Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This document contains excerpts from a grant proposal submitted by Eduardo Carrillo to the National Endowment for the Humanities seeking traveling support for an exhibition of California Chicano art entitled Califas, Chicano Art and Culture in [...]

This document is a transcript of the contribution to a panel discussion by the art historian, Amalia Mesa-Bains, in which she addresses the ways in which the social circumstances experienced by Chicanos in the United States have influenced their [...]

This exhibition catalog, Chicago Latino, was part of an intercultural dialogue initiated by two “socially-minded arts groups,” the 369 Gallery of Edinburgh, Scotland, and the Near Northwest Arts Council of Chicago, Illinois. The exhibition [...]

In this text, Victor Alejandro Sorell writes that Chicago State University observed the 66th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution with a dedication of an eight-panel portable mural by Raymond Patlan entitled El Grito de la Raza Cósmica, [The Cry of [...]

This essay by Chicano artist, José Montoya, describes his experience developing and creating his Pachuco Artseries, which he began in 1969. Montoya notes the inspiration of artist Ricardo Favela and his use of the vato (slang for street dude) figure [...]

This document is a brief unpublished autobiographical statement by artist Carlos Almaraz. In it he discusses the early years of his life, from his birth in Mexico City and subsequent moves to Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, where he attended high [...]

This letter by the art historian and critic Shifra M. Goldman responds to a letter from the Chicana artist Judithe Hernandez. The latter’s letter was responding to Goldman’s review of the exhibition Murals of Aztlán: Street Painters of East Los [...]

The document is an undated letter from Juan Carrillo, the interim board chairman of the Concilio de Arte Popular (CAP), to its members. Along with stating its founding history, purpose, names, and affiliations of the founding board members, the [...]

This document is a handwritten letter in Spanish by Leo Tanguma and addressed to Malaquias Montoya. Tanguma informs Montoya of an art project he is planning to do in conjunction with the public school system in Denver, Colorado, to address the high [...]

This document is a letter by Judithe Hernandez to the Los Angeles Times, written in response to the review of the Los Four exhibition by staff writer William Wilson. She refutes Wilson’s statements, that the museum lowered its standards and [...]

This document is a letter addressed to the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle and signed by Artists of the Fifth Sun Exhibition. It was written in response to the review of the exhibition The Fifth Sun: Contemporary/Traditional Chicano and Latino [...]

This a letter requesting support for the promotion of the first international conference of Chicano art, organized by Santa Barraza and Consuelo Avila in 1979. The stated objective of the conference is to provide an overview of the history and [...]

In this letter, San Francisco artist and muralist Graciela Carrillo challenges Malaquías Montoya’s essay, “A Critical Perspective in the State of Chicano Art,” on what she describes as its elitist, rhetorical style that made it hard to read, [...]

In this letter to Puerto Rican artist Lorenzo Homar, Argentine artist Mauricio Lasansky states that he resents the fact that the Bienal de San Juan del Grabado Latinoamericano y del Caribe [Latin American and Caribbean Print Biennial, San Juan] is [...]

The essay is a brief artist statement in which Amalia Mesa-Bains recounts her beginnings as an altar-maker at the Galería de la Raza in San Francisco in the late 1970s and her subsequent transition from constructing personal altars to public [...]

The Cuban-American artist Paul Sierra begins this lecture, delivered at the Terra Museum of Art in Chicago, by declaring that even though he has been asked to speak about the “sources of Hispanic Art,” he has decided to speak instead about [...]

This document is a statement by Chicano artist Malaquías Montoya on the relationship between art and politics. The author suggests that these are always inextricably linked to one another and that nowhere is this more evident than in the structure [...]

This document is the transcript of an interview between Chicana visual artist Carmen Lomas Garza and Anne-Louise Marquis, curator of Directions, a 1995 exhibition of her works. The interview covers a wide range of topics, including Lomas Garza’s [...]

In this text, Jacinto Quirarte interviews artists who led Chicano art movements in San Antonio and the California Bay area during the late 1960s and early 1970s, asking them questions about what motivated their efforts and about, more generally, what [...]

This document is the transcript of an interview between arts writer Meredith Tromble and Chicana visual artist Amalia Mesa-Bains. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship awardee, Mesa-Bains talks about her motivations as an artist, and her particular [...]

This manifesto written by Chicano artist Malaquías Montoya and his wife, Lezlie Salkowitz-Montoya, derides the developing trend of Chicano artists moving away from a community focus to individual artistic pursuits. According to the Montoyas, the [...]

This document is a review by Alfred Frankenstein of The Fifth Sun: Contemporary/Traditional Chicano and Latino Art exhibition at the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum in 1977. Frankenstein begins by describing the show, detailing the [...]

In this manifesto, Sue Martinez, an artist from San Jose, California, exemplifies by means of the 1981 exhibition Califas: An Exhibition of Chicano Artists in California held at the University of California, Santa Cruz to present the argument that [...]

In this document, Professor Amelia Malagamba explores how Afro-Mexican icons and symbols, as well as sociopolitical issues in the African-American community, have been transformed into what she terms “cultural capital.” A “cultural capital”as [...]

In this text, art historian and activist Victor Alejandro Sorell ponders on arguments for designating Chicano people a nation: the history of the twelfth-century Aztec homeland Aztlán, —located in the U.S. Southwest,— included; the seizure of [...]

This artist’s statement by Carmen Lomas Garza was included in the catalogue for the exhibition of her work, A Piece of My Heart/Pedacito de Mi Corazón, which traveled to various cities in the states of Texas, California, and Illinois, in 1991. In [...]

In this essay, Shifra M. Goldman discusses the Chicano poster movement by considering its historical background, followed by an examination of poster collectives and the work of individual Chicano poster artists, including Rupert Garcia, Malaquías [...]

In this essay, Tere Romo explores the syncretic nature of Chicano spirituality manifested in Chicano art and rooted in the initial encounter between indigenous American cultures and Europe, as well as in the Chicano movement of the 1960s and 1970s. [...]

“A True Barrio” by Edy (Eddie Ytuarte) is part essay, part interview. Edy introduces the essay with a brief review of the work by Harry Gamboa, Gronk, and Willie Herrón exhibited at Mechicano Art Gallery in East Los Angeles in 1972. The author [...]

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 [...]

In this essay, written for the catalogue of the exhibition La Frontera/The Border: Art About the Mexico/United States Border Experience (1993), artist and professor David Avalos describes his experience working at San Diego’s Centro Cultural de la [...]

In this article, John Weber considers pioneering Chicano artist Ray Patlán’s work with teenagers creating a mural in a Latino neighborhood of Chicago during the summer of 1971. The youths were part of the Community Mural Project that, beginning in [...]

In this essay, art historian Margarita Nieto critiques the tendency to trace the genealogy of Chicano art to Mexican art. She locates the roots of the Chicano art movement and the art organizations that emerged within it to the countercultural [...]

In this essay, Ramón García explores the foundations and essential qualities of Chicano camp (rasquache) and its artistic and literary manifestations. García begins with a discussion of the walking murals of the Los Angeles conceptual art group, [...]

In this essay, Guisela Latorre examines the reinterpretation by Chicano/a artists of photographs of soldaderas (female soldiers who participated in the Mexican Revolution) by the Mexican photographer Agustín Víctor Casasola. According to Latorre, [...]

This document is a chapter from a book on “Hispana” and “Hispano” artists from the New Deal Era (1930s and ‘40s). In it, art historian and scholar Tey Marianna Nunn focuses on the lives and works of several artists working under the Works [...]

The author, Susan Keller, ponders the work of Amalia Mesa-Bains within the context of the Mexican-American social empowerment movement of the 1960s and 1970s, also known as the Chicano Movement. A figurehead of her generation, Mesa-Bains looked to [...]

The author, Susan Keller, ponders the work of Amalia Mesa-Bains within the context of the Mexican-American social empowerment movement of the 1960s and 1970s, also known as the Chicano Movement. A figurehead of her generation, Mesa-Bains looked to [...]

This document is a statement by Carlos Almaraz in which it is outlined his approach to his own artistic practice as well as his ambitions for the creation of a broader program of social engagement on the part of Chicano artists. The document [...]

Amalia Mesa-Bains’s essay proposes a historical lineage of heart imagery and the concept of “lo del corazón” [that which comes from the heart] that begins in the Mexico’s Aztec ritual of human sacrifice and culminates in public and popular [...]

In this interview with Jacinto Quirarte, César Martinez recounts his early years and education at Texas A&I in Kingsville. While studying as an artist, he was attracted to Abstract Expressionism and color field painting, although involvement [...]

This essay by Tomás Ybarra-Frausto is included in the 1981 catalogue of selected works from the Mexican Museum in San Francisco, California. Ybarra-Frausto presents a historiography documenting the trajectory of Mexican American artistic traditions [...]

As the curator of Another Life Up Inside Her Head (1995), an exhibition of seventeen emerging Chicana/Latina artists, Amalia Mesa-Bains considers the precedents for their work, as well as the contemporary contexts in which it has been produced. She [...]

The introduction to the catalogue for the exhibition of Latin American art Ante América [Regarding America]—presented in late 1992 at the Luis Ángel Arango Library and the Banco de la República in Bogotá—that was written by the art critic [...]

In this text, Amalia Mesa-Bains introduces an exhibition of Chicano art with an account of Chicano cultural history, and a description of how the works of art in the show relate to several themes. She organizes her account of Chicano cultural history [...]

In this article, San Antonio, Texas, artist César Augusto Martínez writes about Chicano art and the struggle for legitimacy and its acceptance, particularly within the academic community. Martínez argues that Chicano art resists clear stylistic [...]

Written by César Augusto Martínez, one of the most active members of the Chicano art movement of the 1970s, “Arte Chicano” discusses the implications of the term “Chicano” (in Part One) and the status of Chicano art in the mainstream art [...]

This essay by North American historian Shifra M. Goldman examines the artistic production of Chicanos. She considers that production part of the nationalist strategy of a people that determines its own destiny by means of its declarations, be they [...]

Charlotte Moser points out the efflorescence of Chicano art in Texas in the 1970s and how this decade saw the formation of a generation of college-educated Chicano artists; the foundation of Chicano art centers and exhibitions spaces; and the [...]

In this essay, Pedro Rodríguez discusses the complicated history up to the present (the document was written in 1981) of Chicano visual art, which he views as a critical means for the expression of the will and desires of the greater Chicano [...]