Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

The exhibition at Perls Gallery in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, presented Rufino Tamayo as one of the four great Mexican artists. His works were part of the great modernism and, unlike those of his colleagues, no Communist symbols could be found in [...]

This article by C.A.D.A. (Colectivo Acciones de Arte) describes the group’s participation in the IN/OUT exhibition in Washington, DC. Due to the international nature of the exhibition, the text points out differences, provides some context for [...]

This document contains excerpts from a grant proposal submitted by Eduardo Carrillo to the National Endowment for the Humanities seeking traveling support for an exhibition of California Chicano art entitled Califas, Chicano Art and Culture in [...]

On the occasion of the exhibition La casa de todos nosotros: Antonio Martorell y sus amigos [A House for Us All: Antonio Martorell and Friends] held at El Museo del Barrio in 1992, Puerto Rican curator Susana Torruella Leval analyzes Antonio [...]

This is the introduction to the catalogue for the Salón de Artistas Jóvenes Latinoamericanos [Young Latin American Artists Salon]—held at the Pan-American Union in Washington, DC in 1965. It was written by José Gómez Sicre, director of the [...]

In this article, scholar Carla Stellweg discusses the position of New York as the world art center during the 1960s and ‘70s, which attracted many artists from Latin America who came eager to experience its artistic effervescence firsthand. Through [...]

In this conversation between Nuyorican artist Papo Colo, and feminist performance artist Martha Wilson, Colo describes his performances from 1976 to 1986 in chronological order. The conversation with her provides succinct descriptions of the [...]

This essay, written by curator Susana Torruella Leval, provides a biographical overview of the careers of mural artist, Nitza Tufiño, and her father, Rafael Tufiño—a renowned Puerto Rican painter and printmaker. Leval describes the relationship [...]

Mathias Goeritz describes two projects proposed to the then-president of the organizing committee of the 19th Olympic Games, architect Pedro Ramírez Vázquez: the International Meeting of Sculptors and The Route of Friendship. The artist describes [...]

This issue contains more than 400 engravings by José Guadalupe Posada, with a preface by Diego Rivera, in which he redefines the engraver as a “worker,” “warrior of leaflets,” the “greatest artist” produced by the people, and the [...]

This document is a transcript of the contribution to a panel discussion by the art historian, Amalia Mesa-Bains, in which she addresses the ways in which the social circumstances experienced by Chicanos in the United States have influenced their [...]

In this set of four brief poems, Ralph de Romero, a Puerto Rican artist born in New York, expresses his thoughts about painting and art. Some of the themes he addresses in his poems are related to defining art and its elements, and he also reveals [...]

This document contains Bibiana Suaréz's responses to four of the eighteen questions posed to artists by the organizers of The Puerto Rican Equation, an exhibition marking the occasion of the 1898 invasion of Puerto Rico by the United States. Suarez [...]

In this artist statement for the exhibition In Search of an Island (1991), Bibiana Suarez discusses how her work reflects her search for self-identification and the problems of living between two cultures—that of Puerto Rico and the United States [...]

In these two brief articles, Ralph de Romero, a Puerto Rican artist born in New York, states that he feels no responsibility for art history. In other words, it is the artist’s privilege to call anything he creates whatever he wants to call it. De [...]

Rafael Montañez Ortiz describes the assemblages of Marcos Dimas as an extension of the artist’s childhood experience of digging up bits of Taíno artifacts in the fields of Puerto Rico. Ortiz proposes that Dimas’s works are the result of his [...]

This exhibition catalog, Chicago Latino, was part of an intercultural dialogue initiated by two “socially-minded arts groups,” the 369 Gallery of Edinburgh, Scotland, and the Near Northwest Arts Council of Chicago, Illinois. The exhibition [...]

In this text, Victor Alejandro Sorell writes that Chicago State University observed the 66th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution with a dedication of an eight-panel portable mural by Raymond Patlan entitled El Grito de la Raza Cósmica, [The Cry of [...]

This essay by curator Jeannette Ingberman analyzes ten years of work by Papo Colo in painting, sculpture, drawing, and performance. According to the author, Colo’s work explores the metaphysical and the spiritual, incorporating organic forms and [...]

This communiqué outlines the growth of the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR) [League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists] in the last ten months, explaining the organizational structure and activities. It highlights the [...]

In this essay, Italian critic Umbro Apollonio analyzes Jesús Rafael Soto’s vibrational work, particularly his production from the fifties. Apollonio starts out with a brief description of common, albeit distorted, perceptions of contemporary art. [...]

This is a quote from Ralph de Romero, a Puerto Rican artist born in New York, which is accompanied by a pen and ink drawing: “Depression limitates [sic] the creative activity, deteriorates the involvement and mutilates the concept.” Written in [...]

In the introduction to this catalog, César Moro (a celebrated Peruvian poet and artist) alludes to the antecedents of Surrealism within the avant-garde movements of the beginning of the twentieth century. He also identifies the contact points that [...]

This is the introduction to the first portfolio, published to commemorate the first anniversary of the Centro de Arte Puertorriqueño [Puerto Rican Art Center] (CAP) that was established in 1950 in San Juan. The essay describes the goals and [...]

In this 1823 speech, President James Monroe announces a new agreement that forbids European nations from invading countries in the Western Hemisphere. He begins by recounting that the agreement has been negotiated through the Russian government, and [...]

In this text, curator William Niño Araque reflects on Fabiola Sequera’s sculpture on the occasion of the exhibition held at the Galería Astrid Paredes in Caracas in 1991. The curatorial essay proposes three approaches to a body of work that [...]

This essay by Chicano artist, José Montoya, describes his experience developing and creating his Pachuco Artseries, which he began in 1969. Montoya notes the inspiration of artist Ricardo Favela and his use of the vato (slang for street dude) figure [...]

In this short poem, Ralph de Romero, a Puerto Rican artist born in New York, explains why he has always been an artist, never paying any attention to other people’s opinion [of him]. In the poem, de Romero explains that his dedication is documented [...]

This is the introduction to the 1st Latin American Art Biennial delivered by James F. McCloud, the President of the Biennial, at the opening of the event on June 26, 1962, at the Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes “Emilio A. Caraffa” in Córdoba, [...]

This document is a brief unpublished autobiographical statement by artist Carlos Almaraz. In it he discusses the early years of his life, from his birth in Mexico City and subsequent moves to Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, where he attended high [...]

In this short essay, Marcos Dimas discusses his participation in a 1969 group show of Puerto Rican artists at the Brooklyn Museum, where he displayed two paintings, and his first assemblage. He notes that he met the future cofounders of the Puerto [...]

In this essay published in the 1992 exhibition catalog of Remerica! Amerika, Puerto Rican artist Enoc Perez discusses the effects of United States colonialism in the development of art in Puerto Rico. He observes that Puerto Rican artists have [...]

This letter by the art historian and critic Shifra M. Goldman responds to a letter from the Chicana artist Judithe Hernandez. The latter’s letter was responding to Goldman’s review of the exhibition Murals of Aztlán: Street Painters of East Los [...]

In this text, art critic Walter Zanini presents the show Multimedia Internacional. In it, he argues that art from the seventies was highly influenced by artists who privileged semantic concerns. They cast aside aesthetic subjectivity to take part in [...]

In this translated and edited text by Ralph E. Dimmick for a monograph on Venezuelan art as part of the series Art of Latin America Today, the critic and art historian Clara Diament de Sujo offers an overview of the state of art in 1961. In her [...]

In this lecture, the artist Bibiana Suarez recounts how a student's question prompted her to consider her own reasons for producing art; including the motivation of greed, which, although ostensibly negative, she considers as a motivator. Suarez [...]

In this lecture given in April 1989 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago-based, Puerto Rican artist Bibiana Suarez states that the value of art is dependent on its power to reveal the artist’s innermost world, and to preserve that [...]

In this short poem, Ralph de Romero, a Puerto Rican artist born in New York, criticizes a Christian prayer by repeating “blah, blah, blah, blah . . . ” to show his lack of interest in either prayers or the Ten Commandments. Romero concludes his [...]

The document is an undated letter from Juan Carrillo, the interim board chairman of the Concilio de Arte Popular (CAP), to its members. Along with stating its founding history, purpose, names, and affiliations of the founding board members, the [...]

This document is a handwritten letter in Spanish by Leo Tanguma and addressed to Malaquias Montoya. Tanguma informs Montoya of an art project he is planning to do in conjunction with the public school system in Denver, Colorado, to address the high [...]

In this typewritten open letter, the artist collective Taller Boricua [Puerto Rican Workshop], criticizes El Museo del Barrio for excluding the work of several New York-based Puerto Rican artists from an unnamed exhibition of Puerto Rican art jointly [...]

In this letter, the painter [and writer] Roubaix de l’Abrie Richey, known by the pseudonym, “Robo,” the husband of the Italian artist and photographer, Tina Modotti, writes to Edward Weston from Mexico City. The writer is visiting Mexico in [...]

Juan de la Cabada reports on progress in organizing a Congreso Continental de Científicos [Scientists’ Continental Congress] in Mexico City under the direction of Víctor Manuel Villaseñor in accordance with the resolutions of the American [...]

This document proposes an exchange of publications between Frente a Frente and New Masses, but its main goal is to convince the North American publication to use its influence to help connect LEAR to the Association d’Écrivains et Artistes [...]

This letter written by the Comité Ejecutivo of the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios [Executive Committee of the League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists] was addressed to the American Writers’ Congress (AWC) in New York; it [...]

In this brief letter, David Alfaro Siqueiros advises Jackson Pollock and his team that the studio in New York will be closed during the day while he prepares for his forthcoming exhibition in Manhattan. Siqueiros explains that he needs to be alone to [...]

Invitation for members of The Society of British Artists to attend the Kenneth Kemble lecture on his artwork. He is introduced as a nonfigurative artist [...]

In this correspondence, E. de Wilde reports on his arrival in Buenos Aires, having departed from São Paulo (Brazil); it also offers some information regarding the reservation of passages for him and his wife [...]

Enrique Oteiza informs the Ford Foundation that the Centro de Artes Visuales of the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella [Center of Visual Art of the Torcuato Di Tella Institute] regrets the episode that occurred with the authorities (both police and [...]

This letter-report, dated December 23, 1969, was originally written in English by Stanton L. Catlin, an American curator and director of the Center for Inter-American Relations Art Gallery, New York, to Rachel Conkright, Gego’s gallerist in Caracas [...]