Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In her article “2 Contrasting Exhibits Here,” the North American critic Leslie Judd Portner mentions two exhibitions that were held simultaneously at the Pan-American Union in Washington, featuring the works of the Swiss artist Hans Erni (b. 1909 [...]

The artist, agent, and art critic Leonel Estrada discusses a series of paintings by Armando Villegas that were exhibited at the Chamber of Commerce in Medellín. These works, in Estrada’s opinion, reveal a departure from the artist’s earlier [...]

In this article, prestigious film critic and journalist Julio Roca Baena briefly recalls the Grupo de Barranquilla active in the mid-fifties and its importance to Colombian art, literature, and journalism. At the opening of the text, Roca Baena [...]

The regular section on the visual arts in this edition (N° 57, Year 1950) of the magazine published by the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana in Medellín (1937–2005) is devoted to Cecilia Porras, and includes her essay and six reproductions of [...]

This article by the researcher Camilo Sarmiento, “El Automático, entre la literatura y el arte” [El Automático: Between Literature and Art] appeared in Café El Automático: arte, crítica y esfera pública [Café El Automático: Art, Criticism [...]

This document is the catalogue to the Salón de Arte Moderno held in the exhibition hall of the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango in November 1957. In addition to an introduction, the catalogue contains a list with basic information (style, dimension, [...]

Critic Marta Traba’s premise in this essay is that the process by which art emerges has been a constant in the history of Colombia’s national culture. Traba uses the word “emerging” in reference to artistic expressions that transcend local [...]

In this article, art critic Marta Traba comments on the group exhibition held at “El Callejón” gallery in 1956. She asserts that the exhibition is of interest for two main reasons. First, because of the individual works and creators included and [...]

In this article, Walter Engel, an Austrian critic who lived in Colombia, reviews the group exhibition held on the occasion of the opening of “El Caballito” gallery in Bogotá in 1956. Engel asserts that the opening of the gallery represents a [...]

Published in the catalogue to the exhibition commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Primer Salón de Arte Moderno, this text by Sylvia Juliana Suárez presents the idea, process and results of a curatorial and editorial project formulated by [...]

In the October and November 1956 issue of Mito, the magazine’s editorial staff discusses the artistic spirit of Alejando Obregón, Cecilia Porras, and Juan Antonio Roda in relation to solo exhibitions of each one’s work. Obregón’s show at the [...]

Critic Jorge Gaitán Durán presents artist Cecilia Porras in relation to recent Colombian art history and to the specificity of her work. Gaitán Durán deems Porras “the greatest revelation in Colombian painting” of the time and one of the [...]

In this text, historian and critic Germán Rubiano Caballero provides an overview of Colombian art from the twenties through the eighties. He analyzes each decade on the basis of two key criteria: how the modern is constructed and the tension between [...]

This text by Gabriel García Márquez published in the weekly cultural supplement to the Cali-based newspaper El Pueblo is the prologue to the portfolio Graficario de la Lucha popular en Colombia (1977). In his critical analysis of ways of disguising [...]

“Obregón” is the title of the interview included by the arts journalist, Fausto Panesso, in his book, Los intocables [The Untouchables] (1975), which gathers the conversations he had with five of the artists who represented milestones in [...]

This text introduces the print portfolio, Cuba-Colombia, raíces comunes [Cuba/Colombia, Common Roots], the second work of the Corporación Prográfica [Prográfica Association] (Cali, Colombia)—after El graficario de la lucha popular en Colombia [ [...]

In this article, the Colombian painter, Ignacio Gómez Jaramillo, comments on the first individual exhibition by the young painter, Alejandro Obregón. To introduce the artist, Gómez Jaramillo emphasizes his training in the Catalan milieu where he [...]

This is a first-person narrative in which Lucy Tejada discusses recollections and biographical details that she thinks had an impact on her work. She takes up the story in her childhood and mentions her memories of cities and spaces where she lived. [...]

“El americanismo de los años 40 y la nueva vanguardia colombiana” [The Americanism of the 1940s and the New Colombian Avant-Garde], an essay by the historian Álvaro Medina, published in 1978, discusses the artistic languages inspired by the [...]

In the book Problemas sociales en las artes plásticas [Social Problems in the Visual Arts], the critic Walter Engel reviews different periods in the universal history of art, discussing how some cultures and artists depict social issues?such as [...]

In this article, art historian María Margarita Malagón-Kurka analyzes a series of works by Colombian artists that address the topic of violence. She argues that there are two distinct tendencies that took shape in two different historical moments. [...]

In this article, critic Germán Rubiano Caballero introduces a group of Colombian artists born in the first half of the twentieth century. To place these artists in the international context of Western art history, Rubiano Caballero associates them [...]

This foldable brochure summarizes in list form the activities that took place at the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá (MAM) in 1964, when it was directed by the art critic Marta Traba. The text contains seven headings, each of which is followed by a [...]

In this interview, originally published in 1956, painter Ignacio Gómez Jaramillo speaks of his childhood and formative years. Regarding his childhood, he reports that with the support of his mother, he started “doodling” at a young age. Indeed, [...]

“Obregón en contexto” is the title of an essay by the art historian and critic Carmen María Jaramillo, written in 2001, that appeared in the book El mago del Caribe on the artwork of Alejandro Obregón. The essay includes a text by the writer [...]

This document is a dialogue maintained between the Colombian artists Carlos Correa and Pedro Nel Gómez, in September 1956. The conversation expresses both artists’ critical view of abstract art as well as some of the works created in that style. [...]

This newspaper article contains Bernardo Salcedo’s statements about the Primer Premio de Adquisición he was awarded at the III Bienal de Arte Americano held in Cordoba, Argentina in 1966. Salcedo compares this decision with the one made by the [...]

This article by Colombian poet and journalist Rogelio Echavarría sparked a controversy on Colombian painting of the time and its role in a broader Latin American art.  The author begins by contextualizing the problem.  According to Echavarría, a [...]

The article “Propuesta para una doble lectura” is a statement of principle as well as a thesis that Marta Traba formulated on the occasion of an exhibition of Modern Colombian art in Paris. In this text, Traba provides a periodization of [...]

In this article written in 1957, Teresa Tejada discusses the murals by artists Alejandro Obregón and Hernando Tejada recently finished or underway at public institutions and private homes. Specifically, the text provides a formal analysis of the [...]

This is the second part of the article “Primeras etapas de la abstracción en Colombia II” [First Stages of Abstraction in Colombia II] that critic María Elvira Iriarte published in issue 23 of the Revista Arte en Colombia. In this text, she [...]

In this text, Thomas Messer explains the logic behind how he selected the works for his exhibition The Emergent Decade: Latin American Painters and Painting in the 1960s. He also considers the questions that the exhibition raises about how [...]

The author of this document claims that Colombian painting has no past. According to the Argentine critic Marta Traba, the visual arts produced in Colombia from the late nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century are of no interest [...]

[This document includes] a four-page brochure whose first page reads: “Universidad Nacional de Colombia/ Museo Nacional/ Exposición de pintura/ contemporánea/ octubre 1948.” The other three pages contain the names of the artists participating [...]

The Colombian artist Pedro Alcántara writes to Lorenzo Homar asking him to participate in the production of the portfolio “Grandes Maestros de la Plástica Latinoamericana” [Great Masters of Latin American Visual Art]. Ten artists are to be [...]

In the introduction to the exhibition Solidaridad held at the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogota, Colombia, in 1976, Argentine critic Marta Traba—who lived in Puerto Rico for many years—explains that the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende was [...]

In these two supplements, Viennese historian and critic Walter Engel describes exhibitions and artists that in his view shaped the modern art scene in Colombia from 1934 to 1957. Engel distinguishes two distinct periods: 1934 to 1951, and 1952 to [...]

This document by Óscar Delgado, editor of the Colombian journal Índice Cultural [Cultural Index], reports on the creation of the Movimiento Nacional de Artes Plásticas [National Visual Arts Movement] in 1955. The article presents the main [...]

In June 1960, the exhibition, 3000 años de arte colombiano [3000 Years of Colombian Art], was held in Miami and Washington. The journal Lámpara [Lamp] (Bogotá, published 1952–85) printed a supplement with writings by the curators who performed [...]

Making use of his philosophical background, J. R. Guillent Pérez critically analyzes the article by Marta Traba published in Caracas under the title “El arte latinoamericano: un falso apocalipsis.” In his judgment, Traba has not understood the [...]

In this article Damián Bayón questions the general state of the art world and the place occupied by Latin American artists within it. He defines the preeminent art trends of the time and then analyzes the way in which Latin American [...]