Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In her text, Maria Lúcia Bueno follows the course of twentieth century visual arts, from modernity to globalization. She in turn probes the art world, relating art spaces and dissemination of art to their social context. Based on her analysis of the [...]

In her text, Maria Lúcia Bueno follows the course of twentieth century visual arts, from modernity to globalization. She in turn probes the art world, relating art spaces and dissemination of art to their social context. Based on her analysis of the [...]

This essay about the interview by Pablo Mañé Garzón with Ángel Kalenberg, the director of the IGE (Instituto General Electric de Montevideo [General Electric Institute of Montevideo), discussing the programs carried out by the institution that [...]

The article describes a cultural event held at the IGE (Instituto General Electric [General Electric Institute]) in Montevideo where the performances by the visual artists and the exhibition on the industrial artistic works were linked through rather [...]

In this article, written in 1964, Humberto Tomeo, an educator and visual artist, underscores the importance of industrial design in the modern world, and its impact on pedagogical aspects of art instruction in secondary education. The author refers [...]

In this essay, Graciela Pantin analyzes this manifestation of the “spirit of the times,” as expressed in the visual arts, establishing a set of “parameters that identify the socio-historical background of our contemporary nature.” She goes on [...]

Critic Willy Aranguren provides a chronological account of the role of the Salón de Arte in the development of the visual arts in the Barquisimeto region of the state of Lara, where the biennial is organized. Aranguren makes use of historical [...]

The critic Juan Calzadilla reviews the work of the participants in the Gran Premio Christian Dior de Artes Visuales (Caracas, 1987), after ranting about Venezuelan art critics and art salons. He describes that milieu—of what he calls partisan and [...]

In this text, the curator Luis Ángel Duque exposes the reasons why the sixth Bienal de Artes Visuales Christian Dior (1999) is dedicated to hypermedia. In his view, each of the twenty-four participants in the exhibition used imagery and expressed [...]

Venezuelan cultural journalist Mara Comerlati conducted this interview with Gego in 1980 soon after she had been awarded the Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas in 1979. Comerlati provides biographical information about the artist: her arrival [...]

In this review Mirko Lauer discusses the Peruvian visual arts during the two decades spanning the 1960s to the 1980s, challenging the traditional classist view that the different aesthetic fields within the country’s cultural universe should be [...]

This document is the text that accompanies the audiovisual production Plástica [arte contemporáneo en Colombia] produced by the Colombian Ministerio de Cultura and El Vicio productions (2005). The presentation of the DVD contains a synopsis in [...]

In an interview he gave in 1978, Luis Caballero discusses the role of the critic and the evolution of the visual arts in Latin America; gives his opinion on what art means; and reflects on his own work as well as on his influences. Caballero also [...]

In "Rectificaciones sobre las artes plásticas en México," Mexican Muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros states his opinions on a variety of polemical issues in Mexican and Latin American artistic practice. He proposes a reform of the system of arts [...]

Fernando Cocchiarale wrote a historical overview of the pioneering uses of technology in art created in Rio de Janeiro, emphasizing the return of the close links between art and life initiated in the 1960s. The writer also foresaw the revival of the [...]

Art critic and curator Fernando Cocchiarale argues that the expansion of the visual arts into other fields has implied greater distance from the traditions of which it formed part. The inclusion of time and space in art became an important mark of [...]

Here Fernando Cocchiarale discusses how the fields of contemporary art have overflowed past their previous boundaries, going beyond painting, sculpture, printmaking, and drawing; he cites collage and photomontage in the early twentieth century as [...]

In this text, Manga Rosa, a group of artists, describe how they started their collective work oriented towards building tridimensional pieces, much like and similar to architectural work. They refer to Arte ao ar livre [Art outdoors], a project [...]

In 1978, the French art critic Pierre Restany drafted a manifesto along with two artists, the Brazilian (born in Poland) Frans Krajcberg, and the Yugoslav based in Brazil Sepp Baendereck. The text is a rallying call in defense of art that is “ [...]

The texts gathered for the exhibition Tradição e Ruptura: síntese de arte e cultura brasileiras (1984) are introduced by the curator, João Marino. Marino is an advocate of the purposes of the exhibition: to assemble artworks along with [...]

Rubens Mano analyzes the relation between artists and urban spaces during the 1960s and 1970s, both of which introduced into the visual arts a key discussion of the implications of their entry into the core of urban life. The making of art becomes an [...]

This text by Celso Fioravante was featured in the catalogue to the exhibition Arco das Rosas: o marchand como curador, curated by José Roberto Aguilar, and held at the Casa das Rosas in São Paulo in 2001. In it, Celso Fioravante analyzes the role [...]

In her text, Maria Lúcia Bueno follows the course of twentieth century visual arts, from modernity to globalization. She in turn probes the art world, relating art spaces and dissemination of art to their social context. Based on her analysis of the [...]

British critic Guy Brett sets forth an approximate chronology of his personal contact with Brazilian art between the 1964 and 2005, and considers the importance of that contact with Brazilian creators. During the earlier years, his contacts were with [...]

Daniela Bousso opens the roundtable by introducing the participants, their practices, and their work in the realm of audiovisual art. Christine Mello assesses the Prêmio Sérgio Motta, which, in her view, is limited insofar as it is a prize for [...]

The signatories of this manifesto—a statement of solidarity with the struggle of the Brazilian people defending freedom of expression in all areas—are opposed to the dictatorship’s practice of using art as a symbol of prestige for the military [...]

Walter Sebastião describes the activities at the group studio (located in a shed in Belo Horizonte) where eight young contemporary artists work together. They all explore different techniques and languages, but share a preference for a density of [...]

In this text, Mario Ramiro comments on Construção Selvagem, a show of artists from Minas Gerais held at the Centro Cultural São Paulo. The author asserts that by bringing together various artists, group shows give rise to reflection and illustrate [...]

Art critic Lorenzo Mammì gives his reading of the exhibition of the work of sculptor José Resende, which was held at the Galeria Subdistrito in São Paulo (1988). Here, he explains the coherence of the artist’s method in terms of elements of [...]

Maria Olímpia Vassão interviews the artist Alex Vallauri and, in her introductory remarks, comments on the graffiti that have flooded the city of São Paulo since the late 1970s. Vassão notes the anonymous nature of these works, the interference [...]

In this text, Julio Plaza questions the notion of the “Geração ‘80” that circulated widely in Brazil. Brazilian art criticism used that term to define new artistic production that differed from the experimentalism prevalent in the seventies; [...]

According to Ivo Mesquita, it is due to political-economic changes and social crises in Brazil—the results of a colonial project—that the country is influenced by the non-optimistic perspectives that have taken hold in the rest of the world with [...]

Mário Ramiro weaves a commentary around the exhibition of collages created by Hudinilson Jr., a member of the group 3NÓS3 [Three Knots/We Three] to which they both belong. Ramiro emphasizes the serial nature of the show and one of Hudinilson’s [...]

This text ispart two of Julio Plaza’s essay on the “artist’s book.” The author addresses the “anti-artistic book” as well—an innovative conception based on an analytic line of art and on the systematic practice of technological media. [...]

This text is part one of the essay by Julio Plaza on artists’ books. In it, he discusses the concept of the “book” as physical, informational, and linguistic object. In his view, form and content converge in the “artist’s book,” where [...]

In this text, Julio Plaza discusses inter-semiotic translation, that is, the decodification effected in the passage from one art form to another. He draws a difference between that translation and an idea of artistic appearance, and upholds the [...]

In this text, experimental artist Abraham Palatnik discusses the questions of information and technology in relation to human evolution. In Palatnik’s view, evolution is key to the dynamic of culture as man adapts to the world at large and to his [...]

Arlindo Machado’s point of departure in this text is that noise, rather than signals, is the basis of writing in video. Grids of lines and dots are laid out on a surface, but when an electrical current is applied the figures are manipulated and [...]

Testimony by artist Hudinilson Jr. on his work processes. Told in the form of a poem (in verse), the artist reveals the intimate relationship that his body establishes with a Xerox copier, emphasizing that the copies made function like a type of [...]

In his discussion of an exhibition of work by artist Hudinilson Jr., film critic Jean-Claude Bernardet points out the use of the image of a fragmented male body in an austere sequence structured around rectangles in shades of gray. He observes that [...]

This document presents the show A Nova Dimensão do Objeto curated by Aracy Amaral for the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo in 1986. Without attempting to collapse the difference between sculptural works and [...]

This text by writer Benedito Nunes is a comparison of two works, both of them urban scenes from his collection: a painting by Emmanuel Nassar and a photograph by Gratuliano Bibas. Drawing on the author’s background in philosophy, the text is a [...]

In this text, art critic Radha Abramo takes stock of realism and metaphor in relation to wretchedness in the work of Brazilian visual artist Gontran Guanaes Netto. She underscores the link between Guanaes Netto’s production and a national type, a [...]

This text by the art critic Aracy Amaral (b. 1930) describes an exhibition of work by Latin American artists living in Paris, which she curated at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo (MAC-USP) in 1985. The objective of this [...]

In this text, curator Edna Prometheu explains that Sala Escura da Tortura is a new staging of the exhibition that took place at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1973—at a time when a large number of Brazilian exiles from the [...]

This article describes Sala Negra da Tortura, the 1973 exhibition presented by the Grupo Denúncia at the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris; the exhibition then traveled to other European cities where Amnesty International was organizing sessions on [...]

This essay is about a conversation [in French] between the artists Henri Cueco and Gontran Guanaes Netto, in which Cueco analyzes Guanaes Netto’s drawing, describing its testimonial nature as the result of an unspoken agreement between his painting [...]

Kinetic artist Julio Le Parc considers the work of Gontran [Guanaes] Netto, from Paris, the city where he resides. He begins with an analysis of a context in which artists seek individual recognition, which in Le Parc’s view is a situation that [...]

This text was written by the Brazilian artist Abelardo da Hora for the exhibition called Civilização do Nordeste, organized by the Italian architect Lina Bo Bardi at the Museu do Unhão, in Salvador, the capital of Bahia, in 1963. Abelardo da Hora [...]

In this text, published in the catalogue for an exhibition held at the Galeria Raquel Arnaud in 1993, Maria Alice Milliet sets forth an overall analysis of the artwork of Nazareth Pacheco. In this artist, the writer sees a set of qualities capable of [...]