Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

Nelly Richard discusses the artistic aspects of the genre of works by Eugenio Dittborn known as Pintura aeropostal (Airmail Painting). Rather than focusing on a particular work, Richard contemplates the artist’s process and its effects. While [...]

The critic and curator Justo Pastor Mellado writes about Gonzalo Díaz’s participation in the exhibition Cuatro artistas chilenos en el CAYC de Buenos Aires: Díaz, Dittborn, Jaar, Leppe. Pastor Mellado discusses the role that D& [...]

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& [...]

This text by Nelly Richard is based on a collection of quotes, which trace an argumentative arc that express her ideas about the exhibition she is reviewing. She also discusses certain situations in the art field at the time that show how the first [...]

Diamela Eltit writes about Lotty Rosenfeld’s intervention, which consisted of altering the intermittent lines painted on streets to create traffic lanes. The text is arranged in a non-traditional layout that testifies to its poetic, reflective [...]

María Eugenia Brito discusses Lotty Rosenfeld’s project Una milla de cruces sobre el pavimento [A Mile of Crosses on the Pavement]. She addresses the artist’s intervention of traffic lines painted on city roads from what she [...]

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 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 [...]

In this text Nelly Richard offers a diagnostic on feminism in Chile and its connections to social sciences and art. The author refers to a Feminism (with a capital F) that developed in the social sciences, which became the predominant discourse and [...]

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 [...]

The document "Eugenio Dittborn y Gonzalo Muñoz: a propósito de la Historia sentimental de la pintura chilena de Gonzalo Díaz" (Eugenio Dittborn and Gonzalo Muñoz: On the Subject of the Sentimental History of [...]

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 [...]

In her catalogue essay for Rota, the exhibition of works by Juan Domingo Dávila, Diamela Eltit presents an overview of Dávila’s painting, claiming that it always involved a convergence of multiple signs, references from different [...]

Eugenio Dittborn published a poetic-visual creation in La Separata: a text illustrated with a photograph taken by Carlos Gallardo. Dittborn’s poetic prose is based on three points whose sequence produces a similar structure. It begins with & [...]

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 [...]

This poetic text refers to the art actions that Juan Castillo produced in 1981. The Chilean artist’s project, titled Te devuelvo tu imagen (I Return Your Image), was photographed by Lotty Rosenfeld. The text describes Rosenfeld’s filming [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

In this interview, on the occasion of his exhibition at the Galería Cromo de Santiago (1977), the artist Carlos Altamirano answers five basic questions about his work. The questions, which relate to an early period in his career, address the [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

As the title implies, this is the response from Milan Ivelic and Gaspar Galaz to the criticisms that appeared following the publication of their jointly written book, La pintura en Chile desde la Colonia hasta 1981 [Painting in Chile from Colonial [...]

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, Juan Domingo Dávila presents a critical overview of painting in general and a more specific discussion about his own work. He addresses two issues. First, he claims that the “return to painting” is an expression of [...]

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 [...]

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 this text the cultural critic Nelly Richard poses two questions: What strategy is being used? And what is the policy as regards to a cultural approach? Richard’s questions inform her analysis of the ideas underpinning the Provincia señ [...]

In this review of an exhibition of works by Juan Domingo Dávila, the curator and art critic Justo Pastor Mellado posits a connection between the artist’s work and three critical works (by Eugenio Dittborn, Carlos Altamirano, and Gonzalo [...]

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 the document El arte en Chile: una historia que se recita, otra que se construye (Art in Chile: One Historical Account That Is Recited, Another That Is Constructed), Nelly Richard discusses the historical skullduggery involved in that particular [...]

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 [...]

Nelly Richard writes about Juan Domingo Dávila’s paintings, which rely on quotes, referring to the concept of “bodies” in each of the nine sections in the text. Richard explains how quotes can dismantle the whole and, with it [...]

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- [...]

Nelly Richard discusses the background that inspired the works that Francisco Brugnoli and Virginia Errázuriz presented at the Paisaje / Brugnoli / Errázuriz exhibition. Richard analyzes the works and notes that, despite the artists& [...]