Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This newspaper article is about an interview with the director of the Museo de Arte Moderno de México, Fernando Gamboa, on the subject of the exhibition that Carlos Cruz-Diez opened in Mexico City as part of a cultural exchange between Mexico [...]

This short article by the art critic Margarita Nelken comments on the recent inauguration in Paris of the traveling exhibition of Mexican art with work ranging from the pre-Columbian period up to the date of the article. She describes the artistic [...]

This short article revolves around the events surrounding the Exhibition of Mexican Art with work that ranged from pre-Columbian times up to the date of the article. Organized by the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (INBA), it was about to be shown [...]

The twenty-one-page program presents Fernando Gamboa’s initial ideas on how to represent Mexico at the 1958 Belgium world exhibition, the same that centered on the theme of a “second Industrial Revolution”: one of nuclear energy. The curator [...]

The art critic Raquel Tibol’s review includes statements made by the team working at the Museo Nacional de Antropología [National Anthropological Museum]: Jorge Angulo, Ike Larrauri, and Mario Vázquez. When asked to describe the work with which [...]

In commemoration of the XV anniversary of the weekly magazine Hoy [Today], the Instituto de Bellas Artes (INBA) suggests the periodical publish a selection of images representing local painting throughout the ages. An article written by the critic [...]

The Mexican Pavilion in the International Exhibition in Brussels in 1958 was designed by the architects Pedro Ramírez Vázquez and Rafael Mijares. The pavilion contained exhibition spaces and an auditorium and occupied 22,000 square feet. Upon entry [...]

This short article by Luis Suárez, the special correspondent sent to Brussels by the newspaper Novedades, draws attention to the characteristics of the Mexican Pavilion at the Brussels World’s Fair in 1958 in terms of size, cost, and content. [...]

This review by Elena Poniatowska describes the contents of the Mexican Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair, focusing especially on the works of art exhibited. Underscoring the topic by using bold letters, the author of the article speaks in [...]

In this brief letter, ex-President Lázaro Cárdenas congratulates Fernando Gamboa for the “message” he sent regarding Mexico by means of the Brussels Pavilion at the International Fair of 1958 which Cárdenas had visited only a few days earlier [...]

The journalist Luis Suárez complains about the selection of paintings made by the “International committee of experts designated by the general commissioners of the Pavilions of certain number of countries with some importance in modern art,” [...]

This document reports that a Soviet spy gained entry [into Mexico] and that this person came to work with the organizers of the Congreso de la Paz [Peace Conference]. The mural Pesadilla de guerra y sueño de paz [The Nightmare of War and the Dream [...]

This text by art critic Rosa Castro reports on her conversation with curator Fernando Gamboa, who had just arrived from Europe in order to thoroughly implement an exhibition of Mexican art that would take place in Paris. Gamboa comments on the great [...]

Here, Fernando Gamboa made some interesting statements about the worldwide significance of Mexican art. Arte Mexicano en París [Mexican Art in Paris], an exhibition of modern and ancient art presented in Paris in 1952, will offer the world Mexico’ [...]

Eager to cultivate Mexico’s good name abroad, President Miguel Alemán made every effort to obtain the best results for the presentation in Paris of artwork created by his Mexican countrymen. Alemán wanted to make sure that this exhibition— [...]

Carlos Chávez announces the opening of the Mexican art exhibition organized by the governments of Mexico and France, in which a very carefully selected collection of masterpieces would be presented, beginning with the pre-Cortés era and continuing [...]

The Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura (INBAL, 1947) invited Rufino Tamayo to participate in the Mexican Art Exhibition that would take place in Europe. The Oaxacan painter responded that he could not give them an answer until “he knew [...]

This document is Carlos Chávez’s response to the letter that Rufino Tamayo had written to Fernando Gamboa on August 20, 1951. In it, Tamayo asks to know the government’s point of view on the Mexican Art Exhibition that would take place in Europe [...]

In a short article published on May 31, Miguel Álvarez Acosta, the director of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (INBA), stated: “The fact that the best paintings by Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros did not appear in the Biennial was Carrillo Gil [...]

This short article features the opinions expressed in the prestigious French magazine ArtsThe Mexican Pavilion received first place, even above the well-advertised exhibition Cincuenta años de arte moderno [Fifty Years of Modern Art], which placed [...]

This brief article, illustrated by a large caricature, uses a humorous tone to comment on the disputes generated by the declarations of sculptors, who were unable to reach an agreement. “Instead of joining forces to fight the little dictator who [...]

This article describes the exhibition of prints by the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR) [League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists], which was held in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, in Valencia as well as in Madrid.  The [...]

Fernando Gamboa, assistant director of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, was in charge of organizing the Mexican pavilion for the Venice Biennial. Working with the Biennial director (the well-known composer Carlos Chávez), Gamboa carried out [...]

This is an illustration by the cartoonist Rafael Freyre Flores, in which he casts Carlos Chávez as the Director of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (INBA) and Fernando Gamboa as the person in charge of taking an exhibition of Mexican art to [...]

Diego Rivera speaks at length to the newspaper Excélsior on learning that President Miguel Alemán’s administration has refused to send his mural to the 1952 Paris Exhibition. In the first place, Rivera claims that the government has ridden [...]

This brief article, which was probably excerpted from an anonymous interview with Diego Rivera, reports that if no solution can be found to the problems that have arisen between the painter and Carlos Chávez, the Director of the INBA (Instituto [...]