Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

The Venezuelan art critic Enrique Planchart analyzes the work of Nicolás Alexeevich Ferdinandov. In his text, Planchart comments on the general aspects of the personality of this Russian architect and visual artist who made an extended visit to [...]

This is Carlos Contramaestre’s account of his mule-back ride from San Rafael de Mucuchíes (in the state of Mérida) to El Potrero, at an altitude of four thousand meters, to meet Juan Félix Sánchez, the blanket weaver, sculptor, and architect. [...]

Hannia Gómez provides an overview of Gego’s architectural/engineering training and how it influenced her work. The former outlines the latter’s academic education and describes the didactic style of most fashionable architectural schools in [...]

The author of this article notes that Santa Rosa [Saint Rosa] has been glorified with altars, chapels, and temples in various parts of the world; he therefore believes that a basilica should be built in her honor in Lima, her home city. But first, he [...]

This text is a statement of the principles that governed Espacio [Space], an association made up of Peruvian architects, artists and intellectuals. As Espacio saw it, “Entre el mundo de ayer y el mundo de hoy, se ha establecido el origen de la [...]

In this excerpt from her book Carlos Raúl Villanueva y la arquitectura de Venezuela, Professor Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, from the United States, describes how the architect [Villanueva] expresses his own personal view of the “synthesis of the arts.” [...]

In this text, John Weber, a distinguished muralist and co-founder of the Chicago Mural Group, responds to a recent article about murals in Chicago and denies that Chicago’s mural scene is unique. He fears that such a term implies that the scene is [...]

In this essay, Juan Calzadilla points out all the qualities that enabled Venezuelan architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva to become the “protector of the arts” and to develop the Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas, the project for the “integration of [...]

Juan O’Gorman addresses the problem of architecture from the perspective of functionality versus aesthetics and concludes that the two opposites should be fused into one: “architecture should serve as a useful object and as an object of [...]

Upon the installation of twelve stained glass windows designed by Marc Chagall in the synagogue at the University Medical Center of Jerusalem in February 1962, Ida Rodríguez [Prampolini] reflected on the resurgence of stained glass—for decorative [...]

It is believed that the so-called “gran arte” [sanctioned art] is going through a period during which it must, by means of an “organic process” play a live role due to its aesthetic rank, physical dimension, and public intervention. In that [...]

In Mathias Goeritz’s opinion, the architect and sculptor Juan O’Gorman is an original visionary because in his artistic endeavors he tries to connect the arts and subordinate them to concepts that synthesize his extra-artistic convictions. [...]

Mathias Goeritz announces that this issue of the magazine Arquitectura México is dedicated to the examples of architecture and religious art current at the time. He argues that—even though in some works of secular art a greater “religiosity” [...]

To present this issue of the Art Section dedicated to Las Torres de Ciudad Satélite [The Towers of the Satellite City] Mathias Goeritz wonders if anybody else—aside from some of his friends—has read the editorials of this section published as [...]

The architect begins his article by saying that painting achieves its maximum expression when it is applied to architecture. However, he mentions that true collaboration happens only infrequently between painters and architects, because the painter [...]

In this article Dr. Atl (Gerardo Murillo) criticizes commemorative monuments, saying that in Mexico and indeed in the entire world, they are not made to honor the memory of the illustrious men to whom they are dedicated, but for the benefit of [...]

By 1954, Carlos Mérida had published 11 tenets related to what he called functional painting and its importance in the integration of the visual arts, as well as some theoretical concepts regarding architectonic-pictorial space. For Mérida, at that [...]