Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

The journalist Raquel Chonchol wrote under the pseudonym, “Ray Ponte,” for The Daily Journal, a Venezuelan English language newspaper. She reviewed this exhibition on the occasion of a visit by some high-profile members of The International [...]

The exhibition 32 artistas de las Américas was held in Bogotá from February 7–17, 1949. The show was one of the cultural activities promoted by the Visual Arts Unit of the Cultural Affairs Department of the Pan American Union/General Secretariat [...]

In “América Latina: Arte e Identidad,” Germán Rubiano formulates a criticism of the exhibition The Spirit of Latin America held at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York in 1989. He questions a reading of Latin America that, in his view, [...]

In this lecture, Gustavo Buntinx looks to convince his listeners that the current idea of “Latin American art” is an imperialist construct, and argues that the only solution is for them to reinvent it in its entirety. He begins by declaring that [...]

In this article, Argentine critic and gallerist Clara Diament Sujo—who lived in Caracas for a time before settling in New York—describes the activities that German-Venezuelan artist Gego engaged in during her one-year stay in the United States. [...]

In this interview conducted by Mexican performance artist and writer Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Chicano artist Rupert Garcia discusses his perspective on Chicano art, particularly its relation to mainstream institutions and current theoretical trends. [...]

This document includes the text of the catalogue and the program of lectures and film screenings related to the exhibition, Posada: Printmaker to the Mexican People. The catalogue opens with “Corrido of the Coming of Don José Guadalupe Posada to [...]

In this text, Alfred H. Barr, Jr. introduces the catalog of the collection of Latin American art of the Museum of Modern Art with remarks reviewing the history of the museum’s involvement with Latin American art and recent efforts to expand its [...]

This essay by Frances Flynn Paine covers the life and career of Diego Rivera, emphasizing its romantic aspects as well as his early vocation, his extraordinary imagination, his great intelligence, and his passionate temperament. The narrative is [...]

In this article, Roberto Pontual ponders the concept of “discovery,” and discusses the development of a Latin American awareness that has been imposed from elsewhere. This external view establishes a sense of foreign domination that sees the [...]

Referring to the recent visit to Mexico in the early 1940s of Alfred Barr, director and founding father of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the writer notes Barr’s surprise when he found out that Mexico did not yet have a similar institution. [...]

This article suggests that the paintings David Alfaro Siqueiros produced after 1936—that is, the ones he painted after traveling through South America and the United States—should be classified as being from a “third period.” Most of the [...]

This article reviews and analyzes the collection of the Museum of Modern Art [MoMA] in New York, the Whitney Museum and three exhibitions: Salvador Dalí, Roberto Matta and Jean Dubuffet, all of them simultaneously presented in the same city. With [...]

This article reports on the Austrian promoter, René d’Harnoncourt, a resident of New York who was then visiting Mexico. It recounts his beginnings in art, prior to his arrival on the American continent, and his subsequent insertion into the local [...]

This article discusses the scant interest shown in Latin American art by North American museums, particularly MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) in New York. The art critic Aracy A. Amaral highlights the scarcity of exhibitions and mentions the declining [...]

This article discusses a plan by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City to purchase works by José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, Rufino Tamayo, Jesús Guerrero Galván, and Juan Soriano. The chosen artists’ formal and artistic qualities are [...]

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, [...]

Carlos Mérida quotes José Clemente Orozco at length in this article. Orozco had been invited to paint a fresco to accompany the show 20 Siglos de Arte Mexicano [20 Centuries of Mexican Art], presented at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1940 [...]