Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

As the director of the Círculo de Bellas Artes School in Montevideo, painter Carlos María Herrera wrote this letter to Martín Lasala, the president of that institution’s board, with a number of proposals, chief among them was the elimination of [...]

In this manifesto, the ¡30-30! collective of painters announced that its struggle against academism was once again alive and thriving. The reason for this was that the president’s office of the Escuela de Bellas Artes [School of Fine Arts] [...]

This is the text of the lecture given in October 1934 by the writer Jorge Zalamea at the Teatro Colón in Bogotá on the occasion of the exhibition of works by the painter Ignacio Gómez Jaramillo. The essay begins with a general discussion on the [...]

This article was written by the Peruvian politician and writer, Magda Portal, focusing on the work of the artist, Elena Izcue. In Portal’s opinion, looking at the past would not represent a step backward, since the past is where we find the promise [...]

In this essay, Peruvian art critic and diplomat Raúl María Pereira provides an overview of Peruvian painting from the first half of the twentieth century. While the author praises the first generation of academic painters, he believes that their [...]

This article analyzes Jean Dubuffet’s work within the framework of the trend it demonstrates to those artists concerned with the very essence of painting. Pellegrini stresses that for this French artist, art without spontaneity is impossible [...]

This article by Ana María Risco was included in her book Crítica situada. The latter was originally written as an academic thesis in which she explored the network of authors with whom Enrique Lihn communicated in the field of the [...]

In this text, Raúl María Pereira rejects the notion of sincerity—a value as arbitrary as it is ungraspable—as privileged category in artistic creation. He upholds, rather, the duty born of “today’s agonizing mindset”—the search for the [...]

In his letter to the art critic Carlos Solari (alias “Don Quijote”), the painter José Sabogal expresses his appreciation for kind words about his work, but challenges two points made by Solari. The first concerns the impression that he is a [...]

In his article, Guillermo Rouillón deplores the dismissal of José Sabogal from his position as director of the ENBA (Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes). According to Rouillón, Sabogal is undoubtedly “the promoter and guide of Peru’s entry into [...]

David Alfaro Siqueiros critiques the paintings of the 23rd Fine Arts Salon (Buenos Aires) as works imitative of past European painting. The artist defines the event as a colonial art show, with gullible themes and devoid of technique, as well as with [...]