The editorial categories are research topics that have guided researchers during the recovery phase and continue to be the impetus behind the Documents Project’s digital archive and the Critical Documents book series. Developed by the project’s Editorial Board, each of the teams analyzed this framework and adapted it to their local contexts in developing their research objectives and work plans during the Recovery Phase. Learn more on the Editorial Framework page.
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In this article Damián Bayón questions the general state of the art world and the place occupied by Latin American artists within it. He defines the preeminent art trends of the time and then analyzes the way in which Latin American artists are (or are not) able to connect with them. Bayón concludes by declaring that: “within the cultural internationalism that today provides us with . . . means of communication . . . Latin American artists are perhaps the ones who have the most urgent and noble words to speak.”
Damián Carlos Bayón (1915–95) was an art critic, teacher and author of numerous books. He held a Ph.D in history and was a disciple of Jorge Romero Brest (1905-89); in 1948 he became one of the founders of the magazine Ver y estimar, for which Brest served as editor. The following year, Bayón moved to Paris and continued to collaborate on the magazine until 1955 (the final year of its publication). He then began working with theoretician Pierre Francastel. In the next two decades, he became professor in the University of Texas at Austin.Cahiers du Congrès pour la Liberté de la Culture / Cuadernos del Congreso por la Libertad de la Cultura [Notebooks of the Congress for Cultural Freedom] was a magazine published in France and led from its beginnings by François Bondy and later by the Colombian writer Germán Arciniegas. Its one hundred issues were published between March 1953 and September 1965. Bayón made various contributions to the magazine beginning with issue thirty-five, March–April 1959.This article by Bayón is of special interest because it makes known his ideas about the place Latin American art occupied within the international scene of the mid-1960s.