Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

David Alfaro Siqueiros, Diego Rivera, Xavier Guerrero and José Chávez Morado led the call for Mexican artists to orient their artistic production to the guidelines of social realism. They responded “. . .  by rejecting the theories and formalist [...]

With his manifesto, David Alfaro Siqueiros sought to position the avant-garde project anew, doing away with belated modernism and impressionism, in favor of Cubo-Futurist expressions and the incipient eruption of Dadaism. This eagerness for [...]

According to the communiqué, several members of the LEAR [League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists] were scolded by the League’s Executive Committee for overextending their stay in New York and abandoning their League duties, The members were [...]

In this letter, Rufino Tamayo hints at the friction experienced by an artist who put his personal goals above the demands of political activism. Tamayo promises to report on the failings of the delegation to the LEAR and apologizes for asking the [...]

Juan de la Cabada reports on progress in organizing a Congreso Continental de Científicos [Scientists’ Continental Congress] in Mexico City under the direction of Víctor Manuel Villaseñor in accordance with the resolutions of the American [...]

After discussing how busy Germán List Arzubide—the Estridentista from old times—kept in New York’s workers’ media, Ben Ossa mentions the ideas suggested to LEAR by the “Congreso de Artistas Americanos (de Estados Unidos)” [American [...]

“The Red International”—as Ramón Pi, Jr. referred to himself—describes his vehicle for distributing revolutionary words and images from his base in New York. His goal is to place his publication in the hands of professionals whose names he [...]

This essay discusses LEAR’s decision to establish a “Bureau Editor for Mexico” to publish the continent-oriented magazine, Sin Fronteras / All America—the roots of the future “Congreso Continental de Escritores y Artistas de Toda América [ [...]

This document proposes an exchange of publications between Frente a Frente and New Masses, but its main goal is to convince the North American publication to use its influence to help connect LEAR to the Association d’Écrivains et Artistes [...]

This is a letter addressed to Barnabé Barrios, in New York, signed by Juan de la Cabada and Luis Arenal, as the editor and a member of the Executive Committee, respectively, of Frente a Frente [Face to Face] magazine. The authors inform Bernabé [...]

This communiqué outlines the growth of the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR) [League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists] in the last ten months, explaining the organizational structure and activities. It highlights the [...]

Irradiador magazine—subtitled, “Avant-garde magazine: an international project devoted to the new aesthetic, directed by Manuel Maples Arce & Fermín Revueltas”—was published in Mexico City in 1923. El restorán [The Restaurant], a [...]

Irradiador magazine—subtitled, “Avant-garde magazine: an international project devoted to the new aesthetic, directed by Manuel Maples Arce & Fermín Revueltas”—was published in Mexico City in 1923. El restorán [The Restaurant], a [...]

When interviewed for his participation in the first exhibition of Los Contemporáneos group, Manuel Rodríguez Lozano replied: “We are not a group but rather four independent painters,” the common denominator among them being “work and honesty [...]

The protest reports on a series of cancellations and blockages that prevented André Breton from arriving at the university and other college facilities. This occurred despite his official invitation and the fact that his presentation was planned in [...]

This article analyzes the works exhibited by Abraham Ángel, Julio Castellanos, Carlos Mérida, Manuel Rodríguez Lozano and Rufino Tamayo. It also states that other artists were invited to participate: José Clemente Orozco, who promised to send [...]

The first chapter of the book Gestación y Advenimiento, México y el surrealismo, 1925-1950 [Gestation and Advent, Mexico and Surrealism, 1925-1950] is dedicated to the Surrealist presence in Mexico. From a literary perspective, Luis Mario Schneider [...]

During the inaugural ceremony for Diego Rivera’s mural, La creación [Creation], the poet Manuel Maples Arce described the painter as the prototype of the Estridentista artist who would lead the charge on behalf of the insurrection of the visual [...]

Ramón Alva de la Canal painted the first version of El Café de Nadie [No Man’s Café] in 1924. After it disappeared, he decided to paint the scene again, but this time he introduced some new elements. To illustrate it, he included the names of [...]

This stylized painting portrays some of the members of the Estridentista movement in their meeting place: El Café de Nadie [No Man’s Café]. Manuel Maples Arce is in the upper center of the picture, flanked by both Germán List and Salvador [...]

Martí Casanovas relativizes the use of the term “avant-garde.” As applied in the Mexican context, it could be understood as the kind of “hermetic exclusivism” that defines art for art’s sake, which would deprive it of its impassioned [...]

In his role as director of Horizonte, the Estridentista magazine, Germán List Arzubide expresses his opposition to the tribute paid by the mainstream press—specifically Excélsior newspaper—to Salvador Díaz Mirón. He also denounces the crimes [...]

In Ciudad Victoria (Tamaulipas), Miguel Aguillón Guzmán issued a fourth Estridentista manifesto in which the delegates to the III Congreso Nacional de Estudiantes [3rd National Students’Conference] affirm their “support for the Mexican [...]

Salvador Gallardo issued a third Estridentista proclamation in 1925 in the city of Zacatecas that echoed the formal language used by Manuel Maples Arce, the founding father of the trend, Estridentismo. It consisted of a repetitive litany, expressed [...]

In this project, the Estridentista Luis Quintanilla aimed for the renovation of a variety of languages by combining theater, music and the visual arts in the Russian avant-garde style, always along the lines of the great popular traditions. The set [...]

To strengthen the idea of a modern art museum in Mexico, Carlos Román proposes that the modern and contemporary material accumulated in the warehouses of the Academia de San Carlos be added to the collection. He also suggests allocating public funds [...]

The old Guatemalan Estridentista, Arqueles Vela, muses on how the revolution influenced Mexican art. He does not believe that cubism or the poetry of the proletariat were the first fields to be affected; instead, he points to the corridos, the [...]

In this essay, along with posthumous praise for the figure, André Breton, Octavio Paz establishes a new approach to surrealism, automatic writing and the concept of revelation: “The critics are saying that surrealism is no longer the [...]

This is a dense re-telling of Octavio Paz’s nexus to surrealism and particular link to André Breton. It tells of the role played by the poet Benjamín Péret in this long relationship, which the Mexican writer sums up as a [...]

A photograph of angular furnishings illustrates the text in which their designer, Ramón Alva de la Canal, states the necessity of updating the objects which surround us: the avant-garde proposes geometric forms that, divested of their ornamentation [...]

Un chien andalou [Un perro andaluz (1929) [An Andalusian Dog]—a film directed by Luis Buñuel, with a script written by Buñuel and Salvador Dalí—was presented in Mexico nine years after it was shot. Efraín Huerta, a writer by trade and an [...]

A short article by the Mexican poet Xavier Villaurrutia in which he announces the opening of a film club, “16 mm Cinema,” and the projection of the “sobrerrealista” [over-realist] film by Luis Buñuel, Un chien andalou [UnPerro Andaluz /An [...]

According to Efraín Pérez Mendoza, the Grupos de “Acción de Arte” [Art Action Groups] exhibition is one of the most interesting, complete and “most tormented that has been mounted by Mexican artists,” because the works express the [...]

In this newspaper article, Carlos Mérida, a Guatemalan artist who lived in Mexico, quotes from an essay he had written for the exhibition catalogue, Amero 25 nuevas fotografías [Amero: 25 New Photographs]. He also includes three of Emilio Amero’s [...]

The “independents” exhibition was born out of an effort by artists to promote an art market and maintain control of it, christened in the same manner as the Parisian avant-garde. That first show in November 1922—by Grupos de Acción de Arte [ [...]

In the same year that the Estridentista manifesto was written, Manuel Maples Arce recounts the progress of both the literary and artistic avant-gardes in Mexico observing that indeed: “the few intellectuals who joined the revolution were corrupt [...]

In 1936 Luis Cardoza y Aragón—the writer who was involved with the surrealist avant-garde while he was in Paris, and later lived in Mexico—heard from the poet André Breton, who asked him for an introduction to the art of Mexico, where he was [...]

This was the headline of the supplement—dedicated to the muralist on the centenary of his birth—that published a document dated December 19, 1929 in which Diego Rivera explained “My Expulsion from the PCM.” The text discusses [...]

This is the poster-manifesto that gave rise to the Estridentista movement in Mexico. Manuel Maples Arce, a poet born in Xalapa (Veracruz), launched his avant-garde publication Actual as a provocation directed against the acclaimed literary figures of [...]

In 1922, in the chapter dedicated to literature, poetry, and printing—emphasizing the editorial house Antonio Vanegas Arroyo—Dr. Atl refers for the first time to the printmaker José Guadalupe Posada. He describes him in detail: “grabador ú [...]

This book takes as its subject a series of lectures held in 2000. It constitutes the first documentary account of the contributions of the visual artists who were involved in the Estridentista movement avant-garde and its relation to the urban scene [...]

Luis Mario Schneider carried out the first documented study on Etridentismo; he interviewed the members of the group and thoroughly examined the archives of this 1920s avant-garde movement. Although the group left some accounts to history, this was [...]

The printmaker Leopoldo Méndez, with the support of Mariana Yampolsky and Adolfo Mexiac, completed a careful and voluminous edition of the prints by José Guadalupe Posada, which included a selection of his illustrations for free handouts, posters, [...]

Baciu produces a panorama of the work by French painter Jean Charlot, from his early links to his country’s avant-garde and his integration into the first Mexican muralist movement, through to his relationships with the Estridentista movement and [...]

Five years after their first manifesto Actual [see doc. 737463 and doc. 754048], Germán List Arzubide recounted the early activity of the estridentista group. The author began with a description of the group’s leader, the poet Manuel Maples Arce. [...]

This is a brief overview of how the Russian modality of synthetic theatre was transplanted to the Mexican scene after passing through New York, thus becoming a fusion of colorful traditions with the avant-garde spirit. Magaña Esquivel underlines the [...]

While passing through Mexico after four years in New York, artist Emiliano Amero shares his notebooks with author Martí Casanovas, who enthusiastically points out his themes of advertising, as well as café and cabaret life. In his judgment, they [...]

The Chilean poet Vicente (Ruiz) Huidobro explains the effects of the elimination of punctuation due to the spatial cuts proposed by Creationism. With regard to this trend, he also lists the movement’s representatives, their publications, and their [...]

Among descriptions of his affective universe and his hardships, the painter Gerardo Murillo (a.k.a. Dr. Atl) revues some projects that connect him to the French utopian tradition; for instance, either that of an “Integral City” or of an extremist [...]

The magazine Horizonte [Horizon] had excellent cover designers such as Leopoldo Méndez and Ramón Alva de la Canal. Canal was the one who created this cover as well as many vignettes, all of which were very well sketched [...]