Documents of Latin American and Latino 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 [...]

According to this article, this exhibition presented people in Lima with a rare opportunity “to see absolutely modern painting,” which prizes “emotive qualities, sincerity, and the power of values” more highly than the typical “familiar [...]

This text announces the upcoming opening of the show of Surrealism organized by César Moro at the Academia Alcedo in Lima. The writer, who confesses he has not seen the show, comments that it is the first Surrealist exhibition to take place in the [...]

In this interview, Alejandro Romualdo Valle (“Xanno”) reacts to the ideological turn that the debate as to whether or not there are painters in Peru has taken. He states that the real problem facing Peruvian art “is the lack of critics.” [...]

In this interview, Primitivo Evanán Poma explains to Nilo Espinoza that in Sarhua, the country village where he was born, “it was the custom that relatives would give quelcas or painted wooden boards to families that built a house and put a roof [...]

This newspaper article about the closing of the first premises occupied by the IAC (Instituto de Arte Contemporáneo) in Lima was written by Francisco Moncloa at the request of the director of the magazine Oiga. Moncloa lists a series of “anecdotes [...]

Rodrigo Quijano argues that Tiempo detenido—the installation by ceramicist Carlos Runcie Tanaka—does more than illustrate a traumatic event. Since its beginnings, Quijano asserts, the work has been linked to the artist’s search for identity. To [...]

On the occasion of the party organized for José Sabogal by “young Peruvians in Buenos Aires,” the author notes the group’s obvious admiration for and acknowledgment of the artist, based on their shared feelings and ideals. The works of art [...]

This text lists the works of the I Salón de Arte Abstracto held in Lima, Peru in January 1958. The brief prologue states that the exhibition’s mission is to demonstrate how painting in Peru has followed the same “logical” artistic development [...]

This interview with the Indigenist painter Julia Codesido was published in the Lima newspaper La Crónica on the occasion of her exhibition at the Delphic Studios gallery (New York, 1936). The interviewer talks about the warm welcome Codesido [...]

This questionnaire-like interview with José Sabogal addresses his recent stay in Mexico, which lasted for a number of months. The interviewer asserts that Sabogal “is one of our most valuable young artists,” and explains that he has already [...]

In this interview, the writer Mario Vargas Llosa criticizes governmental cultural plans during the first phase (1968–75) of the self-styled Gobierno Revolucionario de las Fuerzas Armadas del Perú. Vargas Llosa says the results of those plans have [...]

In this text, art critic Carlos Raygada asserts that Vinatea Reinoso is one of the “most refined and legitimate proponents” of “genuinely Peruvian painting.” The author makes reference to the most outstanding work in the reigning pictorial [...]

According to César Francisco Macera, José Sabogal’s first exhibition in Perú (Lima, 1919) had a profound impact on the country; viewers were astonished and appalled at “the new landscape” they were looking at. Sabogal responded to critiques [...]

In the author’s opinion there has seldom been a fairer appointment, because José Sabogal is not a token candidate, he is a hard-working painter. Another factor is the “authentic Peruvian-ness” of what José Eulogio Garrido calls the fervent [...]

The author explains that not many Latin American artists exhibit their work in Buenos Aires (other than those from the countries of the Río de la Plata region: Uruguay and Argentina), since European artists tend to be more enthusiastically received [...]

According to the author of this article José Sabogal is, above all, “someone who expresses Peruvian-ness,” one who has not only developed an original technique, but has also managed to expose profound and unprecedented aspects of the country’s [...]

This is the catalogue, written in French, for the exhibition of drawings by Juan Devéscovi and poems by Xavier Abril that was presented at the Maison de l’Amérique Latine [Latin American House] in Paris (November 1927). In his introduction, Jean [...]

Published in Lima-based newspaper La Prensa, this document is a compilation of reviews published in New York newspapers on the Julia Codesido exhibition held at Delphic Studios gallery, also in New York, in 1936. Howard Devree of The New York Times [...]

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

In this text, art critic Carlos Raygada points out that Mario Urteaga’s painting became well known pursuant to his previous exhibition at the Sala Alcedo in Lima (1934) and to winning first prize at the V Salón de Verano de Viña del Mar (1937). [...]

In this [document about] Sabogal’s first exhibition in Lima, the author wrongly declares that he is a “painter from Cuzco” because that is where he painted the works in the exhibition. The reviewer also has some reservations about the canvases [...]

In his review of José Sabogal’s 1937 exhibition, the author claims that an analysis of the evolution of the painter’s work reveals “a single driving thought and a single, constant desire for modernity, as well as a sense of the vernacular.” [...]

Carlos Raygada claims that José Sabogal’s work combines technical mastery with a “moody” aesthetic to produce an accurate expression of the country’s sensibilities. The critic describes Sabogal’s paintings as unusually controversial [...]

This essay was written on the first solo exhibition by the artist Vinatea Reinoso that consisted of around forty works reflecting “ardent nationalist fervor” inspired by the landscapes of Cuzco, Arequipa and Lima. It is seen that Cusco provided [...]

In this text, José Sabogal, who is outraged, writes about a colonial fountain in the city of Cuzco that has been “savagely and mercilessly torn from its secular place.” That fountain, the painter explains, was “the people of Cuzco’s favorite [...]

In this essay Mirko Lauer discusses two approaches to the contemporary interpretation of the visual arts during the pre-capitalist period. Lauer uses the latest ideological definition of creative expression as an umbrella term under which he includes [...]

The celebrated avant-garde artist César Vallejo states that every person has their Ingres violin—a French expression meaning that everyone has a hobby they are passionate about—after having visited a show in Paris featuring “works of madness [...]

Fernando de Szyszlo was interviewed following his success at the III Salón Moncloa. After presenting a brief biographical sketch of the artist, the anonymous interviewer records his opinions on the subject of contemporary art: “the fruit of a [...]

The author of this article is entranced by José Sabogal’s use of color in his works. He also thinks the painter has already expressed, in some of his paintings, an undeniable sense of “Peruvian-ness,” forging a new technique that blends the [...]

This is the text of the entire talk delivered by Fernando de Szyszlo and part of the tribute organized by the IAC (Instituto de Arte Contemporáneo) in 1955 in honor of the painter Mario Urteaga. Szyszlo describes him as a highly idiosyncratic [...]

This article briefly discusses the connections between “revolution” and “culture”—in this case in terms of the military government led by General Juan Velasco Alvarado (1968–75). The anonymous author notes that because the revolution “ [...]

The author José Alfredo Hernández describes José Sabogal as a fully-developed artist with a clearly-defined technique, whose work should only be judged according to appropriately demanding criteria. Hernández mentions the indisputable beauty of [...]

In this essay, a local editor reported that the New York exhibition comprised both works by the Izcue sisters (Elena and Victoria) as well as pre-Hispanic pieces. Such an approach, he writes, demonstrates “a revival” based on the “search for [...]

This text by Rafael Larco Herrera discusses the careers of Peruvian artists Elena and Victoria Izcue. The author mentions specifically Elena’s workbook El arte peruano en la escuela, published in 1926, which earned a great deal of acclaim in Peru [...]

This brief anonymous article addresses the debate on the subject of Motociclista No. 3, by Luis Zevallos Hetzel, winner of the first prize at the painting competition organized by the Festivales de Ancón (a resort on the outskirts of Lima). The [...]

This essay is a biographical sketch on the life and work of architect Manuel Piqueras Cotolí after his passing. His firm convictions and talent was considered an irrecoverable loss in the Peruvian art scene. His “Peruvianism” was not archaic but [...]

In this text, José Sabogal contextualizes his description of the Sunday market in Huancayo, where inhabitants of villages in Junín and Ayacucho go to sell their crafts. He remarks on the work of Mariano Flórez, his engraved gourds in particular, [...]

The author, César Guillermo Corzo, notes that Mario Urteaga’s painting stands out for its skillful use of a brush, which he handles “with an ease that is almost childlike.” He states that his work is not influenced by literature or imitation, [...]

This is the review of the exhibition of works by Julia Codesido at the Delphic Studios gallery (New York, 1936), originally published in El Universal Gráfico de México and reprinted in the Lima newspaper La Crónica. The writer of the Mexican [...]

The author clarifies that he has not yet been to the capital of Peru, but this has not prevented him from visiting José Sabogal’s Exhibition of Woodcut Prints in Lima time and time again. There is nothing absurd about it, says José Eulogio [...]

The author praises Fernando de Szyszlo’s first exhibition (May 1947) for breaking with the “imitative painting” practiced by other young [artists] “who adhere to the dead formulas of the Escuela de Bellas Artes.”  Identifying “two views [...]

In this article, Carlos Solari asserts that the medium of “wood engraving has always been very suggestive” for painter José Sabogal. “The synthetic quality that it requires [befits] the temperamental characteristics for which he is known,” [...]

This article by Luis E. Valcárcel was originally published in El Comercio, the Cuzco newspaper (January 31, 1919) where José Sabogal painted his canvases. According to Valcárcel, the paintings exhibited that year at Casa Brandes (Lima) “are not [...]

The critic Carlos Solari (alias “Don Quijote”) reviews about thirty works that José Sabogal, the founder of Peruvian indigenist painting, brought to Lima after spending several months in Cuzco (c. 1925). In Solari’s opinion, the painter is [...]

In this text, Carlos Solari (alias “Don Quijote”) discusses articles on Peruvian painter Sabogal that appeared in the most important Buenos Aires-based newspapers (three of them in particular). The article in La Prensa speaks of the “modern [...]

Carmen Saco describes Julia Codesido’s 1929 exhibition “as a process, the radical dissolution of a dying world in which one race withdraws and others rise triumphant along with a way of perceiving long-established art as distinct from art that is [...]

The editor of this note—who may be identified as Ernesto More—recounts briefly the artistic trajectory of his brother Carlos More, starting from his studies in the Peruvian Sierras during his younger years to his formative years while on a trip [...]

The author believes “there is almost no hesitation” in recognizing the genius of José Sabogal on the eve of his exhibition in 1921. Speaking in glowing terms, M. E. Mendizábal explains that Sabogal’s paintings shed light on those living in [...]

This article is about a trip taken by the author, José Eulogio Garrido and José Sabogal, the founder of Peruvian indigenist painting, to the community of Sanchique, in the province of Otuzco in northern Peru. The author describes the mountain [...]