Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

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 [...]

In the Montevideo-based weekly Marcha, writer Juan Carlos Somma condemns a series of confused decisions the Uruguayan government made about the preservation and restoration of murals by Joaquín Torres García and members of his workshop at the [...]

The article by the art critic and columnist of the weekly journal Marcha, Fernando García Esteban, was written in immediate response to the published complaint made by Juan Carlos Somma regarding the imminent restoration and transfer of the murals [...]

This is a typewritten copy of the lecture given by David Alfaro Siqueiros at the John Reed Club in Hollywood on September 2, 1932. Siqueiros talks about the creation of what he called the Los Angeles “Mural Painters’ Block” [BPM: Bloque de [...]

Joaquín Torres García gave this lecture on David Alfaro Siqueiros and his mural painting at a time when several Argentinean artists who had worked closely with the Mexican painter in 1933—in particular Antonio Berni and Demetrio Urruchúa—were [...]

In response to the article published in the newspaper El Día by Carlos Herrera Mac-Lean (October 13, 1944), Joaquín Torres García published in the weekly magazine Marcha a particularly harsh response, especially, if one considered that the emitted [...]

Here, Edgardo Pérez Luna praises the mural by Teodoro Núñez Ureta executed in the building that housed Peru’s Treasury Department. The writer argues that the allegories created by the painter in the mural elude the conventions of the genre and [...]

The (unknown) author of this article reports and comments on the exhibition of works by the Argentinian painter, printmaker, and muralist Demetrio Urruchúa at the Ateneo de Montevideo. The article specifically mentions certain iconographic aspects [...]

This article quotes comments made by David Alfaro Siqueiros about contemporary art (in 1940) that appeared in the Mexican magazine Romance (a popular magazine in Latin America). Seven years after his visit to the Río de la Plata region, Siqueiros [...]

The Argentinean visual artist Antonio Berni frequently visited the city of Montevideo from 1938, producing various exhibitions; in this article, he expressed his social and political vision of mural art, attributing it with a “constructive” [...]

In this article, Luis Eduardo Pombo reveals himself as the first Uruguayan art critic to ideologically wrap himself in the aesthetics of David Alfaro Siqueiros. Generally, even the commentaries made by those intellectuals closest to the Mexican [...]

The Union of Visual Artists was part of the structure of the C.T.I.U. (Confederación de Trabajadores Intelectuales del Uruguay [Confederation of Intellectual Workers of Uruguay]) federation created in Montevideo at the request of David Alfaro [...]

In this article, Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros explains his vision of art history which, in his view, wavers between moments of socialization (or social integration) and moments of individualism (or decadence). It is on those grounds that [...]

This essay describes the merits of Chilean-Uruguayan artist Felipe Seade, an advocate of social realism, and harshly criticizes all of those who hindered his career. The frictions between practitioners of social realism and those who disdained it on [...]

In this text, José Sabogal states that, upon their arrival, the Spanish were impressed by the architecture and art they found in America. They understood that “their fortunate victory could not be maintained if they did not consolidate it through [...]

In this speech, José Sabogal discusses the mural paintings and architecture of Arequipa, while summarizing the history of Peruvian art in the twentieth century. Both he and his followers sought “to interpret the landscape and expressions of its [...]

This is the script for a documentary about Jesús Rafael Soto, written by Clara Diament de Sujo—the noted essayist and gallery owner, who lived in Caracas at that time—and produced by Ángel Hurtado for National Television – Canal 5 (Venezuela [...]

In a text on the drawings and prints of José Luis Cuevas written in 1985, the art historian Catalina Banko compares his work to that of the Mexican muralists in order to show the major differences between them. To accomplish this, the Venezuelan [...]

In his comments, Sebastián Salazar Bondy praises the early accomplishments of the painter Sigfrido Laske, especially given the local milieu, “where art training is not as comprehensive as desirable.” His evidence of the artist’s talent is [...]

This is a newspaper review of “El arte para la victoria y la pintura mexicana moderna,” the lecture given by David Alfaro Siqueiros at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes de Lima in March 1943. The painter and political activist informed his [...]

The author notes that the furniture and the decorations on the ceilings, floors, and walls of the Peruvian Pavilion at the Sevilla Expo are all the work of José Sabogal, expressed “in the vernacular style that both moves and captivates him.” [...]

This is the responses given by José Sabogal, the founder of the Peruvian indigenous painting movement, to a questionnaire on the cultural situation in Peru. He proclaims his faith in the idea of a purely Peruvian kind of art, since it embodies “ [...]

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

This article by Gustavo Valcárcel reports on the award that David Alfaro Siqueiros received at the XXV Biennale di Venezia held in 1950. It was, in the author’s view, only due to “sentimental French chauvinism” that Henri Matisse received [...]

This interview with painter and muralist Teodoro Núñez Ureta includes some biographical notes and photographs of his work space. Núñez Ureta asserts that the so-called “isms,” fruit of European decadence, contaminate painting in America. What [...]

When a posthumous biography of Santiago Martínez Delgado was published, Álvaro Orduz León, whose field was advertising, wrote this article describing the artist’s training and activities in the fields of art and advertising in Colombia. He tells [...]

The essayist Carlos Jiménez Gómez interviews Aníbal Gil and provides a detailed profile of the artist on the occasion of his latest mural at the Caja Agraria in the city of Medellín. Jiménez inquires about the “young maestro’s” artistic [...]

In this document, Tim Drescher and Rupert Garcia consider the conditions that influenced the proliferation of mural production by Chicano artists after the start of the Chicano Movement in the late 1960s. It details various thematic and aesthetic [...]

This anonymous document considers the relationship between socially engaged artistic practices by Chicano artists and the development of particular stylistic characteristics that have come to define Chicano art. It posits that the desire to create [...]

This is an anonymous statement that documents the need for Chicano artists to pursue a practice that is engaged with the community of which it is a part, and considers the broader implications of artistic production. It posits that while some Chicano [...]

In this essay, author Gilberto Freyre examines the various phases of the life and artistic career of the painter Lula Cardoso Ayres, establishing a nexus between his art and origins from the social elite of the state of Pernambuco. He comments on the [...]

“Ketty” is the name (or pseudonym) of the journalist who wrote this report about the mural that Hernando Tejada was at the time painting at the Ferrocarril del Pacífico railway station in Cali. Before divulging the particular events in the [...]

In this essay, the Colombian artist and theoretician Juan Mejía discusses independently two images of a rhinoceros, each of which appeared at different times in the history of Colombian art. The first image is part of a mural painted on the wall of [...]

“El americanismo de los años 40 y la nueva vanguardia colombiana” [The Americanism of the 1940s and the New Colombian Avant-Garde], an essay by the historian Álvaro Medina, published in 1978, discusses the artistic languages inspired by the [...]

In the book Problemas sociales en las artes plásticas [Social Problems in the Visual Arts], the critic Walter Engel reviews different periods in the universal history of art, discussing how some cultures and artists depict social issues?such as [...]

In this interview with Pedro Nel Gómez, presented as a first-person narrative, the painter provides an overview of his childhood in a mining town in [the Department of] Antioquia, where he first came into contact with the topics he would later [...]

Pedro Nel Gómez, creator of the controversial frescos of the old city palace in Medellín, which at the time of this writing (2009), houses the Museo de Antioquia—explains his reasons for undertaking that major pictorial series. He also provides [...]

When he turned fifty, the painter Pedro Nel Gómez was interviewed by an unnamed journalist from the magazine Semana, which published an article on his life and work. He spent his childhood in Anorí (Antioquia), and later began his training as an [...]

This document includes the expert appraisal report of the eleven murals that artist Pedro Nel Gómez painted from 1935 to 1937 at the new Medellín City Hall. The Medellín City Council had commissioned Colombian writers Efe Gómez and Antonio J. [...]

The article “El expresionismo como síntoma de pereza e inhabilidad en el arte” [Expressionism as a Symptom of Laziness and Inability in Art] expresses the opinion held in traditional political circles in Colombia concerning avant-garde modern [...]

This essay, written by the Colombian attorney and philosopher Francisco Posada, is divided into nine parts: (i) an untitled introduction; (ii) “Colonial Feudalism”; (iii) “Realism and Social Conflict”; (iv) “Painting”; (v) “The Current [...]

Before this article by Ignacio Gómez Jaramillo appeared in the Bogotá newspaper El Tiempo, he read from it on Balance del medio siglo [Balance of the Half Century], the national Colombian TV program hosted by the Argentine art critic Marta Traba. G [...]

This document is a chapter from a book on “Hispana” and “Hispano” artists from the New Deal Era (1930s and ‘40s). In it, art historian and scholar Tey Marianna Nunn focuses on the lives and works of several artists working under the Works [...]

In this document, artist and art historian Eva Cockroft details the history and development of the Chicano mural movement in the United States, focusing on its beginnings as a means of voicing solidarity and political resistance during the United [...]

In this document, artist David Avalos posits that the Chicano community has been marginalized, and exists “outside of the law”; it has, for the most part, been kept outside of the institutions of mainstream American society. He writes that this [...]

In this document, Amalia Mesa-Bains profiles Chicana muralists, Patricia Rodríguez and Judith F. Baca, focusing on their respective artistic developments and their roles in the Chicano Movement, attempting to shed light on the links between social [...]

This document is a transcript of a conference presentation given by art historian Shifra M. Goldman. In her talk, she defends the validity of contemporary Latin American and Chicano art as fields of study for art historians, criticizing detractors [...]

This document is an editorial within a newsletter published by El Colegio de la Frontera Norte [The School of the North Border]. It describes the work of the painter Malaquías Montoya and declares that he is responsible for the first mural painted [...]

This is a brief review of the state of Chicano mural production in New Mexico at the time of this publication in 1978. It includes a short personal and artistic biography of the author, the New Mexican muralist Francisco Lefebre, and articulates his [...]

In this article written in 1957, Teresa Tejada discusses the murals by artists Alejandro Obregón and Hernando Tejada recently finished or underway at public institutions and private homes. Specifically, the text provides a formal analysis of the [...]