Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

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 [...]

In this brief consideration of Alejandro Romero’s œuvre, author Victor A. Sorell discusses the impact of Chicago, Romero’s adopted home, on his works. Romero invokes the industrial ambience and architectural totems of this city in his pieces, [...]

In this text, Victor A. Sorell considers the works of the three Chicago-based, Mexican muralists Aurelio Díaz Alfaro, Marcos Raya, and Vicente Mendoza through the prism of what he characterizes as three language types—“private,” “public,” [...]

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 catalogue essay, Victor Alejandro Sorell considers the 36-year career (spanning 1964–2000) of the Chicano artist Carlos Cortez, praising him as the “quintessential artist-reporter,” and emphasizing his virtuosity as a master printmaker [...]

This essay, with accompanying inventory and maps, considers the Chicago community mural scene from 1967 through 1979, noting that the medium was employed by artists from a variety of ethnic backgrounds to “ . . . express ethnic, historical, popular [...]

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 [...]

The co-editor of ABRAZO, Víctor A. Sorell writes that ethnic artists must no longer believe that the mainstream art world neglects them merely due to elitism (ignorance of ethnic artists contributes to this neglect as well). ABRAZO urges the art [...]

In this review of the exhibition Art of the Other Mexico: Sources and Meanings, Victor Alejandro Sorell writes that the border is the exhibition’s overarching and master trope. The exhibition features works of art by the “greater Mexican [...]

Victor Alejandro Sorell’s essay is a comprehensive study addressing more than one hundred twentieth-century Chicano and Mexican artists and collectives active between the 1960s and 1990s, including film and performance practitioners and activists, [...]

In this curatorial essay, Victor A. Sorell weighs opposition to the term “Hispanic” with the need to label the Latino artists of diverse origins included in the exhibition, Arte Hispano-Americano en Chicago=Hispanic-American Art in Chicago. He [...]

This seminal essay by Victor Alejandro Sorell is an early attempt to gauge the history and evolution of Hispanic-American (now Latino) barrio/community muralism in greater Chicago, from its inception in the mid-1960s through its development into the [...]