Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this document, curator and art historian Susana Torruella Leval considers works by several artists whose practices reflect an interest in articulating a particular historical consciousness that is tied to their cultural identity as Latin Americans [...]

In this document, Amalia Mesa-Bains details the development of the Galería de la Raza [Gallery of the People], an important San Francisco cultural institution established in 1970 in the midst of the Chicano Movement. Mesa-Bains describes the ways in [...]

David Avalos recounts the installation of his sculpture San Diego Donkey Cart in front of the Federal Courthouse, and its subsequent removal by Chief Judge Gordon Thompson. The artist describes the piece as a reworking of Tijuana donkey carts where [...]

In this essay, written for the catalogue of the exhibition La Frontera/The Border: Art About the Mexico/United States Border Experience (1993), artist and professor David Avalos describes his experience working at San Diego’s Centro Cultural de la [...]

In this essay, Madeleine Grynsztejn, co-curator of the 1993 exhibition entitled La Frontera/The Border: Art about The Mexico/United States Border Experience, outlines the scope and vision of the show and details the contributions of its 37 artists [...]

Susana Torruella Leval’s essay examines works by artists David Avalos, Deborah Small, and Alfredo Jaar, and addresses contemporary neocolonial practices thus connecting them to the histories of colonialism in the Americas, which have been often [...]

In this essay, Tomas Ybarra-Frausto focuses on the heart as an important symbol in Chicano art. Divided into two sections: “Themes and Variations” and “Maintenance and Extension of Traditions,” he argues that the “moral dimension” of [...]