Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this interview, art critic Marta Traba poses ten questions to Colombian artist Beatriz González. Traba begins by inquiring about the ironic nature of González’s subjects and the kitschy character of the objects she produces. In [...]

In this April 1964 magazine article, Marta Traba attests to Beatriz González’s artistic talents, reaffirming the decision by MAM (Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá) to exhibit the young artist’s work in a debut solo exhibition [...]

For Marta Traba, the Fernando de Szyszlo exhibition in Bogotá (Colombia) evidences that “the mistake does not lie in wanting to be American, but in how one is American.” In her opinion, the series of works by the Peruvian painter inspired by the [...]

This document consists of a personal invitation printed on a sheet of paper, in which “a group of people who are residents of the city” invite those who are interested in “any authentic form of culture” to attend a meeting to be held at 6 p.m [...]

The chapter “Espacios ambientales: la ilusión óptica” in the book Verdades sobre arte, mentiras sobre papel. Encuentros con Santiago Cárdenas y su obra, is an interview done by Jaime Ardila and Camilo Lleras with the painter Santiago Cárdenas [...]

This article documents a $20,000 prize awarded to the Colombian artist Ana Mercedes Hoyos for her work in the exhibition Espacios ambientales, held by the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá (1968). The work awarded the prize was Blanco sobre blanco, [...]

The brochure Trastorno: diálogo entre Jaime Iregui y Carlos Salas records a conversation held between the two Colombian artists in May 1999, days before their joint exhibition at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Pereira. The Pereira exhibition would [...]

The Colombian curator and art critic Eduardo Serrano introduced the retrospective exhibition Manolo Vellojín. Dos décadas (1987) at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Bogotá. In this exhibition, the writer points out three “sources” of Abstract art [...]

The article “Once antioqueños en el M.A.M.” by Eduardo Serrano Rueda discusses the exhibition of the same name held at the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá in 1975. That show featured eleven artists from the city of Medellín, capital of the [...]

“Observaciones” by Jaime Iregui, the artist and cultural agent, is the text from the first section of Tándem 2, the publication that also reported on the workshops presented at the exhibition Observaciones. Obra en Tándem con Carlos Salas [...]

Olga de Amaral: Cuatro tiempos is the title of the retrospective exhibition of works presented by the textile artist at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Bogotá from November 1993 to February 1994. It is also the title of the catalogue essay written by [...]

This essay appeared in the catalogue of Carlos Caicedo, Reportero Gráfico, the exhibition presented at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Bogotá in 1976. In his essay, the writer and journalist Daniel Samper Pizano discusses the work of the [...]

This article is from the brochure for one of the first video installations ever to be exhibited in Colombia: Gilles Charalambos “Tortas de trigo”; it was shown at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Bogotá in 1981. In the article, José Hernán Aguilar [...]

This essay appeared in the catalogue for La sensación del tiempo humano. Homenaje a Giorgione, the exhibition of works by the Colombian artist Luis Hernando Giraldo (b. 1946) that was presented in March 1999 at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Bogotá. [...]

In this text, Carmen María Jaramillo reviews Autorreflexiones de la pintura, an exhibition of work by Colombian painter Carlos Salas’s held at Galería El Museo in Bogotá in 1994. Jaramillo addresses the formal aspects of Salas’s art as well as [...]

The text “El color de la vida, el color de la muerte” by critic and writer Darío Ruiz Gómez was published in the flyer put out by the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name featuring work by painter [...]

Ricardo Arcos-Palma’s article “Liliana Angulo, del otro lado del espejo” is a critical reflection on Liliana Angulo’s work. The text was published on April 4, 2007 in Escáner Cultural, a web-based magazine specialized in art from Chile. In [...]

This document is the introduction to the catalogue of a show of contemporary painting from Venezuela organized in June 1963 by the Museo de Arte Moderno (MAM) of Bogotá in conjunction with the exhibition hall of the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango. [...]

Published in the Bogotá-based newspaper La Prensa on October 31, 1996, the article entitled “Generación Instalada” by journalist María Margarita García is a critical and descriptive review of the fifth edition of the Bienal de Bogotá. The [...]

In a text entitled “El Arte y la violencia en la era del narcotráfico” that deals with art and violence, Álvaro Medina describes and analyzes the radical transformation that the armed conflict in Colombia underwent in the early eighties. In it [...]

“El arte y la violencia revolucionaria” is one of the chapters of Arte y violencia en Colombia desde 1948 by Álvaro Medina. A historian and curator, Medina provides a serious reflection on the relationships between artistic practices and the [...]

Curator and historian Álvaro Medina wrote an essay that addresses the socio-political and aesthetic history of Colombia during the second half of the 20th century. One section of the essay, “El arte y la violencia bipartidista,” deals with the [...]

In Carolina Ponce de León’s chapter about the Colombian artist Luis Fernando Roldán, in El efecto mariposa [The Butterfly Effect], she discusses two periods in his career, one prior to and one after Parque de la Independencia [Independence Park [...]

The article “Monólogo con los objetos” [Monologue with Objects], written by Mario Opazo, was published on the “La guía” [The Guide] page of the “Artista Invitado” [Invited Artist] cultural section of the El Espectador newspaper (June 6 [...]

This article, written by the Spanish art critic Francisco Gil Tovar, discusses the Banco de la República Art Collection three years after it was founded. The article is divided into five brief sections, as follows: an introductory paragraph, “La [...]

The article entitled “Seropositivo, el contagio con la realidad” [Seropositive: Infected by Reality] was published in the newspaper El Nuevo Siglo [The New Century] on January 20, 1994. It was a review of the exhibition of the Seropositivo (1994 [...]

This article refers to the work of the video artist and TV/film producer, Rodrigo Castaño, shown at the IV Salón Atenas at the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá, in October 1978. Castaño’s work consists of three videos: Autorretrato (1978); [...]

Gloria Zea, the director of the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá, Ángel Kalenberg, manager of the Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales of Montevideo, Uruguay, and Axel Stein, director of the exhibition hall of the Fundación Eugenio Mendoza, in Caracas [...]

Aproximación a una historia del videoarte en Colombia is one of the links on the website http://bitio.net/vac Historia del Videoarte en Colombia, a research project by video artist and professor Gilles Charalambos Bruyère that provides, free of [...]

Álvaro Medina analyzes the work of Colombian artist Luis Paz, who “works with ideas more than with images.” Medina defines Paz’s work as Conceptual art, a category that allows him to explain what is supposedly understood by this trend in [...]

This text is the closing chapter of Consuelo Pabón’s essay “Actos de Fabulación. Arte, Cuerpo y Pensamiento Año 2000: Memorias de una Itinerancia.” In 2005, it was awarded the prize given by the Colombian Ministerio de Cultura to a [...]

Art critic Miguel González wrote the text “Sobre Marta Elena Vélez” for the exhibition Marta Elena Vélez [1980-1986] held at the Museo de Arte Moderno of Medellín (MAMM). González compares Vélez’s first exhibition, which took place in [...]

In this essay the critic and curator Eduardo Serrano introduces the exhibition of works by the Colombian artist Álvaro Barrios at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Bogotá in March 1977. Serrano begins his essay with the most conventional of all [...]

The Museo de Arte Moderno [Museum of Modern Art] of Bogotá (MAM) printed this catalog to introduce the exhibition, Pantoja de Bolivia [Pantoja from Bolivia] (1964). The document provides a biography of Óscar Pantoja in which he is shown to be a [...]

The “Acta de constitución del Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá” [Articles of Association of the Museum of Modern Art in Bogota] begins with the following two lines: “On November 20, 1962, at the Teatro Colón, at 7 p.m., the Museo de Arte [...]

“I Bienal de Arte de Bogotá” [1st Bogotá Art Biennial], by the Colombian critic and curator Miguel González, is a newspaper article about the event that took place at the Museo de Arte Moderno [Museum of Modern Art] in Bogotá in 1988. Gonzá [...]

The critic and curator Eduardo Serrano writes the opening essay in the catalogue for the Iª Bienal de Arte de Bogotá [1st Bogotá Art Biennial]. He evokes the commemoration of the 450th anniversary of the founding of the city of Bogotá to [...]

This document is the catalogue in brochure form accompanying an exhibition of work by Pablo Solano (1928?2013), entitled Óleos y Dibujos [Oil Paintings and Drawings], that opened at the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá (MAM) on June 8, 1965. The [...]

This catalogue in brochure form describes the show of wooden sculpture by Hernando Tejada that opened on May 25, 1965, at the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá (MAM). The document consists of a black and white photograph of the Colombian artist, an [...]

In this article, Argentine art critic Marta Traba presents the outcome of the Primer Salón Intercol de Artistas Jóvenes [First Intercol Salon of Young Artists] (1964), which she describes as a way to come into contact with emerging trends in [...]

This fully illustrated catalogue to the Primer Salón Intercol de Artistas Jóvenes [First Intercol Salon of Young Artists] (1964) is divided into five parts: the cover, featuring a photograph of the exhibition that took place at the first seat of [...]

This document is pertinent to the official founding of a museum of modern art in the city of Bogotá on July 27, 1955. The ceremony, which was organized by the office of Education Minister Aurelio Caicedo Ayerbe, was held at the Hotel Tequendama. [...]

The art historian Germán Rubiano Caballero wrote this essay in 1971, on the occasion of the retrospective exhibition of works by Andrés de Santa María at the Museo de Arte Moderno [Museum of Modern Art] in Bogotá. This exhibition included for the [...]

In 1984, the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá (MAM) in conjunction with the Flota Mercante Grancolombiana published a large-format book entitled Ramírez Villamizar with the most complete set of reproductions of work by this Colombian artist found in [...]

This document is the catalogue for the exhibition Tres pintores argentinos (1963), featuring the work of Antonio Berni, Carlos Alonso, and Carlos Uria. In addition to a text written by art critic Marta Traba that presents the artists and works—and [...]

This document is the catalogue published by the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá (MAM) on the occasion of the exhibition of Peruvian painter Fernando de Szyszlo entitled Pinturas sobre el poema de Atahualpa (1964). It contains two black and white [...]

Issued between August and September of 1963, this document is the first annual report of the activity of the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá (MAM). A foldable brochure, the document consists of a list of actions undertaken and of individuals and [...]

In this text, Colombian art critic Eduardo Serrano—curator of the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá—presents the exhibition Arte y Política held at that institution in 1974. Serrano asserts that politics is more than a recurring theme in the work [...]

In this article, published in November 1963, the Colombian journalist Gloria Valencia Diago interviews the Spanish artist Juan Antonio Roda, in connection with the exhibition of his oil painting series, Tumbas,at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Bogot [...]

The catalogue for the exhibition Tumbas (1963) by Juan Antonio Roda consists of a two-page leaflet; on the first page, which is fully illustrated, is the exhibition title and artist’s name. On the next page, there are four paragraphs written by the [...]