Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This article, published in Revista de avance in 1927, was written by the young essayist and journalist born in Catalonia, Martí Casanovas. Here, he sets forth a fierce criticism of the way the capitalist production system affects and determines the [...]

This brief article by Alberto Methol Ferré, published in 1960, provides the first indications of a specific change in the painter Pedro Figari’s philosophy. For decades his fame as a painter had largely obscured his philosophical thinking. In this [...]

The author discusses Arte simple, the recently published book by Cipriano Santiago Vitureira. The Uruguayan columnist notes Vitureira’s poetic sensitivity, and expresses his conviction that art can drive social change. Atahualpa del Cioppo does not [...]

“Declaración de los intelectuales colombianosdurante el paro general” is an open letter dated May 8, 1957 published in issue No. 13 of the magazine Mito. It is signed by twenty-five people, among them politicians, writers, poets, and artists. [...]

The Boletín de TESEO is the newsletter published by the AAEU (Agrupación de Artistas y Escritores Uruguayos), the association of Uruguayan artists and writers whose memorandum of association appears in this Boletín Nº 1, Year 1, August 25, 1923. [...]

“Testimonio: El intelectual de izquierda y cierta estética revolucionaria” the editorial published in issue Nº 7 (April–May, 1960) of Revista Sardio (Caracas, 1958–61) analyzes and compares the validity and authenticity of commitment in the [...]

The subject of this interview is the Peruvian artist, writer, and critic Juan Manuel Ugarte Eléspuru, who was at that time the director of the ENBA (Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes) in Peru. The conversation refers to the institution’s trajectory [...]

This text is a transcription of the speech given by writer Sebastián Salazar Bondy at the first convention organized by the Asociación Nacional de Escritores y Artistas (ANEA); the event was held in Lima in September 1955. In Salazar Bondy’s view [...]

“Non Serviam,” a manifesto written by Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro, records his rejection of naturalism in poetry. He declares that poets should no longer imitate or reproduce nature; instead, they should create distinct new worlds [...]

This document, composed in 1978 by writer José Armas, is a report on the state of the organization, Revolución Artística y Acción Social (RAYAS), and is also an appeal for action on outstanding issues. RAYAS, a group founded by Armas and other [...]

This brief document by writer José Armas summarizes the ideas of a group of Chicano writers and artists from the states of Washington, California, Texas, and New Mexico who met in Lubbock, Texas, with the intention of forming an artistic and [...]

This report by José Armas is of a meeting between multiple Chicano artists and writers, held for the purpose of establishing a union in support of the promotion of Chicano cultural production. The document provides detailed background information on [...]

With a nod to the ideas of the Mexican writer, Octavio Paz, Puerto Rican artist José Antonio Torres Martinó observes that some writers suffer from two kinds of exile. In addition to the exterior exile, or physical separation from their country, [...]

Juan de la Cabada reports on progress in organizing a Congreso Continental de Científicos [Scientists’ Continental Congress] in Mexico City under the direction of Víctor Manuel Villaseñor in accordance with the resolutions of the American [...]

Ermilo Abreu Gómez interviews Cuban Juan Marinello for Frente a Frente [Face to Face], the journal of the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR) [League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists]. In the interview, the key issue of artistic [...]

On the occasion of Frances Toor’s death, Diego Rivera, who was a friend and collaborator of Toor’s, dedicated an article in remembrance of the fundamental role that the American writer and editor played in the dissemination of Mexican art, in [...]

After criticizing the painters of the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria (ENP), the newspaper El Demócrata speaks of the triumphs Mexico achieved abroad, through singers, writers, and the architects during the Río de Janeiro Expo. These are our [...]

Daniel Cosío Villegas wonders why the natural order of having better writers than artists—painters, to be more precise—has been inverted in Mexico. He concludes that there are many reasons: an intense nationalism in politics as well as in [...]

This was an interdisciplinary poetry project produced by Nicanor Parra in 1952. Parra worked with Enrique Lihn and Alejandro Jodorowsky to create Quebrantahuesos, a sheet of paper measuring 55 x 40 centimeters which they covered with newspaper [...]

In her essay “La narrativa de Diamela Eltit: un nuevo paradigma socio-literario de lectura” (Diamela Eltit’s Narrative: A New Socio-Literary Paradigm for Reading), Eugenia Brito discusses Eltit’s “writing” (l&rsquo [...]

After the 1973 coup d’état in Chile, the country’s literature underwent a process of transformation that prompted a redefinition of concepts such as, among other things, the roles of writers and readers as well as their limits and [...]

León Ferrari explains the method he used to develop the text based on reports from the news media. He discusses his ideas for staging the work [...]

Roberto Merino discusses La nueva novela [The New Novel] by Juan Luis Martínez, concentrating on specific pages in the book and questioning its operations. He addresses the photograph that Lewis Carroll took of Alice Lidell, which Martí [...]

From Madrid, the Spanish avant-garde poet Ramón Gómez de la Serna wrote a concise profile of Filippo Tomasso Marinetti that was taken up by the Mexican cultural press. De la Serna refers to a certain appeasement of spirit in his friend the Futurist [...]