Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In the Survey Section, the journalist Ortega decided to go to the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria to ask the painters there the following question: Who is the greatest painter in Mexico? The caricaturist Ernesto García Cabral ironically responds that [...]

The article written by the researcher Pilar García de Germenos presents the cultural biography of Alfredo Ramos Martínez from 1910 to 1920, to help our understanding of the changes he implemented at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes. During [...]

María Elena Sodi de Pallares discusses the inconsistency shown by the INBA (Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes) while sponsoring a mural by Diego Rivera to be displayed at the Paris exhibition, but then decided not to submit it after all when the [...]

After criticizing the painters of the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria (ENP), the newspaper El Demócrata speaks of the triumphs Mexico achieved abroad, through singers, writers, and the architects during the Río de Janeiro Expo. These are our [...]

In this 1925 letter, Ángel Zárraga acknowledges Manuel Rodríguez Lozano as a painter and a friend. After a brief introduction of indeterminate tone, Zárraga points to his discovery that “Race” and “People” are grandiose concepts that lead [...]

In this lengthy article, Fausto Ramírez discusses the importance of paying attention to the creative work of men of art and science as one contemplates the future of the world, as was done at the New School for Social Research (1930). This topic was [...]

In a brief speech, Antonio Caso, president of the Universidad Nacional de México, calls upon all men, from wherever they hail, to unite so that they can achieve the highest purposes of the Nation [...]

In a letter to Jorge Enciso, addressed to the Dirección de Monumentos Nacionales [National Monuments Administration], Siqueiros announces that Javier Rojo Gómez has commissioned him to paint murals in the tower of what was known as the former [...]

The Argentine art critic, Raquel Tibol, asked Diego Rivera 14 questions aimed at identifying his different impressions of the Soviet Union [today, in 1956,] as compared to 1927. The questions were focused on new art, the art market, and the disputes [...]

Jean Charlot thanks, ironically, the fact that José Clemente Orozco has not studied in Europe, since the United States offered him the mechanical elements of his œuvre, and Mexico the dramatic elements. Orozco, in Charlot’s opinion, lives within [...]

Dr. Atl calls upon us to analyze the post-revolutionary movement from its beginnings in 1908, when the first effective revitalizing influences reached Mexico from Europe. To him, the administration of General Porfirio Díaz—with its socially [...]

The press waxed passionate with accusations among members of the Latin American left about the decision by the American University in Bogotá to grant an honorary doctorate to Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre. To Diego Rivera, this seemed to be an [...]

The Dirección General de Monumentos [Bureau of Monuments] will perform extensive oversight of all the art monuments distributed on sites throughout Mexico. To that end, it will appoint a number of inspectors in counties, the Federal District and the [...]

This article conveys the opinions expressed by a variety of institutions in response to José Vasconcelos’ resignation in late 1923 as a result of the crimes committed a few days earlier, particularly the death of Francisco Field Jurado, the [...]

In an open letter to the newspaper, David Alfaro Siqueiros makes a number of statements about the article published in the same paper defending students’ rights in terms of the paintings at the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria (ENP). Siqueiros [...]

Diego Rivera speaks at length to the newspaper Excélsior on learning that President Miguel Alemán’s administration has refused to send his mural to the 1952 Paris Exhibition. In the first place, Rivera claims that the government has ridden [...]

Having recently unpacked his bags after a trip to Europe, Diego Rivera was interviewed by Roberto Barrios at the courtyards of the Academia de la Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes, amid the classic statues that the students have traditionally copied [...]

In this piece, Febronio Ortega gathered a variety of opinions from the art world. Among them, he recalled Diego Rivera’s description of his visit to the “Museo de Mediocridades” [Museum of Mediocrities]—Rivera’s characterization of the [...]

In this article, Enrique Molina, President of the Universidad de Concepción in Chile, compares the negative impact of World War I with the educational reconstruction undertaken by José Vasconcelos in Mexico, which he refers to as a time of [...]

Diego Rivera begins his article on how children draw in Mexico by saying that he hates the instruction provided by the Academy, which starts by teaching children how to draw illustrations, then sculpture, and finally the nude model. Rivera criticizes [...]

This article shows how the personalities in arts and politics are intimately linked. The long essay describes the defense that Dr. Atl made of a "seat" in the National Congress. It is about a lawmakers’ bench. In these elections, in spite of having [...]

Xavier Moyssén writes about mural painting’s nineteenth-century precedents, in private houses and in pulquerías [agave sap saloons,] and works painted by nineteenth-century students at the Academia; the artists, he includes, are José Obregón, [...]

Diego Rivera enumerates his reasons for believing that the Estadio Olímpico [Olympic Stadium] of the Ciudad Universitaria [UNAM Campus] is the most salient example of the struggle for Mexican independence. To construct such a building, the most [...]

The Consejo Cultural y Artístico of Mexico City held a banquet to honor the poet José Juan Tablada, who would leave for New York the next day to continue the promotion of Mexican art in that city. This article includes a series of caricatures [...]

A pillar commemorating independence was planned to celebrate the centennial of Mexican independence. The jury for the competition was composed of three teachers from the Academy: Manuel Iturbe, architect; Arnulfo Domínguez Bello, sculptor; and [...]

This is the first of a four-part article on the technical nature of the Mexican painting movement. Violent aesthetic transformations had occurred in the last few years while art criticism against painters oscillated between grand praise and fury. [...]

This is the second of four articles on the nature of the current Mexican painting movement. The article concerns the celebrated individuality that incites our painters, given the supposition that originality is a painter’s greatest asset. The [...]

This is the last installment of an article in four parts by painters David Alfaro Siqueiros and Jean Charlot, about the character of the current movement of painting in Mexico. The article, as foretold by the title, is going to be about the positive [...]

This is the third of four articles on the nature of the current painting movement in Mexico. It classifies those painters and writers as retrogressive, who continue to paint under outdated and foreign influences without contributing to the local [...]

The writer Ermilo Abreu Gómez recommends a two-pronged approach to understanding the work of Roberto Montenegro. The first would consider his role as an illustrator of books and periodicals as from 1908 when he began working in Paris with Paul Iribe [...]

At what was going to be a lecture organized at the Universidad Nacional de México during winter term, Manuel Toussaint set forth his ideas on what art education should be, since art provides a major support in completing the educational work the [...]

In this long, interesting article, José Revueltas ponders the nature of words, how they are used and how, over time, their meaning changes. As an example, he mentions the expression “épater le bourgeois” [to frighten the bourgeois] that was in [...]

In his article, Dr. Atl, does a broad study and recognition of the art movement in progress. Historically speaking, he says that there have been three ways to create art; one, which is that of folk art that has always been created; another is the [...]

The sculptor Francisco Zúñiga is going through a time of transition in the arts, when the old artists are confronted with young sculptors who are in search of quick success for their works. Taking the opposite view, he admires the long time it took [...]

Forma magazine conducted a survey on painting and sculpture. Based on the results, Diego Rivera wrote about the major differences among those who considered themselves to be sculptors, saying that all that a sculptor really needed was a quarry and a [...]

This article explains that only fools think culture is improvised. This is why the reconstruction plan proposed by the Secretaria de Educación Pública (SEP) [Ministry of Public Education] was based on the past with an eye on the future. The [...]

After seeing Celia Calderón’s exhibition in a Galería de Ventas Libres [at 154, calle de Puebla, [Mexico City] the art critic Jorge J. Crespo de la Serna reviews her work. The critic shares the opinion of Miguel Salas Anzures that, in spite of [...]

The exhibition catalog is a curatorial reconstruction of the 1910 exhibition held for the Centennial of Mexican Independence and organized by the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes de México. The study was based on an amassing of graphic materials [...]

This article is a short notice from a newspaper announcing that the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes was then manufacturing excellent paints for watercolors, pastels, oils, and tempera. The announcement came about due to a rise in prices for [...]

Diego Rivera lays the groundwork for his article about Frida Kahlo by tracing a path through the history of the founding cultures of the Pre-Hispanic and Spanish periods and the nineteenth-century. In his opinion, Mexico’s social evolution can be [...]

On the orders of the Mexican Under Secretary of Education, Bernardo J. Gastélum (the office manager), confirmed the dismissal of all the Etridentista painters who—led by Diego Rivera—had painted murals on the walls of the annex of the SEP, the [...]

This essay researched and written by Pilar García de Germenos unravels, strand by strand, the historical fetish for linking certain national events that took place in 1910 with the postrevolutionary movement. (By way of background, 1910 was the year [...]

This article reports on the number of cultural missionaries sent by the Secretaría de Educación Pública [SEP, Ministry of Public Education], as well as the costs and duties of the teachers, and the differences between the rural teachers, [...]

In this article, Diego Rivera affirms that he does not know Alvarado Rubio, an employee of the Embassy of Guatemala during the regime of dictator Carlos Castillo Armas, and that it is from there that the lies published in Impacto begin. Rivera also [...]

José Vasconcelos calls upon Mexican intellectuals to travel to the backlands to share the hardships of the poor in order to learn from the experience. His challenge extends to young and cultured teachers, writers, poets and artists. Vasconcelos also [...]

The sculptor Francisco Zúñiga analyzes the reasons for the failure of the art schools. He acknowledges that the art schools do not graduate artists; the students are rather there to learn a set of techniques that are essential to making art. La [...]

Along with a caricature by Miguel Covarrubias published in a special edition of El Universal Ilustrado, Renato Molina Enríquez focuses his article on the encaustic technique used by Diego Rivera. This allows Antonio Caso’s article to explain the [...]

Diego Rivera painted two different murals at the National School of Agronomy in Chapingo [now named Universidad Autónoma Chapingo, located near the Mexico City airport]. One was in the school’s offices, where Rivera explains that he was able to [...]

Daniel Cosío Villegas wonders why the natural order of having better writers than artists—painters, to be more precise—has been inverted in Mexico. He concludes that there are many reasons: an intense nationalism in politics as well as in [...]

From Renato Molina Enríquez’s insight, Mexico is imbued with visual invention. Despite the collapse of the native cultures, the landowners of the colonial era did not succeed in eliminating the people’s artistic potential; nevertheless, academic [...]