Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This exhibition essay by Julia P. Herzberg discusses twelve Chilean artists working in experimental and avant-garde modalities (from the late 1970s to early 1990s). These artists are lesser known outside Chile because they stayed in the country [...]

In this essay, Eugenia Brito discusses three works by the writer, poet, and artist Raúl Zurita: Purgatorio (Purgatory), Áreas verdes (Green Areas), and Anteparaíso (Anteparadise). Through these works, the author created an impact [...]

This essay includes a compilation of statements made by members of the Tribu No, a group devoted to experimental poetry and art that was active in Chile in the late 1960s and early 1970s; it also includes statements by other individuals who were [...]

The theorist Justo Pastor Mellado outlines his curatorial approach for the exhibition 1973–2000: Transferencia y densidad. He begins by defining concepts such as “curator,” discussing the term’s evolution in Chile and its [...]

In this essay Ricardo Richon Brunet reviews the evolution of Chilean art since the arrival of Raymond Monvoisin in the mid-nineteenth century. He describes the kind of work that was produced by the early artists, especially those who trained at the [...]

In his essay about the vast subject of art criticism in Chile from 1950 to 1973, Patricio Muñoz Zárate highlights the field’s defining moments, milestones, and notable personalities. In a series of subchapters, he sheds light on [...]

In this article Pablo Oyarzún provides a critical review of the art produced over the course of three decades. He notes the lack of a tradition that could bear witness to and interpret art production in Chile. From the early twentieth century& [...]

In this essay Justo Pastor Mellado presents an extension of his theory concerning the vital contribution made by printing to the emergence of “modernity” in Chilean art. The text, arranged in 21 sections, describes the evolution of [...]

This book consists of research on and documentation of all the works carried out by C.A.D.A. (Colectivo Acciones de Arte) [Art Action Collective] during its existence, 1979 – 1985. The book includes interviews of Lotty Rosenfeld, Juan Castillo, [...]

This text is a letter from the painter, muralist, printmaker, and architect by training Nemesio Antúnez to his son Pablo. It is written in the first person, in an innovative narrative style that was in vogue in Chile at the time. In this sort [...]

This is the introduction to the catalogue for the Salón de Artistas Jóvenes Latinoamericanos [Young Latin American Artists Salon]—held at the Pan-American Union in Washington, DC in 1965. It was written by José Gómez Sicre, director of the [...]

This exhibition essay discusses the Chilean artist Catalina Parra’s collages on view in the exhibition Catalina Parra: It’s Indisputable. It includes seven series with seventy works, which comprise collages made of newspaper clippings [...]

In this essay “El caso Simón Bolívar o el arte como zona de disturbios” (The Simón Bolívar Case, or Art as a Site of Civil Unrest), Nelly Richard addresses the outrage expressed in the Santiago press and by the general [...]

Nelly Richard focuses on a number of artists as part of her assessment of the status of painting in Chile during the 1970s and 1980s. She discusses a selection of works by a group of artists who take a critical approach to the painting tradition, [...]

In this essay Adriana Valdés discusses the production of women artists, and takes a sweeping look at women artists in Latin America and Chile. She follows María Zambrano’s lead regarding the cultural and historical forces that [...]

In his essay “Realismo y crisis de la representación pictórica” (Realism and Crisis in Pictorial Representation), Guillermo Machuca addresses several critical points regarding the visual arts in Chile during the 1960s. They include, [...]

In this essay, Guillermo Machuca discusses the evolution of Chilean art, from the founding of the Academia de Pintura to the artists of the 1960s, using the works in the collection held by the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (Santiago) as a base. [...]

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 [...]

José de Nordenflycht discusses Justo Pastor Mellado’s curatorial vision for Chile 100 Años Artes Visuales. He mentions the area that included five painters who all studied at the Universidad de Chile: José Balmes, Samy [...]

In this article, which is one of the first formal written accounts of the history of Chilean photography, Mario Fonseca emphasizes the absence of history, criticism, and market. He talks about the arrival of the first daguerreotypes in Chile, in 1840 [...]

This is Nelly Richard’s critical review of La pintura en Chile: desde la Colonia hasta 1981 (Painting in Chile: From the Colonial Period to 1981), the book cowritten by Milán Ivelic and Gaspar Galaz. Richard takes issue with a number of [...]

This essay by Alberto Madrid is the research on the evolution of Chilean engraving at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de Viña del Mar. For this the author utilized references of national geographic elements associated with printmaking, which [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado studied the work of Gracia Barrios in great detail. He suggests that her career could be divided into two phases that were not chronological but rather two different ways of approaching painting. He dubs one of them an optical- [...]

This is Nelly Richard’s “Introduction” to her book Margins and Institutions. Art in Chile Since 1973, in which she outlines the concept of the Escena de Avanzada. The “advanced scene” flourished in an unofficial sector [...]

This essay by Mario Soro was one of the chapters in the catalogue for the exhibition Chile 100 años (Chile 100 Years) covering the second period, 1950–73, titled “Entre modernidad y utopía” (Between Modernity and [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado discusses the unofficial shipment of Chilean art to the 12th Paris Biennial arranged by Nelly Richard, which he describes as a key moment in the birth of the Escena de Avanzada. Mellado also focuses on several landmark art events [...]

This article by Ana María Risco was included in her book Crítica situada. The latter 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 [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado’s essay “Breve nota sobre pintura chilena: 1950–88,” introduced the traveling exhibition Cirugía Plástica [Plastic Surgery] to Berlin audiences. Mellado mentions certain specific features of [...]

This text is an introduction to the 1959 exhibition South American Art Today, presented at the Dallas Museum of Art. It is written by the curator, Cuban art critic and writer José Gómez Sicre. Gómez Sicre explains that the exhibition South [...]

   In her essay “Sobre arte y política(s): contraoficialidad, poder y lenguajes,” written for the exhibition catalogue Cirugía plástica (Plastic Surgery), Nelly Richard reflects on the socio-political and [...]

In this essay, the printmaker Pedro Millar reflects on the lira popular [that is, printed poetic forms illustrated with singular woodcuts], a Chilean folk tradition, as the antecedents to wood engraving in Chile. Accompanying the article was an [...]

In this text Nelly Richard identifies some of Walter Benjamin’s ideas that, in her opinion, are relevant to works produced in Chile during the military dictatorship (1973–90) and the start of what was known as the “democratic [...]

This article by Ana María Risco was included in her book Crítica situada. The latter 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 [...]

This text is part of El gran solipsismo, Juan Luis Martínez. Obra visual (Santiago: Editorial Puntángeles, 2002), the collection of essays written by the researcher José de Nordenflycht. The author considers the work in question [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado discusses the evolution of Chilean painting, from its roots to the 1980s. He divides his essay into six sections that explore the field’s history, from José Gil de Castro to the early twentieth century, remembering [...]

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 [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado explains the reasons that motivated the Chilean submission to the X Mostra da Gravura, which was a desire to articulate a new artistic cartography. The hypothesis he lays out in this text points to formal movements in the field [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado discusses Juan Downey’s work in the audiovisual series titled Transamérica and Ojo Pensante (Thinking Eye). He believes it is especially necessary to view the video Moving (1974) and draws attention to several shots [...]

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 [...]

This letter from Mario Pedrosa, the Brazilian critic, stresses the importance of the gesture made by artists who donated their works to the Museo de la Solidaridad in a spirit of soladarity with the people of Chile, who were at that time on the road [...]

In 1998, Adriana Valdés discusses “Estudios sobre la felicidad” and the review she had written about this work by Alfredo Jaar. She refers to the concepts known as the “open work” (Umberto Eco, 1962) and “ [...]

Puerto Rican historian and critic Teresa Tió reviews the development of the Bienal de San Juan del Grabado Latinoamericano y del Caribe [San Juan Biennial of Latin American and Caribbean Graphic Art] from its beginnings in 1970 through 1987. She [...]

The curator and researcher Alberto Madrid analyzes Historias de identificación (Histories of Identification), housed in one of the rooms at the grand exhibition held at the MNBA in Santiago, Chile, which uses portraits to record presence and [...]

In this essay Justo Pastor Mellado discusses Quadrivium, the exhibition of works by Gonzalo Díaz, presenting a critical overview of the latter’s production since 1982. Mellado’s review could be split into two parts, each of which [...]

As President of the Artistic Solidarity Committee with Chile, Mário Pedrosa addresses then President Salvador Allende Gossens during the reception ceremony for the works that would make up the collection of the Museo de la Solidaridad in Santiago. [...]

The art critic Justo Pastor Mellado examines the connections between politics and the visual arts in Chile from 1970 to 1983, from the election of Salvador Allende and the Unidad Popular (1970–73) to the tenth anniversary of the dictatorship [...]

In this book, psychologist Jorge Nunes includes a series of interviews with Venezuelan painter César Rengifo. He delves into numerous aspects, some unpublished, of the life and work of the artist. Of the twenty-eight chapters that compose this book [...]

This is Enrique Lihn’s lengthy, emphatic review of “Abstracción y Figurativismo o el dilema de la expresividad en la pintura,” an essay by Jorge Elliot. Lihn is not out to discredit Elliot’s proposals, he wants to [...]

In this essay José Balmes writes about his work and shares some thoughts on “contemporary painting.” He recalls how he started painting when he was a young man in Catalonia, then moved to Chile after the Spanish Civil War and [...]