Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In her essay about an exhibition of paintings by Roser Bru, Adriana Valdés refers to Bru’s portraits of Franz Kafka, Milena Jesenská, and Anne Frank, commenting on the sitters’ eyes and how they gaze out from the canvas to [...]

In her review of Love, a 1988 painting by Juan Domingo Dávila, Nelly Richard refers to ideas she had previously explored in La cita amorosa, jointly published with the artist a few years earlier. Harking back to that publication allows the [...]

This text provides an analysis of what happens at a cultural level in a totalitarian society, which the author implies is a reference to Chile, and how political resistance is organized in such circumstances. One of the main features that José [...]

Diamela Eltit escribe sobre la obra de Juan Downey, a propósito de su exposición en Chile Festival Downey. El texto se articula en dos puntos: “La patria: todas las patrias” y “Todas las patrias: la patria” cuya [...]

Roberto Merino writes about Unidos en la gloria y en la muerte, the installation by Gonzalo Díaz on display at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes. The work takes its name from a sculpture by Rebeca Matte located outside the museum that was [...]

In this essay Juan Downey describes what he experienced while immersed, with his camera, in several indigenous tribes in Venezuela and Brazil. His goal was to make recordings that would facilitate connection with such environments, claiming that the [...]

An art project by Carlos Altamirano is displayed on both sides of this page, which appeared in CAL, the magazine published by the eponymous gallery in Santiago. The work claims that “art needs your response” in an attempt to encourage [...]

In this essay Pablo Oyarzún discusses the emancipating quality of Juan Downey’s work via paidéia (teaching). The essayist notes Downey’s constant focus on the creation, circulation, and meaningful social transmission of [...]

The essay “Parpadeo y piedad,” which appeared in the catalogue for the exhibition Cirugía plástica (Plastic Surgery), held in Berlin, discusses art in Chile, specifically, the art produced in the wake of the 1973 fascist [...]

In this essay, Enrique Lihn discusses the Tango series of photographs by Paz Errázuriz, based on a review of the works of authors who have written about the origins and lyrics of this particular style of music and dance. Lihn claims that & [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado explains the reasons that motivated the Chilean submission to the X Mostra da Gravura, which was a desire to articulate a new artistic cartography. The hypothesis he lays out in this text points to formal movements in the field [...]

In 1998, Adriana Valdés discusses “Estudios sobre la felicidad” and the review she had written about this work by Alfredo Jaar. She refers to the concepts known as the “open work” (Umberto Eco, 1962) and “ [...]

In this essay, Milan Ivelic writes about the third group exhibition of the Promoción 80 [Class of ’80]. He explains why these artists are “a group,” noting their age, where they were educated, and how they approach art in [...]

The essayist Pablo Oyarzún discusses the work of Eugenio Dittborn, stitching together a patchwork quilt of quotes and references. He talks about what is “legible” and “illegible” in the Chilean experimental artist&rsquo [...]

Nelly Richard discusses Gonzalo Díaz’s painting, which she sees as an example of a revitalizing trend in Chilean visual arts that, in her opinion, had been waning in recent art exhibitions during that time. Richard claims that Dí [...]

In this essay Nelly Richard addresses the new approach to painting taken by some artists in response to what she referred to as the Escena de Avanzada. In her review of the BENMAYOR/DIAZ/DITTBORN/DUCLOS/LEPPE exhibition, Richard discusses the [...]

In this text Nelly Richard identifies some of Walter Benjamin’s ideas that, in her opinion, are relevant to works produced in Chile during the military dictatorship (1973–90) and the start of what was known as the “democratic [...]

This anonymous essay, published in the magazine La Bicicleta in 1979, is a review of the Seminario Arte Actual, an event that was directed by Nelly Richard and organized for the purpose of stimulating an open discussion on the subject of contemporary [...]

   In her essay “Sobre arte y política(s): contraoficialidad, poder y lenguajes,” written for the exhibition catalogue Cirugía plástica (Plastic Surgery), Nelly Richard reflects on the socio-political and [...]

Pablo Oyarzún’s short essay “Virginia Errázuriz. Pequeña poética de sus instalaciones” (Virginia Errázuriz. A Brief Poetics of her Installations) was inspired by the installation of Errá [...]

In this essay, Justo Pastor Mellado reviews Tránsito suspendido, an art action presented by Carlos Altamirano. The work consists of a number of moments that are referred to in a newspaper story that the author uses to explain the steps [...]

In this essay, Nelly Richard discusses Carlos Altamirano’s exhibition, Tránsito suspendido. The text includes aphorisms that refer to the organizing structure of the review. It also takes an experimental approach by alternating words in [...]

Unable to refer specifically to the works that would be shown at the exhibition about which he was attempting to write, Pablo Oyarzún, the Chilean essayist and an authority on philosophy, discusses the idea involved in the term “context& [...]

In her essay “Trama urbana y fugas utópicas” (Urban Fabric and Utopian Flights), Nelly Richard discusses CADA (Colectivo Acciones de Arte) two decades after the group launched its program of urban actions in Santiago. She describes the [...]

Lotty Rosenfeld describes the process for Una milla de cruces sobre el pavimento [A Thousand Crosses on the Pavement], an action she began in 1979. It consisted of adding a horizontal white line to the broken lines painted on paved roads, thus [...]

In this essay Nelly Richard discusses the connection between writing and the reader, the implicit recipient of a text. In this review of the reader, she takes a sociological approach in describing and assessing the target of a text; counter to that [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado discusses the evolution of Chilean painting, from its roots to the 1980s. He divides his essay into six sections that explore the field’s history, from José Gil de Castro to the early twentieth century, remembering [...]

Diamela Eltit and Lotty Rosenfeld wrote this essay after the Círculo de Estudios de la Mujer invited them to take part in a conference commemorating International Women’s Day. Eltit and Rosenfeld had intended to show a pornographic film [...]

Nelly Richard   discusses C.A.D.A. (Colectivo  Acciones de Arte), taking a critical look at the art action group’s relationship to what she called the Escena de Avanzada, a name she coined based on the group’s strategies [...]

In a series of eight notes, Nelly Richard discusses Chilean artworks and the artists who produced them during the late 1970s. Her use of “notes” indicates that she does not intend to present a uniform view of cultural projects or an all- [...]

Gonzalo Muñoz discusses three of the processes that Eugenio Dittborn uses in his work, indicating the presence of an intent and a strategy. The first is “the relief” created by the combination of drawing and photography in [...]

In this essay, Nelly Richard discusses some of the “art actions” that Lotty Rosenfeld—a member of the art action group known as CADA—created on public roads and highways in Chile. Rosenfeld altered traffic signage and lines on [...]

This text is about Lotty Rosenfeld’s work, beginning with Una milla de cruces sobre el pavimento [A Mile of Crosses on the Pavement]. In his essay, Gonzalo Muñoz discusses the interest that Rosenfeld’s action stirred up as a [...]

In this article, Carlos Aldunate casts an eye on Juan Downey’s production, referencing some of his works. He recalls his connections with the artist and Machu Picchu, calling Downey a “true artist.” Aldunate explains that some of [...]

In 1985 C.A.D.A. (Colectivo Acciones de Arte) and the Movimiento Unitario Mujeres por la Vida joined forces to publish an insert in Análisis magazine. The insert featured a photograph of a woman whose husband had been murdered by agents [...]