Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This document is the inaugural text issued by the editors and founders of Revista de avance and published in its first issue on March 15, 1927. Taking the form of a manifesto in a poetic, metaphorical style, the text links the emergence of the [...]

In 1965, the original manifesto of the magazine Los Huevos del Plata was an avant-garde platform advocating against Uruguayan cultural dominance by the so-called Generación del ’45, a group of writers who exerted and promoted their strong [...]

This article is about the group, led by Clemente Padín, which created the magazine Los Huevos del Plata, a departure from the literary style that was favored in Uruguayan cultural circles in the 1960s. The Uruguayan author’s goal was to present [...]

This is a letter sent by the Uruguayan artist Pedro Figari to writer Alberto Zum Felde at the magazine La Pluma, which the latter directed. It is recognition by the famed artist, lawyer, and philosopher of the magazine’s cosmopolitanism, Latin [...]

In 1927, on the occasion of the first published volume of the magazine La Pluma, the editors outline the basic themes and profiles planned for subsequent editions. Such tenets included an early adherence to the cosmopolitan and eclectic practices [...]

Entitled “Testimonio: Las constantes de nuestra generación,” this text published in Revista Sardio (Caracas, 5–6. January–April, 1959) clarifies the reasons for the magazine’s creation in light of criticism leveled against it. The founding [...]

This “Statement” in the first issue of Revista Sardio presents the reasons for the founding of the publication and lays out its aesthetic, ethical, and political thinking. The magazine rejects an aestheticism that it deems incapable of grasping [...]

The artist Gabriel Morera; the writers José Balza, Jesús Enrique Guédez and Salvador Garmendia; the playwrights Román Chalbaud and Isaac Chocrón; and the graphic designer Nedo all make different statements about the relationship between the [...]

The fifth issue of the magazine CAL contains an array of articles on literature, the visual arts, poetry, philosophy, photography, and criticism relevant to the Venezuelan cultural scene of the day. Outstanding in this issue are the following [...]

This text by Guillermo Meneses is a presentation of CAL magazine, which he founded. Published in the magazine’s first issue, Meneses’s text explains the meaning of the letters in the publication’s name: C refers to crítica (criticism), A to [...]

In this text, Eduardo Neira Alva asserts that the “clear generational consciousness” in Latin America is evidenced by the existence of a number of journals that, like Espacio, express the thinking of groups “engaged in the great task of [...]

This document is the first issue of the magazine Rayado sobre el Techo published by the visual artists and writers who formed part of El Techo de la Ballena, a group active in Caracas from 1961 to 1968. This issue contains texts crucial to the group [...]

Ricardo Rodríguez Morales, the economist, writer, and author of many articles and essays on art and literature, analyzes and contextualizes the contents of two of the most important visual arts magazines in Colombia in the 1950s: Plástica and [...]

This document is an editorial page outlining the motivations for the creation of the magazine Tin-Tan. It cites its primary focus as addressing a critical absence in the print media of publications dedicated to the concerns of Mexican-Americans and [...]

In 1988 the art critic Mário Baratta described the origins and performance of the group of artists and writers who produced Clã [Clan] magazine and founded the SCAP (Sociedade Cearense de Artes Plásticas) in the mid-1940s in the state of Ceará. [...]

Carlos Scarinci writes about the early days of printmaking in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. He also mentions the artist Pedro Weingärtner, whose pioneering graphic works attracted attention at a national level. Weingärtner produced his first [...]

The first editorial published in Quixote magazine (December 1947) condemns the cultural “paralysis” generated by the veneration of the past, and proposes “stamping everything we do with the restless spirit of our Brazilian creativity and the [...]

This is the thirteenth and last issue of Nervo Óptico. This one-page handbill includes a photograph taken by Liliana Porter, a work entitled the Ladder of fire. Porter used an image by the same title, which she clipped from an art book. After [...]

This twelfth issue of Nervo Óptico, which was published two months after the previous issue, presents a group photographic work created by Telmo Lanes and Clovis Dariano. Superimposed on a photograph of an empty chair, we see a photograph of the [...]

The eleventh issue of Nervo Óptico shows the sequential photographic record of a performance presented by Flávio Pons, Cláudio Goulart and Vera Chaves Barcellos in Amsterdam in February 1978. Entitled On Ice, the event consisted of a gradual [...]

This tenth issue of Nervo Óptico, still on an atypical bimonthly schedule, is double the usual size (32cm x 45cm) and folded in the middle. Its cover has the title “Urban Stories: Sociedade Anónima”. In addition, it bears this notice: “Any [...]

This ninth issue of Nervo Óptico appeared as a bimonthly issue (as the previous one), almost as an exception to the regular monthly schedule. This issue shows a figurative drawing (pencil on paper) by Maria Tomaselli [Cirne Lima] from her 1977 [...]

This eighth issue of Nervo Óptico begins with an epigraph by the Brazilian art critic Mário Pedrosa, and a statement said to be collectively written by the Grupo N.O. This issue presents works exhibited in São Paulo, at the Galeria Eucatexpo. [...]

The seventh issue of the journal Nervo Óptico showed the photographic work of Vera Chaves Barcellos, with text at the bottom of the page limited to “Regarding the Smile,” consisting of 15 photos arranged in five sets of three. Each photo has a [...]

This is the sixth issue of Nervo Óptico, which presents Clovis Dariano’s photographic work entitled “Landscape on Landscape: City Scene.” This is a landscape of an urban skyline (Porto Alegre, the capital of Rio Grande do Sul) observed from [...]

The fifth issue of the journal Nervo Óptico presents photographic work by Telmo Lanes (with neither title nor text). The image of an eye is shown in three sets of five photographs laid out in a circular composition. The artist’s own eye follows [...]

This is the fourth issue of the publication Nervo Óptico. This issue publishes “fake news” signed by the artist Carlos Pasquetti. Looking like news in a community newspaper, a photograph covers the entire editorial space, with the headline: “ [...]

This is the third issue of the publication Nervo Óptico. It shows works by Carlos Asp under the general title of “Projects to Recover the Internal Landscape: Self-Portrait on Live Elements.” One of these involves an installation with sketches of [...]

This is the second issue of the publication Nervo Óptico. Like all issues of this publication except the first, there is neither an epigraph nor text; the name of the artist and the work are stated at the bottom of the page. This work is a series of [...]

This is the first issue of the Brazilian journal Nervo Óptico (April 1977). A seven-line text/statement (all the text in that publication) sets forth the manifesto written by the N.O. group in December 1976, which assumed a “critical stance [...]

This text is issue zero of Clã - Revista Trimestral magazine, in which the members introduce the publication. In their opinion Clã is not only a literary magazine; it also constitutes what they consider “a mental representation of Ceará,” [...]

Aluízio Medeiros discusses the third Salão de Abril presented by the SCAP (Sociedade Cearense de Artes Plásticas). Medeiros recalls the assembly of artists and intellectuals that took place six years earlier in the city of Fortaleza. He explains [...]

[This is an] historical account of Clã [Clan], which is a literary journal focused on modernism in the state of Ceará (Northeast Brazil) that emphasized the work produced by local painters. The first issue (zero) appeared in 1946, and the journal [...]

In this editorial, published in the second issue of the bilingual magazine Buzón de Arte/Arte de Buzón, the Venezuelan artist Diego Barboza—who was the director and editor of the magazine—describes the issue, explaining that [...]

The Colombian artist Judith Márquez Montoya explains the rationale behind the publication of the magazine Plástica and its intended goals. She begins by outlining two basic objectives: “On a modest but dignified scale, the purpose of the magazine [...]

As the editorial to the first issue of the magazine Prisma, this text by Marta Traba introduces the magazine of art criticism, which was committed to publishing research and “objective” studies of local and international art. The members of the [...]

This is a summary of the accusations that Joaquim Inojosa leveled against Gilberto Freyre following the 1952 republication of the “Manifesto Regionalista” [1926]. According to Inojosa, the author changed the date of the manifesto in order to gain [...]

Written by the members of the group El Techo de la Ballena and published in the first issue of their magazine Rayado sobre el Techo, this essay expresses their desire to return to matter—that is, to “the magma”—in an original act that frees [...]

The journalist Natalia de Cuba refers to three people who use the Internet to promote Puerto Rican art. The artist Mari Mater O’Neill created the online magazine, El Cuarto del Quenepón in 1995; it publishes articles, videos, gallery news, and [...]

Puerto Rico-based freelance journalist María Bird describes the objectives of the online cultural magazine El Cuarto del Quenepón created by Puerto Rican artist Mari Mater O’Neill in 1995. A bimonthly, El Quenepón is intended to spread knowledge [...]

The editors Rosario Ferré and Olga Nolla defined the hypotheses, priorities, purposes, and selection criteria for the magazine, Zona de Carga y Descarga [Loading and Unloading Zone]. They considered it their duty to raise the consciousness of the [...]

In this letter to Puerto Rican artist Lorenzo Homar, Mexican artist Alberto Beltrán comments on the new issue of the publication, El coyote emplumado[The Plumed Coyote], which will cover topics relating to the campaign being waged by right-wing [...]

In this article, defined by its author as “of a utopian nature,” artist and critic Galaor Carbonell analyzes the limitations, objectives, methodology, and functions of a cultural magazine that could operate in Latin America from a sociological [...]

This review is unsigned; its subtitle is “De nuevo Los Disidentes.” It is the second item in Márgenes, the culture column in Últimas Noticias, the Caracas newspaper. The review notes the recent appearance of the second issue of Los Disidentes, [...]

[This text is] the first issue of Los Disidentes (Paris, 1950) magazine, in which [the group] explains succinctly the “essential mission” of the eponymous magazine and the “immediate aim” which they are pursuing with this [...]

The painter Luis Guevara Moreno—a member of Los Disidentes, the group of Venezuelan artists living in Paris in 1950—briefly reviews an issue of Taller (1948), the magazine published by the group Taller Libre de Arte that was founded in Caracas [...]

This is a letter addressed to Barnabé Barrios, in New York, signed by Juan de la Cabada and Luis Arenal, as the editor and a member of the Executive Committee, respectively, of Frente a Frente [Face to Face] magazine. The authors inform Bernabé [...]

Irradiador magazine—subtitled, “Avant-garde magazine: an international project devoted to the new aesthetic, directed by Manuel Maples Arce & Fermín Revueltas”—was published in Mexico City in 1923. El restorán [The Restaurant], a [...]

In this text, painter Tarsila do Amaral provides an overview of her artistic career, specifically in relation to the Pau-Brasil movement and to cultural “anthropophagy.” She emphasizes the importance of the trip she took to Minas Gerais in 1924 [...]

Questioning the exhaustion of Western civilization (specifically the European version), and basing his arguments on the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud—who wrote about the social life of primitive peoples in his book Totem and Taboo— Plí [...]