Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This article, published in the magazine of the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM), highlights the artist Judith Lauand, the subject of the “anthological exhibition” Judith Lauand: Experiências. It begins with a [...]

In this newspaper article dated June 20, 1954, professor Walter Zanini reviews the exhibition of works by artists representing the Atelier Abstração at the MAM-SP (Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo). Despite the fact that, as a [...]

Professor Walter Zanini, the director of the Museu de Arte Contemporânea (an affiliate of the Universidade de São Paulo), begins his introductory essay by congratulating the graphic artist and painter Lothar Charoux on behalf of the [...]

In this essay Luiz Antônio de Figueiredo discusses some of the parallel developments in the fields of Concrete poetry and Concrete art. In the 1950s “they both started to map out the routes of non-figurative art, which was exploring [...]

These documents are the invitation to and the program of the Third Exhibition of the Atelier-Abstração, held in São Paulo in June 1956. The Atelier-Abstração was a studio set up by the Brazilian artist Samson Flexor [...]

This poster was designed to promote the inaugural Exposição nacional de arte concreta: artes visuais, which was presented in December 1956 at the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM-SP) and in January–February 1957 at [...]

This text by art critic Regina Teixeira de Barros discusses the exhibition of work by Ernesto Neto held at the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo in 1992. She observes a division in Neto’s recent production since as it furthers the [...]

Benedito Junqueira Duarte arranges the scattered memories of his cinematographic career in his book Caçadores de Imagens. In the chapter “The Freud of Cascadura,” Duarte mentions that the Primer Clube de Cinema in São Paulo was started in the [...]

Murilo Mendes submits a very personal review of the Primera Bienal do Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo in 1951. After several visits, he clearly discerns the creation of “an international visual language.” He also notes the concerns among [...]

This is an editorial that was published in the Jornal Artes Plásticas, in São Paulo, in the 1940s, an essential period in terms of establishing museums in Brazil. This text is a record of the phenomenon that led to São Paulo’s construction of [...]

This document records the founding of the MAM-SP (Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo) and describes its initial activities, including the exhibition of Abstract work organized by René Drouin (director of the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris). In [...]

Lourival Gomes Machado criticizes the fact that the São Paulo Biennial has been declared a success on the basis of numbers: number of people who attended, number of works exhibited, amount spent on materials, etc. The critic, who was the artistic [...]

This document consists of the minutes to the special general meeting of the board of the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM-SP), where motions to dissolve the museum and to donate its holdings to the Universidade de São Paulo (USP) are [...]

Letter from Léon Degand—director of the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM-SP)—to René Drouin—a Parisian gallerist and the partner of Leo Castelli—discussing details related to the first exhibition at MAM-SP. According to the letter, [...]

Waldemar Cordeiro, one of the major figures in Brazilian visual arts, provides a broad overview of events in that field in the early 1950s, a key decade in the history of the arts in Brazil. Cordeiro lists the exhibitions, courses, and conferences [...]

In this article, Oswald de Andrade claims there is an urgent need to create a modern art museum in the city of São Paulo, underscoring the fragile nature of and almost nonexistent institutional support for the Brazilian art system. De Andrade [...]

The document is in reference to the presentation of the Argentinean delegation organized by the Subsecretaría de Difusión del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de la República Argentina [Undersecretary for Dissemination of the Ministry of [...]

This article notes that Alfredo Hlito—who was secretary to the director of nueva visión [New Vision] magazine at that time—was awarded a prize at the Second São Paulo Biennial in Brazil. The writer suggests that this was not just a well- [...]