Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

Néstor García Canclini, the anthropologist, professor, and cultural studies theoretician, interprets León Ferrari’s blue-printed and photocopied works, using the “aura” concept that was proposed by Walter Benjamin. He also underscores the [...]

Eugenio Dittborn published a poetic-visual creation in La Separata: a text illustrated with a photograph taken by Carlos Gallardo. Dittborn’s poetic prose is based on three points whose sequence produces a similar structure. It begins with & [...]

This essay by Murilo Mendes appeared in the exhibition catalogue for work by the sculptor Maria Martins at the MAM-RJ (Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro) in 1956. Mendes thinks the uniqueness of her work arises from a confrontation at a [...]

In this article, Barboza Leite identifies the artists who contributed to the founding of the SCAP (Sociedade Cearense de Artes Plásticas) from 1941 to 1949, when the association was launched. He provides a detailed description of the endemic [...]

In this excerpt from his book Pancetti (Rio de Janeiro: Ministério da Educação e Cultura, 1960), Medeiros Lima recounts José Pancetti’s first experiences with paintings when he was still a sailor. The section cited begins with the painting work [...]

This is the catalogue for Nipo brasileiros. Mestres e alunos em 50 anos, the exhibition held at the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo (São Paulo, 1984). It includes an essay by Maria Cecília França Lourenço, the art historian and curator of the [...]

In this text, experimental artist Abraham Palatnik discusses the questions of information and technology in relation to human evolution. In Palatnik’s view, evolution is key to the dynamic of culture as man adapts to the world at large and to his [...]

The artist Rubens Gerchman discusses Pare, the exhibition he jointly presented with Roberto Magalhães, Antonio Dias, Carlos Vergara, and Pedro Escosteguy at the G-4 gallery in Rio de Janeiro in April 1966. Gerchman explains that the exhibition [...]

In a short statement, written in 1960, Libero Badii renounces any form of salon exhibition, in keeping with his other disengagements from, for example, academic continuity, material progress, and official teaching [...]

To start with, the newspaper’s editorial statement was very clear concerning the basic purpose of A parte do fogo [The Fire’s Part]: to take part in Brazil’s cultural process and create a space devoted to reflection and to the production of [...]

This text by artist Alberto Brandt describes the artistic aims of his exhibition Alberto Brandt. Exposición de pinturas held at the Centro Profesional del Este in Caracas in 1957. As opposed to the “pseudo-classicism,” rationality, and formalism [...]

In this text critic Mário Pedrosa discusses the Tiradentes mural by Candido Portinari, commissioned by the Colégio dos Cataguases (in the state of Minas Gerais) to be created in a building by architect Oscar Niemeyer. The mural represents the key [...]

León Ferrari sketches his idea for the Christ mounted on a fighter jet for the piece he submitted to the Torcuato Di Tella Institute’s 1965 National and International Prize. This work would be known as Civilización Occidental y Cristiana [Western [...]

Jorge López Anaya writes about the rapid emergence of Grupo Sí [Yes Group] in the city of La Plata. He analyzes the use of chromatic saturation as a trait typical of the group’s artists. The critic states that the chromatic geometry represents, [...]

This essay was published in the leaflet produced for the 1960 solo exhibition of Brazilian painter Willys de Castro at the Galeria Aremar in the city of Campinas. The artist himself defines the most distinctive quality of his visual art, which he [...]

Léon Degand, the French art critic, delivers a lengthy review of figurative painting in order to explain that abstract art is not the one that is constantly subordinating input from external sources to the demands of plastic expression, but rather [...]

This is the fourth issue of the publication Nervo Óptico. This issue publishes “fake news” signed by the artist Carlos Pasquetti. Looking like news in a community newspaper, a photograph covers the entire editorial space, with the headline: “ [...]

By means o a poetic prose, art critic Jorge Romero Brest states that he fearfully admires the huge sculptures and lovingly cares about the drawings and small sculptures made by Líbero Badii. He analyzes the relationship between art and life, from [...]

Ignacio Pirovano presents Enio Iommi’s exhibition (Galería Bonino, September-October, 1969) with a thorough analysis of the different periods involved: his background, the Concrete Art period, the phase begun in 1950 since the dissolution of the [...]

On the back cover of number 4/5 of the magazine U-tópicos: Entornoalovisual (Lima, 1984), a brief anonymous article discusses the iconographic scenes painted on truck mudguards. The writer points out that, despite being ignored “by [...]

The artist, agent, and art critic Leonel Estrada discusses a series of paintings by Armando Villegas that were exhibited at the Chamber of Commerce in Medellín. These works, in Estrada’s opinion, reveal a departure from the artist’s earlier [...]

In this text Nemesio Antúnez provides a brief description of Taller 99. He discusses the origin of the workshop and his association with Atelier 17 (founded in 1917) in Paris, where he completed his training as a printmaker, underscoring the [...]

This foreword by Aldo Pellegrini indicates the changes of direction produced in the period of five years separating the first Arte Nuevo [New Art] exhibition and this sixth show, which he characterizes as a passage from the intellectual to the vital [...]

In this text, Ruth Auerbach explains the curatorial guidelines behind the 3rd Bienal Nacional de Arte de Guayana (Ciudad Bolívar, 1993). She believes the salons were established in order to propose that they be a space open to experimentation. In [...]

Vicente Caride presents Ferruccio Polacco’s exhibition (Galería Rubbers, Buenos Aires, May 1965), emphasizing his preferences for working with the geometric embodiment of images taken from archaic civilizations. Likewise, he points out the austere [...]

Invitation to Alfredo Londaibere’s exhibition (Buenos Aires: Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas, June, 1991 [...]

This text by architect Luis Saia discusses the collection of popular sculptures he put together during his trip to northern and northeastern Brazil in 1938. The architect presents a thesis on the African origin of the “miracle,” the name used for [...]

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 [...]

In this essay, Angela Coldsmith examines the varied printmaking techniques of Anaida Hernández, and her work on behalf of women’s issues in her practices as an artist, activist, and educator. In particular, they note that Hernández organized an [...]

This article, published in the young newsmagazine Boom (Rosario, Argentina, November 1968), narrates what happened during the “lock-up” action carried out by Graciela Carnevale at the “Ciclo de Arte Experimental” [Experimental Practices of [...]

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 [...]

Manifesto included in the catalogue of the Primera Exposición de Pintura Perceptista [First Exhibition of Perceptivist Painting] carried out in Galería Van Riel in Buenos Aires, in October of 1949. Raúl Lozza states that Perceptivism inaugurates a [...]

Juan Grela speaks about painting in the city of Rosario at his lecture, beginning with the Mutualidad [Society]. He refers to his respect for the university and his long-standing relationship with Amigos del Arte [Friends of Art]. The author tells [...]

This text written by the art critic Roberto Guevara is the preface to the catalogue for the exhibition Pinturas, which exhibited work by the French artist Marcel Floris, who had been living in Caracas since 1950. The exhibition was held at the Museo [...]

Curator Juan Calzadilla begins his essay on the Venezuelan painter known as “Pájaro” [Juan Vicente Hernández] by pointing out the similarity between some, though not all, aspects of his work and orthodox Surrealism. Calzadilla comments on the [...]

Hélio Oiticica and Rogério Duarte describe the group experience called Apocalipopótese, a hybrid term that combines the words Apocalypse, hypothesis, and hippopotamus. The essay is written in a decidedly irreverent, poetic style that establishes a [...]

In this set of four brief poems, Ralph de Romero, a Puerto Rican artist born in New York, expresses his thoughts about painting and art. Some of the themes he addresses in his poems are related to defining art and its elements, and he also reveals [...]

Rafael Squirru presents the exhibition that conmemorates the first 15 years of Madí Art (Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires, 1961), highlighting the overt opposition that these dedicated artists must have faced in their research of experimental [...]

This document contains Bibiana Suaréz's responses to four of the eighteen questions posed to artists by the organizers of The Puerto Rican Equation, an exhibition marking the occasion of the 1898 invasion of Puerto Rico by the United States. Suarez [...]

In this artist statement, Bibiana Suarez discusses how her work reflects her search for self-identification and the problems of living between two cultures—that of Puerto Rico and the United States—as a self-imposed exile. Suarez also describes [...]

In this artist statement for the exhibition In Search of an Island (1991), Bibiana Suarez discusses how her work reflects her search for self-identification and the problems of living between two cultures—that of Puerto Rico and the United States [...]

In these two brief articles, Ralph de Romero, a Puerto Rican artist born in New York, states that he feels no responsibility for art history. In other words, it is the artist’s privilege to call anything he creates whatever he wants to call it. De [...]

This text was to be placed on the main wall of the exhibition on Brazilian painting organized by the Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia (MAMB) in 1960. The text asserts that the true innovating power of a culture is found by delving into its popular [...]

According to Ivo Mesquita, it is due to political-economic changes and social crises in Brazil—the results of a colonial project—that the country is influenced by the non-optimistic perspectives that have taken hold in the rest of the world with [...]

The visual artist Willys de Castro reviews the exhibition of drawings by his lifelong companion Hércules Barsotti at the Galeria de Arte das Folhas, in São Paulo. De Castro discusses Barsotti’s technique in great detail, including [...]

The signatories of this manifesto—a statement of solidarity with the struggle of the Brazilian people defending freedom of expression in all areas—are opposed to the dictatorship’s practice of using art as a symbol of prestige for the military [...]

Lorenzo Homar begins these brief notes on Puerto Rican art and artists by discussing painter Francisco Oller. He goes on to state that art should be at the service of society and that artists should not be concerned with imitating avant-gardes who [...]

Rafael Montañez Ortiz describes the assemblages of Marcos Dimas as an extension of the artist’s childhood experience of digging up bits of Taíno artifacts in the fields of Puerto Rico. Ortiz proposes that Dimas’s works are the result of his [...]

This is the third chapter of the book by Lourival Gomes Machado that analyzes the development of modern art in Brazil, in which the author includes a reference to the contribution made to contemporary painting by the “spontaneous” artists (whose [...]

Ernesto B. Rodríguez analyzes Líbero Badii’s portrait sculptures. He claims that the visual arts strive to suggest the invisible by searching for its hidden laws, inventing new forms, and attempting to reveal a variety of sensitive spaces. [...]