Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In its bulletin, GRUPO 8, created in Montevideo in 1959, exposed the need to organically and institutionally tie national industries to those Uruguayan artists affiliated with modernity. The objective was to promote labor sources for Uruguayan modern [...]

Writer Elizabeth Schön critiques the Coloritmos series by Alejandro Otero, and speculates that the intention of the series is its potential for producing visual-chromatic emotions. In this regard, Schön examines the theme of the Coloritmos, whose [...]

The critic Carlos Silva wrote a study of the work of the Venezuelan sculptor Edgar Guinand, pointing out two fundamental periods in his life in art. The first is defined by the writer in the visual arts context that follows the Latin American Post- [...]

This text by artist Alberto Brandt describes the artistic aims of his exhibition Alberto Brandt. Exposición de pinturas held at the Centro Profesional del Este in Caracas in 1957. As opposed to the “pseudo-classicism,” rationality, and formalism [...]

Robert Storr analyzes Gego’s work in the formal milieu in which it was created. The curator begins with an introduction in which he provides the essential information about her life, her late training as an artist, and the influence of Paul Klee [...]

Luis Enrique Pérez Oramas analyzes Gego’s work in light of what he considers her contribution to the history of visual art. The critic considers [the source of] that contribution to be the different artistic milieu in which her artistic life [...]

In this essay, Luis Enrique Pérez Oramas describes Gego’s body of work. The curator identifies the artist’s early work in the category of geometric abstraction; however, as she developed, she moved toward an approach that was “organic and [...]

Luis Enrique Pérez Oramas believed that as a foreigner in Venezuela, Gego gave her work the function of an “analytical process” by constructing a “neutral space” in a time saturated by Kinetic art and geometric abstraction. Her work resists [...]

In this essay, Venezuelan curator Rina Carvajal asserts that by means of the disintegration and reconfiguration of the form, the visual discourse formulated by Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt, 1912–1994), a Venezuelan artist of German origin, opened up [...]

Of the three chapters in the book by researcher Víctor Guédez on the Venezuelan artist Armando Barrios. Lo permanente, lo novedoso y lo influyente, chapter three, “Lo influyente,” is discussed here. Under subtitle five (“La conquista de una s [...]

Juan Calzadilla begins his critical essay by relating a crisis in geometric abstraction to the exploration of Informalism by Omar Carreño. Calzadilla reflects on Carreño’s embrace of the gestural and material aspects of the trend in his paintings [...]

The critic Carlos Maldonado Bourgoin discusses the painter and sculptor Omar Carreño’s latest work, in which he returns to his exploration of geometrical abstraction. Maldonado Bourgoin mentions the Venezuelan artist’s passion for research, [...]

Venezuelan writer and journalist Alfredo Schael interviews Omar Carreño in 1973, a year after he was awarded the Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas [National Prize for the Visual Arts]. The author examines the career of the Venezuelan painter and [...]

The critic Roberto Guevara comments on Mateo Manaure’s pinturas sobremontaje. In the critic’s opinion, this series represents one of the artist’s most noteworthy contributions, after his achievements in the field of geometric abstract art, [...]

The synopsis and the annotations in English are coming soon. However, our bilingual readers can click on “Español” to access this information in Spanish [...]

Juan Calzadilla starts this critical text with a general commentary on the concept of “painting” when it is limited to the artist’s self-expression based on discovering a personal language, with the resulting isolation from the environment. He [...]

In this text, critic Márcio Doctors analyzes the work of Brazilian painter Eduardo Sued for whom the author asserts geometry is the translation of the unnamable space of things and a point of departure, rather than a destination. He writes, & [...]

“Anatomía de un Método” [Anatomy of a Method], by the artist and writer Samuel Montealegre, is a review of Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar’s sculptural work. This essay was written as an introduction to the exhibition of the artist’s works at [...]

This text by historian and critic Walter Engel may be the first essay to specifically focus on Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar’s work in relief, which Engel considers key to the artist’s transition from painting to sculpture. Engel’s provides a [...]

In 1984, the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá (MAM) in conjunction with the Flota Mercante Grancolombiana published a large-format book entitled Ramírez Villamizar with the most complete set of reproductions of work by this Colombian artist found in [...]

The essay “El arte clásico de Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar” by art critic Casimiro Eiger is one of the first critical texts to address Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar’s work as part of the geometric abstraction movement. Eiger considers Ramírez’ [...]

In 1989, Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar showed his series of works titled Homenaje a los Artífices Precolombinos [Tribute to Pre-Columbian Artisans] at the III Bienal de La Habana [Third Havana Biennial]. The Colombian sculptor wrote an essay for the [...]

In this notebook, which is one of several kept by Colombian artist Carlos Rojas, the author writes down thirty-two points essential to his art.  Written like a manifesto, this particular manuscript contains ideas that Rojas considers innate to his [...]

In this article, Fernando de Szyszlo interviews his colleague, the renowned French exponent of geometric abstraction, Jean Dewasne, who explains that he rejects the romantic concept of “inspiration” on the grounds that it is a “passive” [...]

In this brief, bilingual essay by novelist Zoé Valdés, the author explores the function of Carmen Herrera’s paintings from a visual as well as a poetic point of view. She analyzes the lyricism and yet mathematical approach to Herrera’s style, [...]

In the view of Jacob Ruchti, the origin of Constructivism can be traced to the analytic investigation of Cubism. He believes that Constructivism implies “a new conceptual vision of things,” where colors, lines, and forms have an expressive power [...]

In his presentation, Samuel Oliver discusses the new order involved in building form with its own defining formal attributes. He supports his proposal with simple volumes and takes advantage of pure, highly visible colors. The forms are built into [...]

The manifesto La visión elemental [The Elemental Vision] puts forth a Non-Illusionist theoretical position on the image: working with volumetric or flat forms, simple and concise, activating planes and volumes using pigmentation, the usage of flat [...]

Jorge López Anaya writes about the rapid emergence of Grupo Sí [Yes Group] in the city of La Plata. He analyzes the use of chromatic saturation as a trait typical of the group’s artists. The critic states that the chromatic geometry represents, [...]

Guillermo Whitelow writes about how prone the Argentinean artists are to group themselves into three distinct tendencies. In the first group (José A. Fernández Muro, Sarah Grilo, Miguel Ocampo, Kasuya Sakai, Clorindo Testa), he points out they have [...]

In this document, the art critic Jorge Romero Brest writes about the work of César Paternosto and Alejandro Puente, discussing the concepts of color and image. Romero Brest emphasizes the treatment of the irregular frames that simultaneously suggest [...]

The critic writes about Ary Brizzi’s work beginning with the concept of “structure.” He discusses the existence of geometric art and—considering the combinations of geometry are exhaustible—he opts to use the term “parageometry.” Uribe [...]

French artist and critic Germaine Derbecq wrote, in a literary text, about the work of Alfredo Hlito underscoring its differences from Concrete art, especially regarding the modulation of color. She conceives Hlito's painting as a block without [...]

This is of the checklist of the groups included in the Exposición de arte no figurativo [Exhibition of Non-Figurative Art] (1960): they were Asociación de Arte no figurativo [Association of Non-Figurative Art], Arte Nuevo [New Art], Grupo Buenos [...]

Poet and essayist Saúl Yurkiévich identifies Nelson Blanco and Carlos Pacheco as two figurative artists who react against Informalism, although he tracks the influence of chromatic geometry in both. For Yurkievich, the dynamics of new painting [...]

Francisco Brugnoli reviews the work of Matilde Pérez in terms of persistence and discontinuity. In his essay, he theorizes about art’s role as a means of communication and provides a historical perspective on the evolution of a kind of [...]

Antonio Romera writes about the emergence and characteristics of the Rectángulo group. He explains that it was the first Chilean art group in which members shared a philosophy, an ethic, and an aesthetic. He reviews the career of Ramón [...]

This introductory text for a tribute exhibition identifies the three periods of Jorge de la Vega’s work: the geometric stage, the Nueva Figuración [New Figuration] stage (within painting), and the stage of songs, poems, and accompanying shows. [...]

In this introductory text for works by Enio Iommi, Pellegrini highlights how the artist’s sculpture broke with the traditional criteria of volume, weight and quiescence by juxtaposing spatial structure against volume. His analysis dates three [...]

In this text, Aldo Pellegrini introduces the Luis R. Tomasello exhibition held at Galería Denise René in Paris (November 1962). He emphasizes that the works presented make use of spatial volumes that are subordinated to the plane in which they move [...]

This introductory essay explains that the works by Alejandro Puente and César Paternosto take a different approach to geometric expression, thus introducing what might be called a ”sensitive geometry” as opposed to the hardness of Concrete art, [...]

In this text, critic Aldo Pellegrini points out that Rogelio Polesello’s work has begun moving away from an initial tendency toward pure formal spectacle and, now, is approaching the search for spontaneous gesture, although a peculiar sense of [...]

In the introductory text for Aldo Paparella, the critic points out that Paparella’s works manage to synthesize the rational aspect with the vital. Pellegrini likewise emphasizes that the use of quite different materials, such as torn wood and metal [...]

This is the text of an introductory essay for an exhibition of both Figurative and Non-figurative art. In Aldo Pellegrini’s opinion, both alternatives have not only overcome their old enmity but now proclaim the vitality of painting to those who [...]

This introductory text for works by Alfredo Hlito emphasizes how the artist expanded their sensory territory while not abandoning the notion of purely visual painting. Pellegrini also points out that Hlito’s works also divide space into planes in a [...]

Kenneth Kemble points out the characteristics of Generative art. He mentions Rafael Squirru’s lecture. Kemble is ironic about geometry and the aesthetic value of the cow (regarding the rancher and collector, Ignacio Pirovano). He highlights the [...]

This article by Carlos Mérida sets forth the different formal and basic elements for the integration of several art fields: scale, rhythm, color and harmony. In the artist’s opinion, the new generation of Mexican painters possesses a tendency [...]