Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

The art critic for the New York Times, Holland Cotter, introduces the artist Beatriz González—who is also an art critic—as an artist who defies the conventions imposed by the North American and European art markets and sets her own rules as [...]

In this article, the British critic Rod Mengham reviews Doris Salcedo’s installation Neither (2004) in terms of the Colombian artist’s career, identifying significant changes in her work since 2002. Up until that point, Salcedo had produced [...]

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

The art and photography critic Fernando Castro reviews the works Aliento [Breath], Narcisos [Narcissi], and Lacrimarios [Tear Containers] by Oscar Muñoz that were exhibited at the Sicardi Gallery in Houston in March 2002 as part of Fotofest. [...]

The text “El color de la vida, el color de la muerte” by critic and writer Darío Ruiz Gómez was published in the flyer put out by the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name featuring work by painter [...]

In a text entitled “El Arte y la violencia en la era del narcotráfico” that deals with art and violence, Álvaro Medina describes and analyzes the radical transformation that the armed conflict in Colombia underwent in the early eighties. In it [...]

“El arte y la violencia revolucionaria” is one of the chapters of Arte y violencia en Colombia desde 1948 by Álvaro Medina. A historian and curator, Medina provides a serious reflection on the relationships between artistic practices and the [...]

Curator and historian Álvaro Medina wrote an essay that addresses the socio-political and aesthetic history of Colombia during the second half of the 20th century. One section of the essay, “El arte y la violencia bipartidista,” deals with the [...]

This is the published record of the conversation that ensued when Hans-Michael Herzog, the curator of the Fundación Daros Latinamerica [Daros Latinamerica Foundation] interviewed Rosemberg Sandoval. The interview shows how the Colombian artist’s [...]

In “Una cámara registra el 9 de abril” [A Camera Documents the Ninth of April], Guillermo González describes some of the key events in the life of his father, the photojournalist Sady González, who spent several days in 1948 photographing the [...]

This text by writer Darío Ruiz Gómez was written on the occasion of an exhibition of prints by artists Umberto Giangrandi, Carlos Granada, and Fabio Rodríguez. Ruiz Gómez contrasts Colombian art’s widespread lack of commitment with the vitality [...]

Commentator Ana María Reyes argues that one of the most complex problems faced by Colombian artists in the second half of the 20th century is how to represent violence, a daily reality in the country during that period. The challenge lies in [...]

Ismael Xavier refers to Glauber Rocha’s essay “Uma Estética da Fome” [An Aesthetic of Hunger] in which he sees a connection to Frantz Fanon’s theory concerning an intellectual response to the consequences of colonialism. In so doing, Xavier [...]

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 article, art historian María Margarita Malagón-Kurka analyzes a series of works by Colombian artists that address the topic of violence. She argues that there are two distinct tendencies that took shape in two different historical moments. [...]

“Obregón en contexto” is the title of an essay by the art historian and critic Carmen María Jaramillo, written in 2001, that appeared in the book El mago del Caribe on the artwork of Alejandro Obregón. The essay includes a text by the writer [...]

As the title suggests, this is a record of the conversation between the Colombian historian Gonzalo Sánchez and the artist María Elvira Escallón (who is also Colombian) that was published in the magazine Análisis Político [Political Analysis] in [...]

This is the text for Otras Miradas = Other Glances, written by the historian and art critic Carmen María Jaramillo Jiménez for the exhibition that was organized with the help of the Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2004. The [...]

“Social Taxonomy and Political Botany” are alternative names associated with the text “Flora Necrológica” [Necrological Flora], in which the art critic José Ignacio Roca discusses the meaning of the term “violence” from a Colombian [...]

In the chapter called “Las huellas de la guerra” [The Scars of War] (2003), the Colombian historian Gonzalo Sánchez G. discusses the “very complex and allusive” relationships involved in the trilogy Guerras, Memoria e Historia [Wars, Memory [...]

The catalogue for the exhibition, Otras miradas = Other Glances (2004) includes the historian Carmen María Jaramillo’s interview of María Elvira Escallón, which focused on the latter’s series Desde adentro [From Within] (2003) that was [...]

The conversation between the Colombian artist María Fernanda Cardoso (Bogotá, b. 1963) and the German art critic and director of the Fundación Daros Latinamerica (Zürich and Rio de Janeiro) Hans-Michael Herzog, took place on June 29, 2004, in Zü [...]

This document includes the introductory chapter to the book Cuerpo gramatical: cuerpo, arte y violencia [Grammatical Body: Body, Art, and Violence], in which the Colombian artist José Alejandro Restrepo considers the (human) “body” as an area [...]

Doris Salcedo gave this lecture in 2003 at the National Museum in Colombia. She discusses three of the projects she presented in the1990s in Colombia, Holland, Turkey, and Germany: Atrabiliarios [Defiant] (2), Un acto de memoria [An Act of Memory], [...]

Entitled “The Dynamic of Violence,” this article by researcher and art critic Olga M. Viso analyzes specific works by Doris Salcedo such as Atrabiliarios [Defiant]and Casa Viuda [The Widowed House], as well as Sin título [Untitled] furniture ( [...]

In the book Volverse aire [Become Air], published in 2003, María Iovino describes and analyzes Óscar Muñoz’s work from his early stages as a draftsman to the works produced the year the book was published in Bogotá. Special attention is paid to [...]

In this essay, Bernardo Salcedo criticizes Fernando Botero’s paintings on the subject of violence in Colombia and other countries, accusing the well-known artist of hypocrisy. Salcedo claims that Botero did not choose to address the subject of [...]

The catalogue for Juan Carlos Romero’s Violencia [Violence] exhibition (Buenos Aires: Centro de Arte y Comunicación [Art and Communication Center], April 1973). In his essay in the catalogue, Jorge Glusberg states that Romero has always challenged [...]