Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This article is about the emergence of a group in São Paulo in 1993 that called itself the “Atelier Piratininga.” The members of the group were Ernesto Bonato, Armando Sobral, and Giorgia Volpe. In their early days they were mainly focused on [...]

This bound and offset printed leaflet reflects the joint efforts of two groups of Brazilian artists—Espaço Coringa and Projeto Aberto—whose goal was to stimulate activities targeting “Public Arts, Contextual Art, and the Social Artist,” as [...]

This text presents “Espaço Coringa,” an eight-member art collective based in São Paulo. The main focus of the group’s work is graphic art that involves the public space [...]

In this chapter of her book on Evandro Carlos Jardim, Yvoty Macambira mentions the printing workshop created in 1987—the Atelier Experimental de Gravura Francesc Domingo Segura—whose name pays tribute to Jardim’s mentor. The workshop operated [...]

In this introductory article, the curator and journalist Teniza Spinelli outlines the genealogy of print clubs in Brazil, beginning with the Grupo de Bagé (1948), and moving on to the Clube de Gravura de Porto Alegre (1950), which was the model for [...]

In this article the art critic Stella Teixeira de Barros outlines the history of the various visual arts associations that were founded in the city of São Paulo between the Brazilian modernist period and the 1980s. Teixeira de Barros uses the term [...]

This is a news report on the formation of the Cooperativa dos Artistas Plásticos de São Paulo in 1979, which in fact was a pioneering initiative in Brazil. Instead of meeting to discuss issues on aesthetics, the collective sought to establish an [...]

This newspaper article is about the Grupo Quinze, a group of Japanese-Brazilian artists that was formed in São Paulo in the late 1940s. The critic Ibiapaba Martins explains what led them to form this association. He describes the workshop and [...]

This text was featured in the catalogue for 8º Salão de Artes Plásticas that was organized by the Grupo Seibi in 1964. It recounts the history of the group of artists from the Japanese community in the state of São Paulo, a group created in 1935 [...]

The synopsis in English are coming soon [...]

This text by Salim Miguel is a review of the Exposição de Gravuras Brasileiras held at the Salón of the Lux-Hotel in Florianópolis in the state of Santa Catarina from October 24 to 31, 1954. The show featured seventy-four works produced at Clubes [...]

Carlos Scliar, a printmaker from the state of Rio Grande del Sur, gave this interview on the occasion of the Exposição de Gravuras Brasileiras, an exhibition held in the state of Santa Catarina, which borders on Rio Grande del Sur. The focus of the [...]

This article describes the origins, operation, and goals of the Clube de Gravura of Rio de Janeiro, which was founded in 1952 “thanks to the growing interest in printmaking that is sweeping the country.” Clubs of this nature have contributed to [...]

This article reports on the activities of the Clube de Gravura de Porto Alegre (CGPA) founded in 1950 by artist Carlos Scliar, who served as its president. The club was considered a model organization. It gained “notoriety throughout Brazil and [...]

This is the first chapter of the book Festival de Performance de Cali-Colombia [Cali-Colombia Performance Festival] (2006) published by Helena Producciones, the group that was started in 1998 and currently includes the Colombian artists Wilson Díaz [...]

The chapter published in the book Ciudad espejo [Mirror City] by the Arts Faculty of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia [National University of Colombia] (2009), written by Natalia Gutiérrez, describes the methodology used by the Colectivo [...]

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 [...]

“Pequeño laboratorio del imaginario social” [Small-scale Social Awareness Laboratory] is a lecture written by the artist Rolf Abderhalden and delivered at the Cátedra Manuel Ancízar (2006) at the National University of Colombia. It includes a [...]

This article, written by the journalist Fabián Forero Barón and published in the newspaper El Tiempo in Bogotá in December 2007, reviews the work of the urban group Colectivo Excusado Printsystem and its impact on the city since 2003. The article [...]

The article written by the journalist Fabián Forero Barón and published in the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo (December 2007) reviews the visual artwork of the collective Excusado Printsystem, and its impact in Bogotá since 2003. It places major [...]

This text was published as one chapter of the 2007 book Dibujos de la calle by the School of Arts at the Universidad de Bogotá – Jorge Tadeo Lozano, written by the members of the Excusado Printsystem collective. The chapter clearly and concretely [...]

This document is a preliminary sketch of the frontispiece for the first issue of Excusado, an independent publication in Bogotá, rendered one year before it was published (2004). The text contains the unpublished version of the Excusado manifesto as [...]

This text was written by Waldemar Cordeiro in response to Sérgio Milliet’s critique of his “Manifesto Ruptura” that was published in the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo on December 13, 1952. In addition to replying to each one of Milliet’s [...]

This document, composed in 1978 by writer José Armas, is a report on the state of the organization, Revolución Artística y Acción Social (RAYAS), and is also an appeal for action on outstanding issues. RAYAS, a group founded by Armas and other [...]

This brief document by writer José Armas summarizes the ideas of a group of Chicano writers and artists from the states of Washington, California, Texas, and New Mexico who met in Lubbock, Texas, with the intention of forming an artistic and [...]

Written by the members of the group El Techo de la Ballena and published in the first issue of their magazine Rayado sobre el Techo, this essay expresses their desire to return to matter—that is, to “the magma”—in an original act that frees [...]

In this text, the members of El Techo de la Ballena, a group that emerged in the sixties, in Caracas, delineated the differences between categories such as “tacky,” “unfortunate,” and “ridiculous” in the exhibition, Homenaje a la cursiler [...]

Written by Syeus Mottel, a theater and film director, and a photographer, this essay describes how the community action group, called CHARAS, originated, and how its members worked together to build the first geodesic domes in the Lower East Side of [...]

In this “Author’s Note,” Syeus Mottel, a theater and film director, and a photographer, describes his experience after he was recruited to make a book adaptation of a unique project already in development by Buckminster Fuller and Michael Ben [...]

The brochure begins with a part dictionary, part humorous definition of the words “Con Safo,” which is followed by an anonymous short essay that functions as a manifesto for the Con Safo artist collective. In it, the group outlines the [...]

In this article, members of the Border Art Workshop/Taller de Arte Fronterizo (BAW/TAF) respond to several misrepresentations of the group and factual errors about its genesis carried out by former member Guillermo Gómez-Peña. Citing quotes from [...]

In this document Tomás Ybarra-Frausto discusses the philosophical and sociological underpinnings of Chicano art. He links its development to the political goals of the Chicano movement, describing the work of Chicano artists as a model for freedom [...]

Art historian and curator Shifra M. Goldman begins this essay with a brief background of Chicano art prior to discussing the history of the Austin-based Chicana artist group MAS (Mujeres Artistas del Suroeste) and the work of its five founding [...]

In this essay, Hugo Martinez chronicles the formation of United Graffiti Artists, a collective of New York City graffiti artists. Analyzing the graffiti scene from a sociological perspective, Martinez reports that the majority of graffiti artists in [...]

In this 1972 essay, R. Buckminster Fuller presciently describes a new era of communication systems in which all humanity can learn enough about productivity as well as the generalized principles of nature that render abject poverty, and the have-nots [...]

Art critic Lucy Lippard gives an overview of issues that have galvanized Latino artists in the United States to take action; the most notable causes being migrant workers rights in the 1960s and ‘70s, protests against United States interventions in [...]

Betty Wilde-Biasiny recounts the emergence of the photography collective, En Foco [Focused], to the rise of alternative artist-run spaces and collectives in New York City during the 1970s. Wilde-Biasiny states that En Foco’s promotion of cultural [...]

Photographer Charles Biasiny-Rivera recounts the history of En Foco [Focused], the first Puerto Rican photographers collective in New York City. Founded in 1973, En Foco’s community-based programs in the Bronx included operating a street gallery, a [...]

This catalogue for the 1980 exhibition, Comadres: A Collective Environmental Exhibit by Ten Women Artists, wasdesigned as a folder containing loose sheets of handwritten minutes taken throughout the different meetings in preparation of the [...]

This annotated chronology written by Puerto Rican-born artist Diogenes Ballester, documents the history of Taller Boricua [Puerto Rican Workshop]—the oldest extant Puerto Rican artist collective in New York—from its founding in 1969 to 1989. For [...]

The group—calling itself the Colectiva de Artistas Puertorriqueños—articulates the concern that the policies of El Museo del Barrio marginalize the production of Puerto Rican artists in New York in favor of promoting well-established artists [...]

Curator Isabel Nazario compares the emergence of independent Puerto Rican printmaking collectives in New York during the 1970s to the government sponsored graphic art workshops that were instituted in Puerto Rico in the 1950s. She notes that Puerto [...]

In this essay, American curator Lynn Gumpert compares the socio-aesthetic programs adopted by Taller Boricua [Puerto Rican Workshop] and Fashion Moda, two art collectives based in Latino neighborhoods in New York City that were invited to present [...]

When the painter Lasar Segall was interviewed by a São Paulo newspaper, he reviewed the SPAM (Sociedade Pró-Arte Moderna) association’s program to create an “environment [to foster] modern art” in the city of São Paulo. Segall discussed the [...]

This manifesto states, briefly, that the goal of SPAM (Sociedade Pró-Arte Moderna), the pro-modern art association, is to create an environment devoted to the “development” of artistic activities. Founded in 1932 by a group of intellectuals, [...]

SPAM (Sociedade Pró-Arte Moderna) was founded in December 1932 in São Paulo. Its stated goals were to create closer artistic ties, and relationships between artists and the public. The catalogue for the SPAM 1ª Exposição de Arte Moderna includes [...]

In his essay, critic Sérgio Milliet analyzes the painting taking place in São Paulo at the end of the 1930s, with an eye toward two exhibitions: the first, at the II Salão de Maio and the other, at the Salão do Sindicato dos Artistas Plásticos ( [...]

This address by Mário Pedrosa was entitled “Käthe Kollwitz e seu modo vermelho de perceber a vida” [Käthe Kollwitz and her red perception of life]; it was delivered at the CAM (Clube dos Artistas Modernos) in June 1933 during the show [...]

This is an article about the founding of the Grupo Almeida Júnior in São Paulo in 1935, a group that was organized to host conferences and an annual exhibition of works by its members, who were: the painters Anita Malfatti, Georgina de Albuquerque [...]

In the editorial published in this sixth edition of the magazine Festa, Tasso da Silveira claims to see a kind of “violence” in Brazilian modern art that wants to create an all-embracing future. In his opinion there are three modernist movements [...]