Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this article Clemente Padín discusses the historical development of performance art in Europe and in North America. He also refers to specific examples to describe the nature of this action art as practiced in Latin America. He believes [...]

The researcher Irma Arestizábal comments on the placement of Argentinean avant-garde art, (always at the margin) in relationship to the hegemonic art centers. She writes based on a selection of works of Argentinean artists that appear in [...]

In the essay “Los nuevos procesos y la representación figurativa” [The New Processes and Figurative Representation], chapter III of the book La desaparición de los límites [The Disappearance of Limits], author Zuleiva Vivas explains the [...]

Five continents and one city: The Tercer Salón Internacional de Pintura [3rd International Painting Salon], held in Mexico City in 2000, was based on the selections made by five curators, each of whom chose three contemporary artists from their [...]

The author, Alfonso Castrillón, discusses a number of conceptual events that took place in Lima in the 1960s and compares them to other more recent ones, including the group exhibition Signo X Signo (1979) and Acción Furtiva (1980), performance [...]

This article by the art critic Eduardo Márceles Daconte was published in the Sunday Magazine of the Bogotá daily newspaper El Espectador. The writer provides a brief account of the activities of the group El Sindicato, which emerged in Barranquilla [...]

Álvaro Medina analyzes the work of Colombian artist Luis Paz, who “works with ideas more than with images.” Medina defines Paz’s work as Conceptual art, a category that allows him to explain what is supposedly understood by this trend in [...]

In this 1997 catalogue essay, the Cuban-Mexican curator Osvaldo Sánchez attempts to characterize the emerging generation of Mexican artists, who came onto the artistic scene following the eruption of neo-mexicanismo [Neo-Mexicanism] in the 1980s. S [...]

On the basis of the festive, bold, and boundless nature of the relationship between the social and the artistic in Latin America, critic Aracy Amaral argues that there is an integral connection between the creative and the political in the region. In [...]

Aracy Amaral addresses the unquestionable mismatch between forms of artistic expression and their reception and promotion. She is aware that the lack of proper education for artists leads to the redundancy of “experimental” art already created in [...]

Undermining the guidelines of the exhibition Universalis: a desmaterialização da arte (XXIII São Paulo Biennial, 1996), Puerto Rican curator Mari Carmen Ramírez explains the contrarian concept of the “re-materialização” of art which, in her [...]

This book about Waltercio Caldas is part of the ABC—Arte Brasileira Contemporânea—collection published by Funarte (Fundacão Nacional das Artes). A slim volume, it has a “Preface” and includes the artist’s remarks about some of his works, [...]

Volume from the ABC collection – Arte Brasileira Contemporânea dedicated to Lygia Pape; it includes texts written by her, critic Mário Pedrosa, and a poem by Luis Otávio Pimentel, as well as some short passages written by 19th century writer [...]

This volume, which forms part of the Arte Brasileira Contemporânea (ABC) collection, discusses Brazilian artist Lygia Clark. It includes texts by the artist herself—indeed, the book is a sort of anthology of her writings—and by [...]

This book on artist Cildo Meireles forms part of the ABC—Arte Brasileira Contemporânea—a collection published by the Fundação Nacional de Artes (Funarte), a governmental organization with headquarters in Rio de Janeiro. The volume contains the [...]

This book is part of the ABC (Arte Brasileira Contemporânea) collection, published by Funarte (Fundação Nacional das Artes). As the title suggests, Artur Barrio is about the artist; it includes a selection of his essays, illustrated with a variety [...]

This book, from the ABC—Arte Brasileira Contemporânea—collection published by FUNARTE, is about Antônio Dias. The book was written by the critic Paulo Sergio Duarte, who suggests that the artist’s work shattered [...]

This book on artist Anna Bella Geiger forms part of the ABC—Arte Brasileira Contemporânea—a collection published by the Fundação Nacional de Artes (Funarte), a government organization with headquarters in Rio de Janeiro. In this volume, critic [...]

Lygia Pape interviews Hélio Oiticica after he had returned from having lived for a period in New York. When asked about the term “Latin American art,” Oiticica says that he does not believe his work fits into that category, which he considers [...]

In this review, Ligia Canongia discusses CASA, the work by the artist Paulo Roberto Leal. In the artist’s opinion, the environment created in CASA was reminiscent of the boxes he built in his earlier production, while also offering “an excellent [...]

In this text, Artur Barrio explains that the body is the essential support of his art. In his view, the body in and of itself is the work of art by virtue of the simple fact that art entails “action.” Barrio also discusses with complete frankness [...]

In this interview with Lygia Clark by art critic Vera Pedrosa, the artist discusses the radical change in direction at the heart of her research. Her work no longer revolves around formal questions, but rather around experiences that operate directly [...]

In these lines, artist Lygia Clark analyzes the displacement of the object in her artistic formulations. Whereas before objects were the vehicles of sensations, sensations now take shape by means of the artist’s proposals to form what she calls [...]

In this essay the critic Roberto Pontual discusses the works of Vera Chaves Barcellos, paying particular attention to her thoughts on the subject of prints. He focuses on her work during the 1970s, especially her experiments with a photo-language [...]

This work by Cildo Meireles is a clear rebuff to the art world, a pointed politico-ideological dismissal of the artistic status quo as manifested in capitalist society. It is essentially a thoroughly political work that arises from the same [...]

These are Hélio Oiticica’s notes, written in 1966 and 1967, in which he outlines the basic descriptions for the “Parangolés,” his series of multicolored capes. He associates the series with the concept of “anti-art” and the active [...]

In this essay, written in a critical-poetic style, Hélio Oiticica examines the connections between words and objects in Rubens Gerchman’s work, and calls them “objeto-ideograma” [object-ideogram]. These works seek to hold a dialogue about [...]

In this essay, Hélio Oiticica reviews Lygia Pape’s career, which has been skyrocketing ever since her Livro da criação, produced in 1960. Oiticica notes that Pape’s work is increasingly concerned with sensory experience, a trend that has been [...]

The English critic Guy Brett interviews Hélio Oiticica, who describes some of the concepts involved in the works exhibited at his London retrospective. The artist explains his concepts of creative participation, “crelazer” [a hybrid word [...]

This poetic text by the artist Rubens Gerchman is based on the opposition of certain words. Influenced by concrete poetry, this text is similar to works Gerchman produced at the time when the connection between word and image, and word and object, [...]

This interview features Luís Otávio Pimentel and Flammarion, the organizers of and participants in Orgramurbana, the happening at the Aterro do Flamengo beach in Rio de Janeiro in 1970. Both of them say that Orgramurbana was a “post concept” [...]

This text consists of statements by the organizers of the event entitled Orgramurbana, a neologism that means something like “ogres organized in the urban area.” An artistic event that attempted to connect to the community, Orgramurbana was held [...]

Critic Mário Pedrosa terms Hélio Oiticica’s recent work “post-modern,” given that he no longer relies on criteria established by Cubism, but rather on other innovative stimuli. In his judgment, this “post-modern” work begins a new cycle [...]

Hélio Oiticica and Rogério Duarte describe the group experience called Apocalipopótese, a hybrid term that combines the words Apocalypse, hypothesis, and hippopotamus. The essay is written in a decidedly irreverent, poetic style that establishes a [...]

In this essay, Hélio Oiticica discusses the ruptures to be created by a new objectual perspective in Brazilian art that he uses to define his concept of “super-sensory” experience. He is referring to art installations of an (inner) libertarian [...]

The critic Roberto Pontual reviews Brasil Nativo - Brasil Alienígena, the series of works produced by Anna Bella Geiger. In keeping with the name “Situações Limite” suggested by the artist, Pontual observes how she articulates her attempt to [...]

This is a review of the following emblematic works produced by Cildo Meireles: “Inserções em Circuitos Ideológicos,” “Espaços Virtuais: Cantos,” and “Blindhotland.” According to the art critic Wilson Coutinho, these works suggest a [...]

Carlos Zílio endorses the attitude which, in his opinion, should be adopted by artists who wish to express any form of resistance. He protests against the critical reviews issued by those involved in the promotion or exposure of works of art, [...]

In this text, Brazilian artist Cildo Meireles recalls the late sixties when he and other artists “first came into contact with what was truly of interest,” mainly acting directly on real “situations” rather than creating representations of [...]

The artist Antonio Manuel describes two works that were conceived for an exhibition at the MAM-RJ (Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro) in 1973, an event that the museum canceled on the eve of its opening in an attempt to avoid “difficult [...]

This proposal was submitted to the MAM-RJ (Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro) by the Brazilian artist known as Tunga, for an exhibition of his work at the museum’s Sala Experimental. In this text, the author identifies the concept of & [...]

In this article about Valtércio Caldas, Roberto Pontual discusses the artist’s methods and the universe he has explored in his work since his 1973 exhibition at the MAM-RJ (Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro). Pontual describes the enigmatic [...]

Carlos Vergara talks about his visual art, explaining that the material he uses in his work is not necessarily relevant in itself; it is more of an instrument, a vehicle for the direct transmission of reality. The artist from Rio de Janeiro explains [...]

This text by art critic Ronaldo Brito discusses Tunga’s work on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition Ar do corpo [Body of Air] held at the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM-Rio) in 1975. After arguing that the work of all [...]

This review of Tunga’s work was written by the critic Wilson Coutinho on the occasion of “Tunga,” the exhibition of works by the Brazilian artist at the Espaço ABC (Rio de Janeiro, 1980). Coutinho describes him as one of the few experimental [...]

This newspaper column by the critic Harry Laus includes a transcript of the manifesto written by some of the artists who participated in Opinião 66, the seminal exhibition held at the MAM-RJ (Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro) that year. The [...]

The critic and curator Fernando Cocchiarale reviews O Pão Nosso de cada dia [Our Daily Bread], the series by Anna Bella Geiger. In his opinion, the artist’s other more characteristic works, such as her maps, express the artist’s concept of [...]

In this review, the critic Ronaldo Brito discusses Atensão [Attention, there is tension], the exhibition of works by the visual artist Carlos Zílio. Brito explains that the exhibition space consists of an area in which the works create tensions in [...]

According to the critic and curator Roberto Pontual, 1975 was a turning point that ushered in a period of renewed creative activity in Brazil, as evidenced by the different movements that emerged on the heels of the downturn in art production in the [...]

In his review of exhibitions held in 1981, Frederico Morais mentions the role of the curator as an emergent figure in the art world of Rio de Janeiro. He goes on to discuss the challenge faced by young artists working with more traditional approaches [...]