Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

Iveraldo Lucerna clarifies that this text is a simple account of the activities carried out at the Núcleo de Arte Contemporânea (NAC) of the Universidade Federal da Paraíba. That institution was founded to bridge the distance between the realms of [...]

This is an editorial that was published in the Jornal Artes Plásticas, in São Paulo, in the 1940s, an essential period in terms of establishing museums in Brazil. This text is a record of the phenomenon that led to São Paulo’s construction of [...]

This text by Sérgio Milliet is a review of a show of recent abstract paintings by Cícero Dias held in Rio de Janeiro. In it, Milliet formulates an opposition between figuration and abstraction. The author also asserts that, in his view, Dias’s [...]

This document records the founding of the MAM-SP (Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo) and describes its initial activities, including the exhibition of Abstract work organized by René Drouin (director of the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris). In [...]

This is an account of Mrs. Yolanda Penteado’s travels to establish relationships with representatives of several European countries in order to secure their agreement to participate in the First Bienal de São Paulo (1951). The typewritten document [...]

This article is about the construction of a plaza designed for cultural activities at the new USP (Universidade de São Paulo) campus. The article is in three parts: the first part describes the plaza that has been built in front of the Rectory; the [...]

José Valladares published three reviews of the III Bienal de São Paulo (1955) in the Diário de Notícias, the Bahia newspaper. He notes that he was close to the jury that selected the works for this edition of the international event, and then [...]

Lourival Gomes Machado criticizes the fact that the São Paulo Biennial has been declared a success on the basis of numbers: number of people who attended, number of works exhibited, amount spent on materials, etc. The critic, who was the artistic [...]

This piece reports the winners of the national prize issued by the jury of the 2nd São Paulo Biennial (1953). The writer of this text, Professor Walter Zanini, provides a short description of the art life of each of the prizewinners: Alfredo Volpi, [...]

A declaration written in manifesto format, in this text, artists and critics from São Paulo suggest a number of rules for the composition of the jury to select works for the II São Paulo Biennial (1953). The signers of the document demand a more [...]

Letter from Léon Degand—director of the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM-SP)—to René Drouin—a Parisian gallerist and the partner of Leo Castelli—discussing details related to the first exhibition at MAM-SP. According to the letter, [...]