Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This text is a transcription of a series of interviews that Rita Eder conducted with a number of artists and intellectuals, all contemporaries of the painter Alberto Gironella [1929-1999], who debated the principal iconographic and literary elements [...]

In this essay, Teresa del Conde traces the artistic evolution of Enrique Echeverría during the 1950s-1960s; during the years that an artistic renovation was occurring in Mexico. Del Conde explains how from the beginning Echeverría’s career was [...]

In this essay Teresa del Conde analyzes the characteristics of what she calls the “young painting of Mexico,” meaning those national vanguard trends that had arisen in the 1950s and that developed fully during the 1960s. Members of this group [...]

In the Coloquio III [Symposium III], titled “Mexicanismo y Universalidad” [Mexicanism and Universality], Rufino Tamayo criticizes the “patriotism” of some of his contemporaries, explaining that Mexican art should not be limited to recognition [...]

During the presentation of the catalog for the first exhibition by the Sociedad de Arte Moderno it is established that Mexico must become “one of the most important cultural centers of the world, since its great past and vigorous present compel it [...]

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 [...]

Ernestine Evans reviews Diego Rivera’s murals, referring to their artistic and political values. In this introductory essay she discusses the murals at the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria, the SEP (Ministry of Public Education), and the School of [...]

Xavier Villaurrutia conducts a retrospective of Mexican painting in the 1920s, the origin of which he ascribes to the revolutionary movement of the previous decade. In this context, the author criticizes those painters who continued to follow [...]

In this essay from 1937, Justino Fernández conducts a study on the evolution of Mexican art during the 1920s and 1930s. The text is organized in three large sections: mural painting, general painting and sculpture. Fernández characterizes mural [...]

In this book published in 1937, Frances Toor, the North American promoter based in Mexico, makes a study of the most representative artists of modern Mexican painting. Toor served as editor and author of the introduction, while the painter Carlos Mé [...]

In this essay entitled “The Mexican School,” Laurence E. Schmeckebier analyzes the rise and evolution of the “Mexican School of Painting.” Schmeckebier places the origin of this “school” in the first generation of muralism and in [...]

In this article for the magazine Vanity Fair, Marie Brenner writes a biographical sketch of her aunt, Anita Brenner, about the relationship that is established with Mexican art and culture, particularly during the 1920s. During that decade, Anita [...]

In this book, published in 1951, Virginia Stewart looks back at the 45 most representative artists of modern Mexican painting. Her list, created at the end of the golden era of the “Mexican School of Painting,” includes painters from the first [...]

In this essay, North American critic and art collector MacKinley Helm analyzes the work of those artists whose style and content did not fit into muralism or the so-called “Mexican School of Painting.” Helm discusses, in the context of the 1920s [...]

In this book, Margarita Nelken, a Spanish critic based in Mexico, discusses the development of Expressionism in Mexican art. She argues that Mexican Expressionism has a native origin that, with the passage of time, has been enriched by the different [...]