Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This is the first of two articles by Sebastián Salazar Bondy, published under the pseudonym “Juan Eye,” on the Mexican art exhibition organized in Lima by La Crónica newspaper. The author believes the show is exceptional for its positive [...]

Using newspaper sources, Esther Acevedo explores the diverse ways in which different groups of artists and intellectuals arose during 1920-1924 around the concept of “what is national,” particularly in the visual arts. She also investigates the [...]

The article is a review of the Exposición de arte mexicano [Exhibition of Mexican Art] that was held at the Hospital Juárez. It included paintings, sculpture, and engravings by Mexican artists such as Diego Rivera, Roberto Montenegro, Carlos Orozco [...]

This short article reviews the career of the artist from Jalisco, Roberto Montenegro. In Justino Fernández’s opinion, Montenegro is characterized by his “sensitivity to change, enticed by motion.” With these words, the historian celebrates the [...]

This article is a review of the exhibition of 19th- and 20th-century Jalisco painting that took place at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in the capital of Mexico. The exhibition included works by José María Estrada, Dr. Atl, Roberto Montenegro, José [...]

On the fifteenth anniversary of the Galería de Arte Mexicano [GAM, Mexican Art Gallery], Margarita de Ponce reviews its activities and discusses what she considers to be its greatest contributions toward the distribution and promotion of Mexican art [...]

Fradique’s article, signed in Guadalajara, which is the capital of the state of Jalisco, sets out to review the work of some of the artists from that state. He begins with the “elders”: Dr. Atl, Alfredo Ramos Martínez (sic) and Rafael Ponce de [...]

This article in the Excélsior newspaper reports on the visit Frances Flynn Paine, the American promoter of Mexican art, made to Mexico. She covered all the official institutions in the city in order to collect material for two shows on Mexican art [...]

In this essay, originally published in 1970, Jorge Alberto Manrique points out that in the 1950s the Mexican School of Painting began to stagnate in terms of both form and motifs. However, official support allowed it to maintain its control of the [...]

Xavier Moyssén writes about mural painting’s nineteenth-century precedents, in private houses and in pulquerías [agave sap saloons,] and works painted by nineteenth-century students at the Academia; the artists, he includes, are José Obregón, [...]

The art critic Ceferino Palencia reviews the exhibition at the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana [Salon of Mexican Visual Arts], one of three events presented in Mexico City to celebrate Mother’s Day. Twenty-five “accredited” painters were [...]

In this article, art critic Jorge Juan Crespo de la Serna wrote about mural painting and its importance in the evolution of Mexican art. He believed the murals should be intimately connected to the life of the country that produces them given their [...]

In this interesting article published in the Revista Moderna de México (1898-1911), the most important forum of the era for cultural journalism, the poet José Juan Tablada raises different topics in order to document the artistic production of the [...]

The writer Xavier Villaurrutia comments on the town of Taxco (in the state of Guerrero) and its natural attraction. For him Taxco is like a flash of lightning that has now illuminated him, and he calls it a revelation. Taxco is synonymous with [...]

This short article reports on some painters’ comments on possible changes in the curriculum at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes and the Escuelas de Pintura al Aire Libre [Open-Air Schools of Painting]. Details of the changes were kept [...]

This “exclusive” interview with Mexican illustrator and painter Miguel Covarrubias took place on the occasion of a trip to Mexico City. During this conversation Covarrubias talked at length about a series of “impossible interviews” which had [...]

The author summarizes a lecture given by poet José Gorostiza in which he talks about the “little teachers” of the new school of Mexican painting, as well as the “affinities that are enough, in my opinion, to characterize the work in its [...]

The article provides a detailed description of an encounter with the artist known as “El Chango” [The Monkey] Cabral in his studio during the creation of a removable mural. The reporter describes in detail the composition and animal-like [...]

This is a historical review of the visual arts in Jalisco since pre-Hispanic times: the tonaltecas and their pottery, essential links in the chain of “tradition,” through the Viceroy period when there were plenty of “European copies.” The [...]

In this document José Gorostiza analyzes the works of eight artists who participated in the Pintores mexicanos modernos [Modern Mexican Painters] exhibition organized by Carlos Mérida and Carlos Orozco Romero for the brewery, Carta Blanca. He [...]

In his article, Dr. Atl, does a broad study and recognition of the art movement in progress. Historically speaking, he says that there have been three ways to create art; one, which is that of folk art that has always been created; another is the [...]

In a retrospective article written in 1962, Justino Fernández discusses Roberto Montenegro, the man and the painter. As he reviews Montenegro’s art, he compares the latter’s studio to the portrait painter’s room where someone poses, someone [...]

In this article Ricardo Gómez Robelo takes us through the evolution of Roberto Montenegro’s work. He shows an artist who was interested in knowledge and research. Because Montenegro was an excellent designer, the critic refers to Goya, Beardsley, [...]

In his article “Nuestros Dibujantes” [Our Draftsmen], Silvio Lago identifies with Mexican painter Roberto Montenegro’s art and discusses his transition, which parallels the continent-wide search for an Americanist literary renaissance, an [...]

The writer Ermilo Abreu Gómez recommends a two-pronged approach to understanding the work of Roberto Montenegro. The first would consider his role as an illustrator of books and periodicals as from 1908 when he began working in Paris with Paul Iribe [...]

In this piece, Febronio Ortega gathered a variety of opinions from the art world. Among them, he recalled Diego Rivera’s description of his visit to the “Museo de Mediocridades” [Museum of Mediocrities]—Rivera’s characterization of the [...]

José Vasconcelos, the Minister of Public Education, discusses why he did not take advantage of architects or engineers for projects such as El Estadio [The Stadium] or La Escuela Benito Juárez, a model for schools not just in Mexico, albeit [...]

Daniel Cosío Villegas wonders why the natural order of having better writers than artists—painters, to be more precise—has been inverted in Mexico. He concludes that there are many reasons: an intense nationalism in politics as well as in [...]

The intention of the writer, José Corral Rigand, was to create a written portrait of Roberto Montenegro. He visited Montenegro accompanied by Juan José Tablada (a poet) and Juan Sánchez Azora. Right beside the artist was his painting, Hembra [...]

This text reviews the murals painted by Federico Cantú and Roberto Montenegro at the Papillon Bar on the Antiguo Callejón de la Condesa, beside the House of Tiles in Mexico City’s historic district (currently Madero Street.) The businessman [...]

José Gorostiza analyzes a group of painters who comprise what he calls the Nueva Escuela de Pintura [New School of Painting] in Mexico. Its representatives include Julio Castellanos, Jesús Guerrero Galván, Agustín Lazo, Carlos Mérida, Roberto [...]

In this article, Honduran writer Rafael Heliodoro Valle provides a panorama of the most important moments in the history of Mexican painting. Valle claims that Mexico’s artistic production is preeminent and widely praised by international critics. [...]

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York inaugurated an exhibition of Mexican art that encompasses from the pre-Hispanic era up to and including examples of contemporary art, noteworthy among them the work by painters such as Orozco, Siqueiros, [...]

In this book, published in 1951, Virginia Stewart looks back at the 45 most representative artists of modern Mexican painting. Her list, created at the end of the golden era of the “Mexican School of Painting,” includes painters from the first [...]

Rubén Darío kept in close contact with the Mexican artists settled in Paris, such as Alfredo Ramos Martínez, Roberto Montenegro, Ángel Zárraga, Diego Rivera, and Dr. Atl. This statement by Ernesto Mejía Sánchez documents the exchanges with the [...]

The writer of this article states that during these years of aesthetic crisis, just when a new world is being constructed with new resources, artists approaching maturity have been confronted by a serious, unexpected problem. These artists are being [...]

Jesús B. González, a friend of Saturnino Herrán, wrote this article for the magazine Azulejos. At first he states that he will not be writing art criticism, as he believes this “ha hecho más daño que las malas escuelas” [“has done more [...]

In this document Fernán Feliz de Amadora, a writer from Argentina, writes about the possible association of painter Roberto Montenegro and the Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío. To him, the painter follows one of the newest trends in the art field, that [...]