Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

Author Dorothy Chaplik provides an overview of the life and art of Alejandro Romero, a recognized Chicago-based Mexican painter and muralist. She traces his artistic career from his childhood in Tabasco and youth and Mexico City, when he first [...]

In this letter, Mexican artist Albero Beltrán (1923–2002) informs Puerto Rican artist Lorenzo Homar that the course in poster design that Polish designer Wiktor Gorka was offering at the Academia de San Carlos (Mexico City) would continue until [...]

This is the second of four articles on the nature of the current Mexican painting movement. The article concerns the celebrated individuality that incites our painters, given the supposition that originality is a painter’s greatest asset. The [...]

This article centers on two events: Orozco’s participation in the student exhibition at the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos during the critical year of 1910 and his start as a caricaturist for opposition newspapers. The government [...]

This is a very suggestive article on the exhibition organized by the publication Savia Moderna [Modern Sap] in May 1906. The show is interesting because it included only those Mexican artists who had promised a change in the national outlook, as well [...]

Ricardo Gómez Robelo enthusiastically celebrates the success of the exhibition mounted at the Academia de San Carlos in 1906, featuring Mexican artists who had been awarded fellowships. He praises the “revelation that we do not deceive ourselves, [...]

In this article, Dr. Manuel Urrutia, a prominent figure in the field of hygiene education in Mexico during the 1940s and 1950s, explains the etymological origin of the word “museums” in order to introduce the reader to the Mexican Museum of [...]

This article is an interesting reflection by Ángel Zárraga on the art of the painter’s era, sent from Spain to the magazine Savia Moderna; at the time, he was also an amateur writer. He dedicates the article to two key figures that were beginning [...]

This article, by a noted member of the group behind the magazine Savia Moderna [Modern Sap], is a presentation of the painting exhibition sponsored by the magazine and held in May 1906. This exhibition had a very decisive effect on the future of [...]

Dr. Atl’s exhibition provides an opportunity for the critic Francisco Monterde to interview the painter, although he manages to extract little information from him. Monterde states that Alberto J. Pani and Don Luis Quintanilla were present, as a [...]

“Máscara” [Mask] was a profile of Germán Gedovius, the famous artist from San Luis Potosí. Here, José Juan Tablada discusses the artist’s career, and his trials and tribulations, for a variety of reasons. First of all, to present a moving [...]

This short biography was written by José Juan Tablada and published on February 23rd of 1902, in El Mundo Ilustrado, on the occasion of Santiago Rebull’s death. In this brief account of his artistic career, the author applauds Rebull as a painter [...]

The article comments that the honeymoon of the painter Alfredo Ramos Martínez as director of the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes has been eclipsed by the students in the Academy shouting for his resignation. At the same time, the students in the [...]

This news item describes a fight that took place at the inauguration of an exhibition at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas between Diego Rivera, director of that institution, and the architect Carlos Lazo, who was an art history teacher at the Facultad [...]

The students of the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes de San Carlos accuse the “old men” who meet in the Círculo de Escultores—Ignacio Asúnsolo, Juan Olaguíbel, Federico Canessi, José María Fernández Urbina, Luis Ortiz Monasterio, Modesto [...]

In the course of an interview, Rufino Tamayo talks about the polemic that arose regarding his mural at the Conservatorio Nacional with the topics of song and music. Tamayo took advantage of this forum to disqualify the students of the “little [...]

This article reports the presence of [Efisio] Caboni at the Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City. The author provides a biographical sketch of the Italian master born in Rome. He recounts his education in Italy and some of the difficulties that [...]

This article is seminal because it is one of the few to mention photography as part of the fine arts program at the Academia de San Carlos. The writer describes various artistic media, such as sketches, drawings, and paintings, which all clearly [...]

This article summarizes the conflict between students at the Facultad de Arquitectura [School of Architecture] and those at the Escuela Central de Artes Plásticas [ECAP, Central School of Visual Arts] at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México [...]

Rufino Tamayo takes a radical approach questioning the spirit of nationalism in the visual arts, and suggests that artists should focus on more universal values in their work. In this critical piece he reminds us that, at that time, painting enjoyed [...]

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 [...]

This document states that the “free” students at the Academia de San Carlos yesterday received from the Director General of Bellas Artes, Luis Manuel Rojas, the approved request that the students had submitted to him in order to make changes to [...]

This article, written anonymously, points out the importance of the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes for the teaching of drawing and observation perspective for 500 Mexican workers registered in evening classes at the school. The brief report [...]

This article is a short notice from a newspaper announcing that the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes was then manufacturing excellent paints for watercolors, pastels, oils, and tempera. The announcement came about due to a rise in prices for [...]

A pillar commemorating independence was planned to celebrate the centennial of Mexican independence. The jury for the competition was composed of three teachers from the Academy: Manuel Iturbe, architect; Arnulfo Domínguez Bello, sculptor; and [...]

Within the devastated atmosphere of the post-First World War period, Gerardo Murillo, a.k.a. Doctor Atl, calls for a revolutionary solution. He also stresses his experiments: his new language, the “pintura sígnica” [sign-based] painting, and the [...]

The author points out that Mexican painting still has many paths to explore and that it is preparing a new generation that will come to define the future of art in Mexico. He reports that the magazine Nuestra Ciudad has published some photographs of [...]

Diego Rivera discusses the exhibition at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes, and subtly conveys his disappointment with the event. He believes it is a mistake to imitate what is being done in Europe. Rivera thinks it is dangerous to encourage a “ [...]

In this article Carlos Mérida reviews the annual exhibition at the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes. He emphasizes the show’s disorder, the lack of information to guide the public, and the unevenness of both quantity and quality among the [...]