as to call it a “bricolage.” He [...]

Walter Zanini asserts that Mail art is one of the most widespread international avant-garde art forms. It is characterized by the casting aside of the object and downplaying the anonymity of contemporary art. Zanini points out that new structures and [...]

In 1977, the critic Francisco Bittencourt introduced the work of Ângelo de Aquino in an exhibition, Identidade do artista, the title of which addressed the identity of the contemporary artist vis-à-vis his public status in the world. The discussion [...]

In this editorial, published in the second issue of the bilingual magazine Buzón de Arte/Arte de Buzón, the Venezuelan artist Diego Barboza—who was the director and editor of the magazine—describes the issue, explaining that [...]

Nelly Richard writes about Eugenio Dittborn’s airmail paintings, discussing the folds and marks that are created as they travel through the postal system and what they mean. In her opinion, these “production marks” should be [...]

In this essay Eugenio Dittborn writes about his Pinturas aeropostales [Airmail Paintings], discussing them in poetic terms laid out in 13 sections in which he describes how they were put together and how they were supposed to function. He explains [...]

Gonzalo Muñoz discusses three of the processes that Eugenio Dittborn uses in his work, indicating the presence of an intent and a strategy. The first is “the relief” created by the combination of drawing and photography in [...]

The essayist Pablo Oyarzún discusses the work of Eugenio Dittborn, stitching together a patchwork quilt of quotes and references. He talks about what is “legible” and “illegible” in the Chilean experimental artist&rsquo [...]

Nelly Richard discusses the artistic aspects of the genre of works by Eugenio Dittborn known as Pintura aeropostal (Airmail Painting). Rather than focusing on a particular work, Richard contemplates the artist’s process and its effects. While [...]