Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

Commentary by essayist Alejandro Lora Risco on the Mexican art show organized in Lima by La Crónica newspaper. From within the event’s massive audience, the author highlights the presence of the individuals most likely to read his text: Peruvian [...]

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 [...]

Referencing such Latin American nations as Mexico, Brazil, Uruguay, and Venezuela, and the European nations of Spain and Italy, Venezuelan architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva examines certain artists and movements that in the aforementioned countries, [...]

This article lists the reasons why the painter Juan O’Gorman filed an appeal with the Second Court of the Federal District (Mexico City). His goal was to lift the censorship on the murals he had painted in the waiting area of the Benito Juárez [...]

Luis Islas García brings up an issue that is seldom addressed about the modern Ciudad Universitaria (UNAM campus): the visual arts integration executed by Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Chávez Morado, and Juan O’Gorman. He states [...]

This document is the script for the documentary Pintura Mural Mexicana [Mexican Mural Painting], to be produced by Manuel Barbachano Ponce’s company, Tele-producciones. The documentary was made in response to a request from the Instituto Nacional [...]

This article refers to the mural painted at the “Francisco Giner de los Ríos” primary school located in the central zone of Mexico City, and painted by Gabriel García Maroto. After forming a friendship with the Spanish poet, Federico García [...]

Juan O’Gorman addresses the problem of architecture from the perspective of functionality versus aesthetics and concludes that the two opposites should be fused into one: “architecture should serve as a useful object and as an object of [...]

In forty paragraphs, David Alfaro Siqueiros outlines the process of artistic integration of Mexican architecture and painting that produced the Ciudad Universitaria, the Presidente Juárez Apartment Blocks and the Museo Experimental El Eco. For [...]

The Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes [INBA, National Institute of Fine Arts] invited all painters, regardless of their trend, to take part in the first Salón Anual de Pintura [Annual Painting Salon]. The selection of works and the awarding of [...]

Raquel Tibol interviewed Dr. Atl, who declared his total agreement with the organizers of the Bienal Interamericana de Pintura y Grabado [Inter-American Biennial of Painting and Printmaking], sponsored by the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (INBA [...]

Antonio Rodríguez, who interviewed many painters, asked Juan O’Gorman if he thought that Rufino Tamayo—currently famous and fashionable—was actually an extraordinary painter, as he was considered in the United States. O’Gorman thought that [...]

In Mathias Goeritz’s opinion, the architect and sculptor Juan O’Gorman is an original visionary because in his artistic endeavors he tries to connect the arts and subordinate them to concepts that synthesize his extra-artistic convictions. [...]

During the construction of Mexico City’s UNAM campus, which was begun in 1950, architects and artists worked together to create buildings with murals on exterior walls. In this lengthy lecture, David Alfaro Siqueiros outlines the history of [...]

Diego Rivera maintains that the crisis in Mexican painting is an invention. It may be a crisis invented by the literati so they will have a pretext for writing their books, or perhaps created by critics so they will have material to send to their [...]

Vicente Fé Álvarez interviews David Alfaro Siqueiros, who speaks his mind about the current state of mural painting and talks about how he (Siqueiros) has tried to change it. The artist says that mural painting is like cinematography, explaining [...]

By 1954, Carlos Mérida had published 11 tenets related to what he called functional painting and its importance in the integration of the visual arts, as well as some theoretical concepts regarding architectonic-pictorial space. For Mérida, at that [...]