Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

Rodrigo Quijano argues that Tiempo detenido—the installation by ceramicist Carlos Runcie Tanaka—does more than illustrate a traumatic event. Since its beginnings, Quijano asserts, the work has been linked to the artist’s search for identity. To [...]

Perán Erminy discusses popular art in Venezuela during the II Bienal Nacional Salvador Valero de Arte Popular held in Trujillo (estado Trujillo) in 1988. He also looks back, to colonial times and the early twentieth century. Erminy recalls the first [...]

The art critic Perán Erminy sets forth the standards for organizing the Third Bárbaro Rivas Biennial of Popular Art (Museo de Arte Popular de Petare, Caracas, 1992), explaining the changes in the conditions of the competition stated in the related [...]

In connection with her exhibition in the Sala Mendoza (Caracas, 1990), the Venezuelan artist Isabel Cisneros wrote this [brief] introduction. In the essay, she explains how she entered into the world of ceramics, as well as her interests and [...]

This article was written from Europe by the Peruvian writer and politician César Falcón. In his opinion, “Incan art” constitutes a legacy lacking in ideological direction and, in his judgment, transcendence. He attributes it with a dearth of [...]

This publication reproduces the prologue that Peruvian writer and diplomat Ventura García Calderón wrote to the book El arte peruano en la escuela by Peruvian artist Elena Izcue, as well as an essay by Peruvian educator Elvira García y García [...]

In this article, the essayist and art critic Mercedes Gallagher de Parks discusses the pottery produced in the Amazon region of Peru, noting the wide variety of pieces and their surprising aesthetic. Very little is known about this pottery other than [...]

In this article, the indigenist Peruvian anthropologist Luis E. Valcárcel pays tribute to José Sabogal, following his death in 1956. In the author’s opinion, Cuzco (where the painter lived after spending several years studying in Europe) was [...]

This essay was written by Elvira de Gálvez on the artist Alicia Bustamente on occasion of her death. The author highlights above all Bustamante’s work in the promotion and defense of Peruvian Popular Art. The author states that Bustamente “found [...]

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 text was written by Marta Traba in 1961 on the occasion of the second solo exhibition of Colombian artist Beatriz Daza. In relation to Daza’s formal experiments with enamel works exhibited in this show, Traba refers to Informalism as a return [...]

This text written by Marta Traba presents the first solo exhibition of Colombian artist Beatriz Daza. Traba asserts that “in the restless and discontented spirit of 20th-century visual art” ceramics runs the risk of losing its specificity as it [...]

Puerto Rican critic Enrique García Gutiérrez wrote this review about the Premio Casa Candina [Casa Candina Prize] 1999: the VI Bienal de la Cerámica Contemporánea Puertorriqueña [6th Biennial of Contemporary Puerto Rican Ceramics]. In the [...]

Art critic Enrique García Gutiérrez reviews the IV Bienal de la Cerámica Puertorriqueña [4th Biennial of Contemporary Puerto Rican Ceramics] (1994) organized by Casa Candina. The writer reports that, compared with previous exhibitions, there [...]

Samuel Cherson, a Cuban art critic based in Puerto Rico, states that Casa Candina is responsible for the boom in contemporary Puerto Rican ceramics. The Primera Bienal de Cerámica Contemporánea Puertorriqueña [1st Biennial of Contemporary Puerto [...]

Puerto Rican art critic Enrique García Gutiérrez considers the Bienal de Cerámica Contemporánea Puertorriqueña [Biennial of Contemporary Puerto Rican Ceramics](1988) a good start for the development of the discipline of ceramics on the island. [...]

Samuel Cherson, a Cuban critic living in exile in Puerto Rico, states that Puerto Rican ceramics have become more popular thanks to a movement started by Grupo Manos. Later, this movement was strengthened through the work of Casa Candina, a ceramics [...]

In this document, Puerto Rican critic Enrique García Gutiérrez comments on the work created by Susana Espinosa, an Argentine ceramicist living in Puerto Rico. [Some of] this work was exhibited at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo [Museum of [...]

Bernardo Hogan, an Argentine artist and husband and collaborator of the ceramicist Susana Espinosa, relates his experience of working in the ceramics studio he shares with his wife and his assistant, Isabel Rivera. Hogan tells how in 1980, they [...]

In this article, Puerto Rican art historian María Luisa Moreno gives an overview of the art career of Susana Espinosa, an Argentine ceramicist living in Puerto Rico. Moreno covers Espinosa’s training at the Academia de Bellas Artes de Buenos Aires [...]

Alfonso La Torre interviews the photographer Eva Lewitus, who shares her opinions on the Peruvian folk art exhibition that was presented at the XIV Bienal de São Paulo in 1977. She thinks the exhibit did not reflect the full scope of this kind [...]

In this text, Damián Bayón considers what kinds of “characteristic forms” are visible in American art across historical periods encompassing pre-Columbian, colonial, and modern art and architecture. He conducts his inquiry [...]

In his introduction to Jorge Marcio Gentilini’s exhibition at the Galería Lirolay (Buenos Aires, September 1961), Manuel Mujica Láinez notes that this young artist, who specializes in the art of fire, has already been admitted to the circuit of [...]

Luis Felipe Noé, the artist and art critic, portrays León Ferrari as someone who questions reality, particularly the justice as well as aesthetics and existence itself. He places Ferrari in the hierarchy of generations, pointing out that the artist [...]

This is the catalogue for León Ferrari’s first exhibition in Italy, where he presented 50 of his pieces. He is described here as an Argentine ceramic artist [...]

Kenneth Kemble mentions the Museo Etnográfico, because of an exhibition of primitive Latin American art at the Wildenstein Gallery. He emphasizes the formalist values of the Araucanian carvings and the ceramics. Moreover, he reviews the Spanish [...]

Luis Felipe Noé states that the modest work of Primaldo Mónaco is the proper preservation of childlike grace. In another part of his article, he comments on the work of Chilean sculptor Lorenzo Domínguez who exhibited his illustrations of Don [...]

Luis Felipe Noé writes that a show of drawings by Swiss children at the Pestalozzi Museum in Zurich presents the dilemma between reality and spontaneity at work within chlldren’s drawings; he also maintains that the evolution of adult art can be [...]