Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this essay, the poet Carlos Augusto León writes at length about what is going on in the field of art criticism; he is responding to the debate sparked by an article by Alejandro Otero (“¿Dónde está Guayasamín?” 1953). León does not agree [...]

This document is a short manifesto written in 1959 by the Argentinean collective, Grupo Espartaco. The writers denote the importance of art as revolutionary and state that their mission is to integrate the visual arts with political action and social [...]

In this essay about the exhibition of paintings by the Ecuadorian artist Oswaldo Guayasamín at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas, Alejandro Otero discusses the question of influences in art and originality. Following a detailed analysis of many [...]

In this chapter from América Latina en sus artes Jorge Alberto Manrique begins by describing the artistic movements of the 1920s and comparing this period to a giant hinge that moved backward to the nineteenth century and forward to the twentieth [...]

Based on “the tradition of the national”—described as the assemblage of historical reflections regarding said subject on Latin American culture—the Argentina-born but Colombia-based critic, Marta Traba, performed a review of the documentary [...]

In this open letter by Alejandro Otero [Rodríguez] to his  journalist friend, Miguel Otero Silva, the Venezuelan artist brings forth his objection to the National Sculpture Award given to the Spanish sculptor Eduardo Gregorio at the XVIII Salón [...]