Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

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 [...]

This article is one of the few that describes the murals painted in several primary schools in Mexico, thus it allows us to know what it was like before its total or partial destruction. The title of this mural by Pablo O’Higgins was Vida y [...]

Critic Jorge Juan Crespo de la Serna reviews the content of the newly opened Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. After several visits to take in the breadth of the collection, he concludes that the Mexican painting section [...]

This article describes the activities in the French city of Bordeaux during “Mexican Week,” the event that was sponsored by the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes [INBA, National Institute of Fine Arts] and organized to present exhibitions of [...]

It had been a month since El Machete reported the end of a dispute between Luis Cardoza y Aragón and the defenders of the single cultural front promoted in the magazine Frente a Frente [Face to Face]. In this article, the Estridentista and active [...]

This short document tells us about the mural at the Confederación Campesina [Mexican Peasants Confederation] “Emiliano Zapata” in the city of Puebla. The fine arts department of the SEP [Ministry of Public Education] commissioned the work from [...]

This article is about a series of murals produced in Guadalajara in the annex to the ancient Templo de Santo Tomás, which later became a university building. The participants in the workshop were the painters from Jalisco: Jesús Guerrero Galván, [...]

In this article, Justino Fernández describes the commission and the composition of Jesús Guerrero Galván’s mural in Albuquerque, located at the College of Fine Arts at the University of New Mexico. Fernández reports that he was the one who [...]

The film director and screenwriter Chano Urueta reviews the group exhibition of the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios [LEAR, League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists] held at the former church of Santa Clara, which was later converted [...]

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 author summarizes a lecture given by poet José Gorostiza in which he talks about the “little teachers” of the new school of Mexican painting, as well as the “affinities that are enough, in my opinion, to characterize the work in its [...]

In his article on the young painter Jesús Guerrero Galván, whose 1939 work amounted to a reinterpretation of European classicism, critic Luis Cardoza y Aragón placed more weight and validity on the formal and visual components of the work of the [...]

Justino Fernández attempts to establish a concept of  “arte mexicano,” pointing out that no expression is more valid than any other when rating it as “Mexican.” The critic considers that a whole complex historical expression, which shows [...]

This author describes the mural commission for the functionalist education center in Mexico City, with images accompanying his review. He emphasizes the collective nature of the works as well as the paintings’ subjects. The author applauds the [...]

José Gorostiza analyzes a group of painters who comprise what he calls the Nueva Escuela de Pintura [New School of Painting] in Mexico. Its representatives include Julio Castellanos, Jesús Guerrero Galván, Agustín Lazo, Carlos Mérida, Roberto [...]