Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

The Argentinean visual artist Antonio Berni frequently visited the city of Montevideo from 1938, producing various exhibitions; in this article, he expressed his social and political vision of mural art, attributing it with a “constructive” [...]

In this article, Luis Eduardo Pombo reveals himself as the first Uruguayan art critic to ideologically wrap himself in the aesthetics of David Alfaro Siqueiros. Generally, even the commentaries made by those intellectuals closest to the Mexican [...]

Commentary by essayist Alejandro Lora Risco on the Mexican art show organized in Lima by La Crónica newspaper. From within the event’s massive audience, the author highlights the presence of the individuals most likely to read his text: Peruvian [...]

This article by Gustavo Valcárcel reports on the award that David Alfaro Siqueiros received at the XXV Biennale di Venezia held in 1950. It was, in the author’s view, only due to “sentimental French chauvinism” that Henri Matisse received [...]

In this text, writer Juan Ríos remarks on the Surrealist exhibition held at the Galería de Lima in July 1954. In his view, Surrealism is outdated. Initially an iconoclastic movement, it has, over the course of several decades that witnessed a [...]

Commentary by Luis Miró Quesada Garland on the Mexican art exhibition organized by La Crónica newspaper. The author begins by recognizing the quality of the exhibition as a holistic view on Mexican painting within the last few years. Nevertheless, [...]

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 [...]

In response to the aesthetic opinions expressed by the architect Luis Miró Quesada Garland, who vehemently denied any influence between society and art, the author states that it is obvious that “the great art movements have had an influence on [...]

This document is an essay by Jacinto Quirarte outlining key moments in the history of modern Mexican and Mexican-American art in the United States. It begins with a discussion of the Mexican School, detailing central figures, sociopolitical [...]

This document is an essay by Rupert Garcia that considers the educational and political potential of two distinct but contemporaneous modes of aesthetic practice—easel painting and muralism— championed by the artists of the School of Paris and [...]

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 the prologue to the catalogue, Alirio Oramas explains that the TLA (Taller Libre de Arte) is honoring the Mexican painter José Clemente Orozco for his magnificent mural paintings, which reflect the history and the soul of the Aztecs through a [...]

In this introduction to her book En busca de lo propio, the art historian and critic Ivonne Pini sets forth her methodological principles and the basic questions that guided her research. First, the author states the need to undertake a study of [...]

In his introduction to the book Luis Alberto Acuña: estudio biográfico y crítico, the Ukrainian art historian, critic, and nationalized Colombian, Juan Friede, sets out to clarify his own view of the meaning of art criticism. He believes that the [...]

In this document, Margarita Nieto details the influence of the School of Mexican Painting on the artistic production in the United States during the twenty-year period preceding World War II. She argues that contact between the two countries during [...]

This document is a 1977 calendar produced by the Movimiento Artístico Chicano (MARCH), which includes biographies and reproductions of works by twelve Chicago-area Chicano artists, one for each month. Significant dates in Chicano history are also [...]

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 text, Rita Eder argues that it is worth considering how Latin American art can distinguish itself from European art, and that it has done this at several points in its history by developing radical ways to integrate art into society. Eder [...]

Referencing such Latin American nations as Mexico, Brazil, Uruguay, and Venezuela, and the European nations of Spain and Italy, Venezuelan architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva examines certain artists and movements that in the aforementioned countries, [...]

In this essay, art historian Shifra M. Goldman addresses Chicano mural art in the United States, which began as an independent movement around 1970. Goldman discusses the influences of Mexican muralism, especially that of Los Tres Grandes, Diego [...]

In this essay, Ricardo Romo discusses the vibrant tradition of Chicano muralism, proposing as his goals both an examination of the historical evolution of murals painted in borderland states across the United States (California, Arizona, New Mexico, [...]

In this catalogue essay, Victor Alejandro Sorell considers the 36-year career (spanning 1964–2000) of the Chicano artist Carlos Cortez, praising him as the “quintessential artist-reporter,” and emphasizing his virtuosity as a master printmaker [...]

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 [...]

In this text, Mariano Picón-Salas describes how a series of murals by José Clemente Orozco presents a powerful myth about Mexican culture. Picón-Salas begins by praising Orozco as among the most significant artists of his era, and by tracing the [...]

This essay praises the work of José Clemente Orozco and considers him one of the greatest painters in the world. Luis Cardoza y Aragón analyzes Orozco’s article step by step in a rather poetic manner. He mentions the great complexity of his work [...]

Arguing that art history must always account for precedents and influences, art historian Jacinto Quirarte’s essay traces the way in which Mexican muralists influenced American artists during the 1930s. The author suggests that, in this case, [...]

In his introduction to Método de Dibujo [Drafting Method], José Juan Tablada identifies it as a weapon in the struggle to establish harmony and democracy amid the chaos and authoritarianism in the artistic milieu. He states that the process at work [...]

According to Arnold Belkin, “the Canadian son of Mexican mural painting,” the imperialist policy of the United States of America toward Latin America, as well as the prevailing climate of repression there, prompted many Latin American artists to [...]

The article is a review of the Exposición de arte mexicano [Exhibition of Mexican Art] that was held at the Hospital Juárez. It included paintings, sculpture, and engravings by Mexican artists such as Diego Rivera, Roberto Montenegro, Carlos Orozco [...]

In the prologue to the catalogue of the 1935 exhibition of contemporary Mexican art, Mexican artist Jorge Juan Crespo de la Serna provides a brief overview of Mexican art from the time of the Mayans until the present. He asserts that Mexican art, [...]

This is the third of four articles on the nature of the current painting movement in Mexico. It classifies those painters and writers as retrogressive, who continue to paint under outdated and foreign influences without contributing to the local [...]

This is the first of a four-part article on the technical nature of the Mexican painting movement. Violent aesthetic transformations had occurred in the last few years while art criticism against painters oscillated between grand praise and fury. [...]

In this text, José Clemente Orozco marks his distance from the ideological and aesthetic positions of either Diego Rivera or David Alfaro Siqueiros. Without mentioning them by name, Orozco criticizes the political orientation that [...]

This is a summary of Gilberto Freyre’s thoughts on the subject of Latin America, with a focus on the cultural anthropological aspects of a hybrid civilization based on a blend of black, American Indian, and European traditions. The author discusses [...]

This article is a review of the exhibition of 19th- and 20th-century Jalisco painting that took place at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in the capital of Mexico. The exhibition included works by José María Estrada, Dr. Atl, Roberto Montenegro, José [...]

The critic Antonio Rodríguez uses this article to defend the murals painted by Jorge González Camarena in the main hall of the Edificio Guardiola, in the center of Mexico City. The author believes that the short newspaper article calling for these [...]

After discussing how busy Germán List Arzubide—the Estridentista from old times—kept in New York’s workers’ media, Ben Ossa mentions the ideas suggested to LEAR by the “Congreso de Artistas Americanos (de Estados Unidos)” [American [...]

This article analyzes the works exhibited by Abraham Ángel, Julio Castellanos, Carlos Mérida, Manuel Rodríguez Lozano and Rufino Tamayo. It also states that other artists were invited to participate: José Clemente Orozco, who promised to send [...]

In Ciudad Victoria (Tamaulipas), Miguel Aguillón Guzmán issued a fourth Estridentista manifesto in which the delegates to the III Congreso Nacional de Estudiantes [3rd National Students’Conference] affirm their “support for the Mexican [...]

The poet and art critic Xavier Villaurrutia believes José Clemente Orozco’s murals were his best works; then his drawings, lithographs, and engravings and, lastly, his oil paintings. Villaurrutia believes that oil painting was not the most [...]

On the fifteenth anniversary of the Galería de Arte Mexicano [GAM, Mexican Art Gallery], Margarita de Ponce reviews its activities and discusses what she considers to be its greatest contributions toward the distribution and promotion of Mexican art [...]

In this short article by Antonio Rodríguez, the art critic shows his support for an article published in the previous issue of the journal Espacios by the artist Roberto Berdecio, in defense of “social painting.” Rodríguez believes that “ [...]

While this article mounts a defense of Mexican painting with “human/social content,” it also admits that this art has entered into a “period of crisis or, if you will, reorientation.” In today’s artwork, Berdecio sees “unmistakable signs [...]

Fradique’s article, signed in Guadalajara, which is the capital of the state of Jalisco, sets out to review the work of some of the artists from that state. He begins with the “elders”: Dr. Atl, Alfredo Ramos Martínez (sic) and Rafael Ponce de [...]

This article reviews the José Clemente Orozco exhibition that included the paintings belonging to his La casa del llanto [The House of Weeping] series (1911) and others as well. The exhibition took place at the Biblos bookstore, located in the [...]

This is an autobiographical account by the Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco that reveals the extraordinary influence exerted on his life and work by Dr. Atl. When Dr. Atl returned from Europe, he sought the support of his old colleagues [...]

José Clemente Orozco did not publish any more political caricatures after the 1913 Decena Trágica [Tragic Ten Days]. This paragraph discusses at length the late-nineteenth-century transition from the end of the traditional press to the efficiency [...]

The painter and engraver Fanny Rabel directs an ironic, open letter to Diego Rivera because of the declarations he had made four months earlier in the same publication. [See doc. no. 794985] In the name of the young generations, Rabel asks Rivera if [...]

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 [...]

Xavier Moyssén writes about mural painting’s nineteenth-century precedents, in private houses and in pulquerías [agave sap saloons,] and works painted by nineteenth-century students at the Academia; the artists, he includes, are José Obregón, [...]