Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In its bulletin, GRUPO 8, created in Montevideo in 1959, exposed the need to organically and institutionally tie national industries to those Uruguayan artists affiliated with modernity. The objective was to promote labor sources for Uruguayan modern [...]

This document is a statement issued by the Montevideo-based GRUPO 8. Although diverse, all of the group members produced “abstract art”; in the late fifties, it was a sort of avant-garde functional to local industry insofar as the group connected [...]

In this response to Fernando de Szyszlo, well-known critic Sebastián Salazar Bondy points out how dynamic the Peruvian art scene is; against all odds, “there are people working tirelessly, with no pointless nostalgia as they undertake the creation [...]

Javier Sologuren reviews the abstract oil paintings by Fernando de Szyszlo exhibited at the Instituto de Arte Contemporáneo (IAC) [Institute of Contemporary Art] in Lima. The author praises the quality of the works, whose values express “visual [...]

In this article, the editor of the newspaper Noticias de Arequipa interviews José Sabogal on the occasion of the artist’s visit to Arequipa, and they talk about contemporary Peruvian painting and traditional art. On the former topic, Sabogal [...]

Juan Acha argues that national identities are based on the sense of belonging to a tradition, one which transcends and regulates the adoption of foreign models. Therefore, “nationality” rests on a balance between the continuity of what is [...]

This lecture was given at the last exhibition of Joaquín Torres García’s paintings, shortly before he died. The speaker, a Uruguayan writer who was very close to JTG, had long been a prominent figure in intellectual circles in Montevideo. [...]

After seeing the exhibition of works by Juan Manuel Blanes at the Teatro Solís in Montevideo (1941), Joaquín Torres-García noted that there were pictorial qualities in the artist’s sketches that were lost in the final [...]

In this essay, the architect and art critic Fernando García Esteban issued a harsh critique of the inopportune and improper attention paid to Uruguayan art and its anachronistic naturalism, by supporting an exhibition of four young artists [ [...]

This text was written in 1950 by Guillermo de Torre, a year after the death of Joaquín Torres García. In it, he made a brief assessment of the artistic master relating to modern art from his beginnings as a muralist in Barcelona, while [...]

The art critic Fernando García Esteban discusses the XVI Salón Nacional de Artes Plásticas, closely inspecting the paintings presented by each of the participating artists. He describes what he sees as the “epigonal poverty” of Uruguayan [...]

The Comisión de Cultura del Centro de Estudiantes de Humanidades (Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias, Montevideo, Universidad de la República, Uruguay) produced this leaflet as the invitation to their exhibition of works by “cutting edge” [...]

José Cúneo’s text entitled “Arte Abstracto” was read at a lecture that he gave in Montevideo. Although the exact date when it was written is unknown, the lecture appears to have been given in 1956 or 1957 at the Escuela de Bellas Artes in [...]

This essay published in June 1959 by Grupo 8 in the Boletín N° 1 de Artes Visuales expresses the desire to create common work spaces for artists working in different techniques in order to cross skills and generate new goals for each area. This [...]

This brief, anonymous article, published on January 25, 1959, in the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo, notes that the Galeria de Arte das Folhas closed out 1958 with a group exhibition of Concrete art. The article names the six [...]

The first Bienal Internacional de São Paulo at the Museu de Arte Moderna en São Paulo (MAM-SP) was presented in 1951; it was a groundbreaking event outside of Europe, attracting the sort of attention usually reserved for the Venice [...]

These documents are the invitation to and the program of the Third Exhibition of the Atelier-Abstração, held in São Paulo in June 1956. The Atelier-Abstração was a studio set up by the Brazilian artist Samson Flexor [...]

This poster was designed to promote the inaugural Exposição nacional de arte concreta: artes visuais, which was presented in December 1956 at the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM-SP) and in January–February 1957 at [...]

In this text, Jorge Páez Vilaró analyzes the pictorial work of Juan Carlos Figari Castro, son of painter Pedro Figari, pointing out his talent as a draftsman and the overall merit of his art. Páez Vilaró, himself a painter, understands that the [...]

The article was motivated by the book published by Michel Seuphor, a year before in 1949, in Paris, the spirit that integrated magazine Cercle et carré two decades prior. The book aimed to formulate a brief history on European abstract art. The [...]

This article is by Hans Platschek who was living in Montevideo between 1939 and 1953. The German artist makes a self- analysis on the resulting situation of postwar modernism, specifically the debated notion of “Art Nouveau or young art” both in [...]

This essay is on the work of Victor Varsarely that in 1958 was exhibited for the first time in Montevideo, giving rise to glowing journalistic commentaries. A commentary was also written on the TTG (Taller Torres García [Torres Garcia Workshop]) [...]

This article is part of a published booklet by the TTG (Taller Torres García [Torres Garcia Workshop]) in October of 1958. The TTG sought to respond to the criticism that had been accumulating for a very long time against the disciples of Art Master [...]

This manifesto formed part of the exhibition catalogue of the exhibition by the Primer Salón del Movimiento Libre de Artistas Plásticos of Montevideo. It also included the list of the participants and the written bylaws. This manifesto was claimed [...]

The art critic Fernando García Esteban points to a local artistic reality that is in grave crisis, as it is out of touch with the concerns inherent to contemporary European artists, in his opinion. This a characteristic was considered to be “ [...]

The art critic Fernando García Esteban analyses the difference between an “opinion” on the Visual Arts and the qualified judgment that should be issued by the art critic. It reflects the enormous difference between the artistic ideals that [...]

This essay, is on the art critic Fernando García Esteban and on his noted intellectual presence in Montevideo during the fifties and the sixties. The art critic echoes the difficulties encountered when critiquing local art and the differences in [...]

Figures such as José Pedro Argul, Jorge Romero Brest, and others of national and regional importance provided a new turn in fifties art criticism—a tendency akin to the Generación del 45 in literature. This essay by Argul was first published in [...]

In response to the hypotheses of an “integral art” proposed by Alejandro Romualdo, the writer states his belief that Modern art trends entail a progressive “destruction of reality.” This is why art’s síntesis cannot entail a return to [...]

This text is Alejandro Romualdo Valle’s final round in the debate he carried on with Luis Miró Quesada Garland about the first prize at the Second Salón Moncloa, awarded to the painting Pan by Alfredo Ruiz Rosas. The writer considers the [...]

In this interview, Romano Espinoza Cáceda classifies Peruvian art into three major periods: ancient (decorative, with its own characteristics), colonial (marked by “natural” European influences) and modern (attempting to pinpoint what makes art [...]

In this article, the writer responds to the comments of Luis Miró Quesada Garland, defending the use of the category “integral art.” He defines this term as a fusion of different trends into “a new creative orientation” structured under a [...]

In this interview with Fernando de Szyszlo, the painter states that he is misunderstood within the Lima arts scene. He refutes the notion that an artist must be socially engaged because, in his judgment, “a painter’s only duty is to be a good [...]

Alejandro Romualdo Valle critiques the III Salón de Pintura Manual Moncloa which, in his judgment, posits “abstract art as a complete substitute for art,” arguing that abstraction divides man from art, thus debilitating the latter. [He states] [...]

In this text, Luis Miró Quesada Garland responds to the letter from critic and playwright Edgardo Pérez Luna published on November 7, 1954. To counter the opinion that abstract art has no “meaning,” Miró Quesada Garland cites Hegel, Schiller, [...]

Fernando de Szyszlo sent this open letter to the editor of Cultura Peruana magazine in response to the article by journalist Jesús Manual Orbegozo that was published in this same magazine (Lima, December 1955). Szyszlo denied the declarations [...]

Fernando de Szyszlo was interviewed following his success at the III Salón Moncloa. After presenting a brief biographical sketch of the artist, the anonymous interviewer records his opinions on the subject of contemporary art: “the fruit of a [...]

In the opinion of Alejandro Romualdo Valle, the work created by Alfredo Ruiz Rosas that recently won a first prize is evidence of a significant improvement in Peruvian art. He sees it as a result of the consolidation of several art trends that are [...]

Here, Edgardo Pérez Luna praises the mural by Teodoro Núñez Ureta executed in the building that housed Peru’s Treasury Department. The writer argues that the allegories created by the painter in the mural elude the conventions of the genre and [...]

This time the argument is about the expression “significant painting,” which the author Francisco Miró Quesada Cantuarias contrasts with the term “abstract painting.” He claims that the former has a logical or scientific meaning, which his [...]

In 1956, the art critic José Pedro Argul published a text written the year before for the faculty at the Colegio Sagrada Familia. In it, he outlined his ideas on visual art, his studies, and his philosophy. It reviewed the concept of “beauty,” [...]

This essay by Guido Castillo, a student of Joaquin Torres Garcia, and partner in ideology, was written for the magazine ASIR on the exhibition on the works by Joaquín Torres García organized in Montevideo in 1951, two years after his death. The [...]

This catalogue accompanied the 1959 exhibition of twelve oil paintings by Elsa Gramcko, an abstract artist from Venezuela, at the Pan American Union of the Organization of American States in Washington, D.C. This exhibition marked Gramcko’s [...]

“Declaración de los intelectuales colombianosdurante el paro general” is an open letter dated May 8, 1957 published in issue No. 13 of the magazine Mito. It is signed by twenty-five people, among them politicians, writers, poets, and artists. [...]

The report published in 1956 by the CGM (Club de Grabado de Montevideo) provides information on the institution’s objectives. In the group’s opinion, prints can be used to reach a range of different audiences and address a broad spectrum of [...]

In this essay, Venezuelan architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva discusses in general terms why an architect might incorporate paintings and sculptures into an architectural project and the social implications of this integration. He outlines the concepts [...]

Entitled “Testimonio: Las constantes de nuestra generación,” this text published in Revista Sardio (Caracas, 5–6. January–April, 1959) clarifies the reasons for the magazine’s creation in light of criticism leveled against it. The founding [...]

In his review of the XIX Salón de Arte Venezolano (1958), the critic Perán Erminy notes the ingenious reliance on historical criteria in the arrangement of works selected for the event, from the old landscape masters to the new style of Abstract [...]

This “Statement” in the first issue of Revista Sardio presents the reasons for the founding of the publication and lays out its aesthetic, ethical, and political thinking. The magazine rejects an aestheticism that it deems incapable of grasping [...]

In this text, journalist Sergio Antillano examines the life of his friend and contemporary, artist Héctor Poleo, commenting specifically on his studies at the Academia de Bellas Artes in Caracas and the Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City. [...]