Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

“Pedro Manrique Figueroa. Precursor del ‘collage’ en Colombia” [Pedro Manrique Figueroa: Harbinger of Collage in Colombia] (1999) consists of an appendix and three sections, as follows: “The Zero Years,” “The Pink Years,” and “The [...]

This article by the researcher Camilo Sarmiento, “El Automático, entre la literatura y el arte” [El Automático: Between Literature and Art] appeared in Café El Automático: arte, crítica y esfera pública [Café El Automático: Art, Criticism [...]

“Non Serviam,” a manifesto written by Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro, records his rejection of naturalism in poetry. He declares that poets should no longer imitate or reproduce nature; instead, they should create distinct new worlds [...]

This text traces two parallel ways of understanding the prints in João Câmara’s series Cenas da Vida Brasileira [Scenes from Brazilian Life]. The first entails the artist’s passage from wood engraving—traditionally associated with the [...]

This document is an anthology of poetry from the region of Bezerros, in the state of Pernambuco, which includes about 50 poems and stories from the genre known as “literatura de cordel” (string literature). This form of literature consists of [...]

This text by Murilo Mendes was written on the occasion of the death of French Surrealist writer André Breton in 1966. On the basis of certain encounters he had with Breton in Paris in 1952 and 1953, Mendes makes observations on the work and [...]

French Surrealist poet Benjamin Péret wrote this text on African religions after visiting Brazil. He establishes a counterpoint between Macumba and Candomblé rituals, which he considers “almost revelatory” poetic practices of “primitive and [...]

In this text, critic Prudente de Moraes Neto discusses an article by French writer Benjamin Crémieux published in the Nouvelle Revue Française. In his view, Crémieux fails to give due importance to the unconscious aspect of the artistic process, [...]

Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza interviews Carlos Cruz-Diez in Paris. After providing a physical description of the Venezuelan Kinetic artist and a brief summary of his career, the Colombian author asks him for his opinions about art in general, and Latin [...]

Artist and activist David Avalos wrote this catalogue essay for his solo exhibition in New York at the Intar Gallery. There, Avalos provides a historical context by way of examples of American literature to explain the concept of the exhibition: the [...]

The literary critic, María Sola, tells us that we can pinpoint the legacy of Marta Traba, which is the “dentro de la lucha de la mujer ‘por hablar’ en cambio de ‘ser hablada’ por otros” [women’s struggle to be the ‘speakers’ [...]

The painter Luis Guevara Moreno—a member of Los Disidentes, the group of Venezuelan artists living in Paris in 1950—briefly reviews an issue of Taller (1948), the magazine published by the group Taller Libre de Arte that was founded in Caracas [...]

Evar Méndez’s text brings about a critical balance of the Martin Fierro journal’s actions and what they meant to the Argentinean literary renewal throughout its entire publication span. He points out that the journal gathered, from its founding [...]

Writer Clóvis Gusmão writes to Joaquim Inojosa about the Movimiento Antropofágico and takes the opportunity to clarify some parts of its agenda. Its principles include: the idea of establishing distance from European civilization by creating new [...]

In “Notas sobre lo americano” Luis Oyarzún shares his thoughts about Latin American culture, art, and literature, which he contrasts with his Eurocentric views. He groups his ideas into six points, in which he critiques what he [...]

As part of his research into the rumors and the legend concerning the Baile de los 41 [Dance of the 41]—a scandalous police raid in Mexico City in which 42 homosexual men were arrested—Carlos Monsiváis turns to contemporary newspaper reports. He [...]

This is Antonio Romera’s visual review of Luis Durand’s literary work. The first thing he notices is the sensual nature of Durand’s writing; his narrative style creates currents and movements that trace the outlines of objects and [...]

Act two, scene one of this farce is entitled “The mummies and the bats give their opinion on revolutionary paintings.” Some of the names of the figures from the prior scene are repeated, although this time, they are divided: fresh and dried [...]

Act one, scene two of this farce is entitled “A jury [to try] the reactionary intellectuals and capricious intellectual revolutionaries.” The figures to be judged and the extras, as well as the wailing chorus, have the actual names of numerous [...]

Following the prologue to the farce “The Fall of the Rich and the Construction of a New Social Order,” is a scene in the first act entitled, “The Army of the Soldiers, Workers and Peasants.” In a triumphal panorama of the socialist revolution [...]

This farce was written in verse and consists of a prologue and four parts. The action takes place in Mexico City. On a throne of clouds rests a trinity: a Mexican politician, “the father devil;” a European capitalist, “the grateful son;” and [...]

Josefina Robirosa wrote a very brief, poetic text about the nexus between her “innermost self” and her painting, and by means of her simple text she came close to linking the individual and painting [...]

Conceptual artist Federico Peralta-Ramos concocts a new religion encompassing twenty-three commandments. All of them are ancillary to the main one: “ser gánico” [to act according to how you feel]; in other words, “hacer siempre lo que uno [...]

Federico Peralta-Ramos, in eight quite simple verses, defines what art is; primarily from the art-life nexus which is implicit [...]

Leopoldo Maler writes about the London stage production of León Ferrari’s book Palabras ajenas [Other People’s Words]. Maler mentions the direction by Jim Haynes, and quotes Haynes on his opinions about the book and its perspective on the news [...]

Presentation by poet Rodolfo Alonso, a member of the group of poetry Poesía Buenos Aires, in which he refers to the artists presented at the 1963 Torcuato Di Tella Prize and to the plastic work that is intimately connected to his experiences, to the [...]

The author offers a critical, manifesto-style review of the situation in the field of Latin American art and, especially, culture. Alberto Pérez describes himself as an “American,” “Hispanic American,” “Indian [...]

This article by Ana María Risco was included in her book Crítica situada. It was originally written as an academic thesis in which she explored the network of authors with whom Enrique Lihn communicated in the field of the visual arts. [...]

In her essay “La narrativa de Diamela Eltit: un nuevo paradigma socio-literario de lectura” (Diamela Eltit’s Narrative: A New Socio-Literary Paradigm for Reading), Eugenia Brito discusses Eltit’s “writing” (l&rsquo [...]

After the 1973 coup d’état in Chile, the country’s literature underwent a process of transformation that prompted a redefinition of concepts such as, among other things, the roles of writers and readers as well as their limits and [...]

Rafael Alberti, the Spaniard poet, remarks on how long it has been since they last wrote to each other. He refers affectionately to the Ferrari’s house in Castelar, in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, and mentions his latest poems [...]

Rafael Alberti proposes Escrito en el aire [Written in the Air] as the title of the book, and tells Ferrari about the publishing arrangements being made in Italy. He mentions the friends in Milan who will deliver the special edition [...]

León Ferrari writes to Leopoldo Maler about sending a copy of his book, Palabras ajenas [Other People’s Words] and about a possible stage version to be produced in England. He refers to the increasing politicization of Argentine artists, and [...]

León Ferrari writes to Leopoldo Maler about the London stage production of Palabras ajenas [Other People’s Words]. He discusses the polyphonic work involving the various texts in the book, mentions sending original English copies, and refers to [...]

León Ferrari writes to Leopoldo Maler about the London stage production of Palabras ajenas [Other People’s Words]. He refers to the polyphonic work involving the various texts in the book, and mentions that he has sent a copy to Mario Vargas Llosa [...]

León Ferrari writes to Leopoldo Maler about the London stage production of his book, Palabras ajenas [Other People’s Words]. He asks about the translation, the staging, and the rights, and mentions personal and institutional contacts that would be [...]

The author builds up opposite traits to define the two most significant literary trends in the 1920s Buenos Aires, the Boedo and the Florida groups. And, as representative of Boedo, Mariani celebrates the poetic characteristics of the former while [...]

As part of his curatorial plan for the exhibition 1973–2000: Transferencia y densidad (1973–2000: Transfer and Density), Justo Pastor Mellado proposes that museums should reinstate works that, though ignored by the critical discourse of [...]

On the occasion of a homage to Francis Picabia and Dylan Thomas, Aldo Pellegrini publishes his poem "To Francis Picabia." Beginning with the passing of Picabia in Paris, this poem is part of the tribute that the members of the collective editorship [...]

Aldo Pellegrini points out that poetry constitutes an anti-conventional language par excellence; he believes it is necessary to break with verbal preconceptions when the intensity of the content calls for shades of meaning beyond convention. In this [...]

The relationship that the critic Aldo Pellegrini established with the poet Olivierio Girondo, whom he met in 1948, stands out in this text. Pellegrini relates the closeness that developed between the surrealist group and the Poesía Buenos Aires [ [...]

This text reflects on the power of words, keeping in mind that each human being includes a little of himself or herself into the words that he or she uses. Avoiding to discuss the usefulness of language, Aldo Pellegrini raises two points: its [...]

Pellegrini’s text introduces a number of his writings published in different venues, collected in the book Para contribuir a la confusion general [To Contribute to the General Confusion](1965). Through his reflections, the critic warns that much of [...]

Aldo Pellegrini’s text presents the centennial tribute for the death of Count of Lautréamont, Isidore Ducasse. Pellegrini highlights that Ducasse’s work uses canons, or rules, in order to break them and—by means of this mechanis— outwit or [...]

In this text, Pellegrini applies a critical point of view to three statements, chosen at random, authored by Jorge Luis Borges, T.S.Eliot, and William Faulkner. In his conclusion Pellegrini notes that, although the analysis of these statements [...]

A text by Pellegrini which introduces the translation, which he himself wrote, of a text by the French poet Antonin Artaud. He points out that nobody other than this author has lived through the paroxysm of the most extreme questions a human being [...]

León Ferrari writes poetically about art and religion in terms of his own artistic goals: the appropriation of the works of the old Masters, a repression of sexuality, and eroticism that is ignored by the Catholic Church [...]

León Ferrari composes a poetic description of his method of working: from the line on the plane of the paper through its development in space [...]

This article by Atalaya reflects upon a text written by Guillermo de Torre entitled “Madrid, meridiano intelectual de Hispanoamérica” [Madrid: Intellectual Meridian of the Spanish Americas], published in La Gaceta Literaria [Literary Gazette] in [...]

Roberto Merino discusses La nueva novela [The New Novel] by Juan Luis Martínez, concentrating on specific pages in the book and questioning its operations. He addresses the photograph that Lewis Carroll took of Alice Lidell, which Martí [...]