Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This is Ferreira Gullar’s eulogy for his friend, the sculptor Franz Weissmann, whom he calls “one of the [Brazilian] inventors of the imagined universe.” The author remembers having met Weissmann in 1952 at Mário Pedrosa& [...]

This article, published in the magazine of the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM), highlights the artist Judith Lauand, the subject of the “anthological exhibition” Judith Lauand: Experiências. It begins with a [...]

This text includes a few excerpts from the six lectures that Jorge Romero Brest gave in São Paulo in 1948. At that time, Romero Brest held an academic position at the Universidad de Montevideo and was the director of the magazine Ver y estimar [...]

Alicia Haber was the curator of the 1991 exhibition Charrúas y montes criollos, presenting the contemporary work of Uruguayan artist Rimer Cardillo, who had been residing in New York since 1984. According to the curatorial text, the exhibition [...]

Rodrigo Quijano argues that Tiempo detenido—the installation by ceramicist Carlos Runcie Tanaka—does more than illustrate a traumatic event. Since its beginnings, Quijano asserts, the work has been linked to the artist’s search for identity. To [...]

The author, Natalia Majluf, states that these works, created using the techniques of the “minutemen” photographers that work in provincial city plazas, could initially be thought as ethnographic or touristic photography. Nevertheless, when [...]

In this text, Rodrigo Quijano argues that Lima 01—a series of photographs of inverted images of interiors of old abandoned buildings in downtown Lima—addresses questions of forgetting and urban decay. The series makes reference to the design of [...]

In her text, Maria Lúcia Bueno follows the course of twentieth century visual arts, from modernity to globalization. She in turn probes the art world, relating art spaces and dissemination of art to their social context. Based on her analysis of the [...]

In her text, Maria Lúcia Bueno follows the course of twentieth century visual arts, from modernity to globalization. She in turn probes the art world, relating art spaces and dissemination of art to their social context. Based on her analysis of the [...]

In this unpublished article, created as a PDF, the Uruguayan video-artist Fernando Álvarez Cozzi discusses the origins of video-art in Uruguay, the form’s current situation (in 2008), and certain theoretical aspects of the poetic dimension of an [...]

Mario Sagradini discusses the connections Uricchio (the pseudonym used by Rodolfo Troncone) may have had with artists who were involved in the emergence of the Arte Concreto — Invención movement in 1944 (which was originally based in Buenos Aires [...]

The researcher May Puchet interviews Fernando Álvarez Cozzi, who had been a member of the Octaedro group ever since it was founded in late 1978. The artist explains the political and cultural situation in Uruguay at the time that Octaedro was [...]

In this report, issued in 1992 by NUVA (Núcleo Uruguayo de Videoarte), the Uruguayan video artist Fernando Álvarez Cozzi discusses the origins of latent cultural identities in Latin America and explores the specific nature of video art in Uruguay [...]

This document is the catalogue to the exhibition Videos en Banda (1993), the third edition of an event dedicated to video art from Uruguay and abroad organized by the Núcleo Uruguayo de Videoarte. Held at the Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales de [...]

The catalogue La condición del video. 25 años de videoarte en el Uruguay provides a review of the major figures in the history of Uruguayan video art and describes the development of the movement in this region of Latin America from the time of its [...]

This essay is on the advanced investigative paper written by the researcher May Puchet, on the emergence of group artistic strategies, in character of a group, during the seventies and eighties in Uruguay, looking to reconstruct an artistic narrative [...]

This brief catalogue essay is by Haroldo González, the curator of Las veredas de la Patria Chica, the exhibition that was organized as a tribute to Teresa Vila. The fact that González was an important figure among Uruguayan conceptual artists in [...]

The Uruguayan artist Carlos Capelán created a fictitious entity he called “Post Colonial Liberation Army” which he used to issue personal, though supposedly anonymous, manifestos in which he discussed various things related to art practices, the [...]

Luis Camnitzer reflects on the subject of an artist’s “signature” as he discusses the biographical statements that are encouraged by the institutions that control monetary values in the art field and cater to the market of the individual “ [...]

In a volume entitled Arte, Estado y no he estado, published in 2012, Luis Camnitzer compiles a series of essays he wrote between 1968 and 2006. In them, he explains his focus on Conceptual Art and the socioeconomic roots of his political thinking. [...]

The article by Yamandú Canosa was published in the catalogue of his exhibition when he obtained the Premio Pedro Figari 2007, awarded by the Central Bank of Uruguay for the distinction of his artistic development. In this essay, the Uruguayan [...]

Carlos Capelán’s installations include texts expressed as proclamations presented under the acronym PCLA (r): Post Colonial Liberation Army (re materialización). The Uruguayan artist’s work alludes to and emulates manifestos produced by [...]

This is an interview by the art critic Rosa Queralt with Yamandú Canosa in regard to his 2003 exhibition held in Spain, named La línea h (iceberg), at the Art Center of Salamanca. It was published in the catalogue Premio Pedro Figari (2007–08 [...]

In this essay, the art critic Alicia Haber analyzed the 1995 exhibition Bye Bye Yaugurú by Nelbia Romero at the Centro Municipal de Exposiciones, Subte de Montevideo. The exhibition linked the conceptual aspects of the artistic ideas and concerns of [...]

In this essay, the artist and performer Clemente Padín explains the concept of “street art and urban art” following the alternative art exhibition, Tomarte, held in the city of Rosario, Argentina, in April 1990, with the pretense [...]

In this essay, various aspects of the II Encontro Latino-americano de Artes Plásticas [Second Latin American Meeting of the Visual Arts] held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, are summarized, emphasizing the performing artistic practices and the need to [...]

This essay is about an invitation that was extended to Clemente Padín by the Yellow Springs Institute (USA) to perform at the gathering of Latin American artists held in October of 1989, resulting from information on the event. The artist, in an [...]

This is a critical review of the I Bienal de Artes Plásticas that was held at the Subte Municipal de Montevideo, an exhibition space in the capital city of Uruguay, in 1992. The author explicitly acknowledges Clemente Padín for his presentation of [...]

Artist Nelbia Romero wrote this document on her exhibition project Bye, Bye, Yaugurú, curated by critic Alicia Haber. Written on a loose page, the text explains the aims of an exhibition that set out to reaffirm the need to engage the cultural [...]

In this article Clemente Padín discusses the historical development of performance art in Europe and in North America. He also refers to specific examples to describe the nature of this action art as practiced in Latin America. He believes [...]

Here Clemente Padín sketches a retrospective of his life as an artist—he was an experimental poet, graphic designer, performer, and networker—during the Uruguayan military-civilian dictatorship (that lasted from the June 27, 1973 coup d’état [...]

In this essay, critic and performer Silvio de Gracia explains the importance of and provides context for “action art” in Latin America. He demonstrates its specificity in the region, showing how it differs from similar tendencies in Europe and [...]

The art critics Fernando Davis and Fernanda Nogueira interview the Uruguayan artist Clemente Padín. The conversation focuses mainly on the artist’s literary work, especially his visual poetry which launched a literary and aesthetic revolutionary [...]

In this text, artist and essayist Francisco Tomsich interviews Clemente Padín about his artistic career and the performance he did at the Boxing Club de Barrio Sur in Montevideo in 1987 in which he condemned the forced disappearance of individuals [...]

This article is about the group, led by Clemente Padín, which created the magazine Los Huevos del Plata, a departure from the literary style that was favored in Uruguayan cultural circles in the 1960s. The Uruguayan author’s goal was to present [...]

In this text, Alicia Haber analyzes how a large and complex installation by Nelbia Romero shows the toponymic-linguistic legacy of Guarani culture in a country as European as Uruguay. From the mid-eighties to the mid-nineties, there was a social [...]

In this leaflet Nelbia Romero expresses her goal of recognizing the identity and ethnicity of the indigenous race that once lived on the land that is now Uruguay. That race was, in fact, exterminated during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. [...]

Luis Camnitzer harshly criticizes the contemporary “young art” that emerged in Uruguay, while also critiquing his own 1960s generation. This article is of interest because of its highly controversial nature, given that it was published at a time [...]

This text is the manifesto of Latin American art issued by the Sindicato Uruguayo de Artistas Plásticos (SUAP) in 1991, after the Primer Congreso de Arte Hispanoamericano held in La Paz, Bolivia. It addresses issues facing the region as a whole, [...]

On the occasion of a retrospective exhibition of works by Uruguayan draftsman who were active in the 1960s (a movement that was known as the Dibujazo), Gabriel Peluffo’s essay seeks to place the movement in the relevant socio-political context, [...]

In this essay from 1992, Jean Clay outlines the salient concepts that are intrinsic to Lygia Clark’s work. In his opinion, the Brazilian artist’s trajectory is marked by the tendency toward fusion, an obsession with synthesis, and a [...]

In this essay, the British curator and art critic Guy Brett traces the linkage between the different phases that made up the artistic career of Brazilian artist Lygia Clark. From her Neo-Constructivist paintings and sculptures made in the late 1950s [...]

The synopsis and the annotations in English are coming soon. However, our bilingual readers can click on “Español” to access this information in Spanish [...]

In this essay, Graciela Pantin analyzes this manifestation of the “spirit of the times,” as expressed in the visual arts, establishing a set of “parameters that identify the socio-historical background of our contemporary nature.” She goes on [...]

The synopsis and the annotations in English are coming soon.                                However, our bilingual readers can click on “Español” to access this information in Spanish [...]

In her essay “Apolonio: un objeto encontrado”—about the painter Luis Luna’s series El libro de Apolonio—the critic and curator Carmen María Jaramillo takes a long look at the work of this Colombian artist. Jaramillo scrutinizes the visual [...]

The article “¡Que viva Manrique!” [Hooray for Manrique!], written by the editorial team at the Bogotá newspaper El Espectador and published on April 16, 1996, referred to Pedro Manrique Figueroa. Precursor del Collage en Colombia [Pedro [...]

In the text “Invitación al sacrificio” [An Invitation to Sacrifice], commentator Alejandro Torres discusses the poetic quality of the staging and production in the work of the Mapa Teatro collective directed by Colombian artist Rolf Abderhalden [...]

This text by curator Zuleiva Vivas provides a visual overview of and a reflection on the works by Ricardo Alcaide, Nelsón Garrido, María Eugenia Arria, Alberto Asprino, Mauricio Lupini, Alfredo Ramírez, Luisa Richter, Fabiola Sequera, Jesús [...]

This interview with Venezuelan sculptor Víctor Valera by journalist Teresa Casique makes mention of the artist’s early exhibitions of painting, specifically the one held in Paris in 1953 and the one held at the Ateneo in Caracas in 1965 (there is [...]