Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

Venezuelan artist, curator, and cultural manager Manuel Espinoza presents the exhibition La mano, la seda, el color [Hand, Silk and Color] (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo of Caracas, 1978), which featured prints on silk by nine Venezuelan artists: [...]

In this essay, curator Ralf Christofori uses the notion of “non-orthogonal abstraction” to compare the work of different artists, among them Gego, a Venezuelan artist of German origin; Dutch artist Lara Schnitger; Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto; [...]

This text was written by Venezuelan playwright and essayist Isaac Chocrón (1930–2011) for the catalogue accompanying the Gego exhibition, Gego esculturas. 1957–1967, held at the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango in Bogotá (1967). Chocrón places [...]

This note within the catalogue to the exhibition, Tamarind: A Renaissance of Lithography (Shasta College Art Department, Reading, California, 1971), indicates Gego’s participation in that event. In addition to some information about Gego’ [...]

Venezuelan journalist and filmmaker Gustavo Báez reports that Venezuelan artists José Antonio Hernández-Díez, Jesús Rafael Soto, and Gego enjoyed a warm reception at the twenty-third São Paulo Biennial in 1996. Báez explains that the theme of [...]

In this essay, Venezuelan curator Rina Carvajal asserts that by means of the disintegration and reconfiguration of the form, the visual discourse formulated by Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt, 1912–1994), a Venezuelan artist of German origin, opened up [...]

In this essay, Alejandro Salas studies Gego’s piece Reticulárea (1969). Salas describes and comments on the artist’s thoughts on the different ways she has assembled this work, as well as its journey through the different spaces where it has [...]

In this essay, Luis Enrique Pérez Oramas finds that the work of Armando Reverón is the source of a “formalist tale,” defined as a theme of “traces and shadows.” It is a theme that Pérez Oramas pursues through the entire period when modern [...]

In this essay, Colombian critic and journalist Álvaro Burgos analyzes the sculptures by Gego, a Venezuelan artist of German origin, included in the exhibition Gego: Esculturas, 195­7–1967, held in Colombia. Burgos asserts that Gego’s works form [...]

In this article, Venezuelan critic and professor Mónica Amor refutes the constructivist and organicist approach that has been used to understand Gego’s work. That approach, she claims, does not address the way Gego’s production undermines [ [...]

The curator Carmen Hernández reviews the work by the Venezuelan visual artist Mailén García included in the group exhibition Desde el cuerpo: alegorías de lo femenino. According to Hernández, García’s work shows how violence subordinates and [...]

In this text, Chilean-born curator Carmen Hernández examines the work of Venezuelan artist Antonieta Sosa included in the group show, Desde el cuerpo: alegorías de lo femenino. In Hernández’s view, Sosa’s work upholds the idea of the feminine [...]

In this text, researcher Carmen Hernández examines the visual discourse on gender issues of women artists from Latin America. She concludes that there is no artistic movement in the region that specifically reflects on gender of the sort that [...]

The synopsis and the annotations in English are coming soon. However, our bilingual readers can click on “Español” to access this information in Spanish [...]

Eliseo Sierra analyzes the sources and characteristics of Gego’s graphic discourse (drawings, prints, watercolors, and weavings). Sierra finds that the artist’s work resists classification and is substantially different from the masterworks of [...]

In this text, Luis Enrique Pérez-Oramas analyzes the installation 2i997 produced by Magdalena Fernández for a show of the same name. The critic affirms the solidity of the approach to the work insofar as it builds on the abstract-geometric [...]

In this text, Peruvian writer and critic Julio Ortega argues that the work of Miguel von Dangel cannot be read on the basis of academic ideas limited by causal historicism and the Eurocentric canon´s logic. In his view, von Dangel’s work forms [...]

In the first of the two parts of this essay, Elsa Flores provides a critical analysis of the work by Miguel von Dangel featured in the São Paulo Biennial. Flores’s premise is that von Dangel’s work is a model “Latin American response” to the [...]

In this article, the critic Roberto Guevara reviews the works presented by the artist Mario Abreu at the exhibition Objetos Mágicos (Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas, 1965). Guevara states that Abreu’s magical objects are among the most important [...]

The journalist Edgar Alfonzo Sierra interviews the Venezuelan visual artist Magdalena Fernández on the occasion of Dimensiones variables, her exhibitionat the Galería de Arte Nacional. He describes her as a “weaver of spaces” and describes her [...]

Journalist Rubén Wisotzki interviewed Magdalena Fernández in 1996, when she was awarded the Premio Eugenio Mendoza. Fernández acknowledges that her work, particularly her studies in design to which abstraction and geometricism are fundamental, is [...]

In the second part of this essay, Elsa Flores concludes her critical analysis of the work of visual artist Miguel von Dangel featured in the São Paulo Biennial. Flores examines the underlying premise that the combination of elements in von Dangel’ [...]

In this interview with Miguel von Dangel by French-Venezuelan painter Luis Pannier (b. 1953), von Dangel reflects on art as a religious activity and on the role of the natural environment of the Americas in his work. In von Dangel’s view, the [...]

Carlos Silva reviews the works presented by Miguel von Dangelat the exhibition Sacrofanías (Caracas: Centro Armitano de Arte, 1989). Silva assesses the artist’s work to date and mentions von Dangel’s conceptual consistency as he creates a vast [...]

Writer Enrique Viloria analyzes the work of Miguel von Dangel from a perspective based on environmental conservation, suggesting that in his encapsulated landscapes, nature retains its essence, transcending the work (which is imprisoned and preserved [...]

Here, Miguel von Dangel reviews the ideas of Latin American identity and its utopias, stating that its identity was subconsciously affected by cultural conflicts from elsewhere. The writer also points out deficiencies in Latin American criticism, [...]

Journalist Blanca Elena Pantin interviews Miguel von Dangel about the religious meaning of his work. Influenced by the thinking of Jean-Paul Sartre and Friedrich Nietzsche, the painter asserts that, after the experience of two world wars in the 20th [...]

In this text, Miguel von Dangel criticizes the stance taken by the Venezuelan painter Oswaldo Vigas regarding the exhibition by Robert  Rauschenberg at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas, which Vigas finds contradictory and “chauvinist [...]

In this newspaper article, Antonio Velluto describes the incident at the Caracas Cathedral when the parish priest, Augusto Laborem, took a stick to the sculpture Retrato espiritual de un tiempo, by Miguel von Dangel, and destroyed it because he [...]

In this article, the critic Víctor Guédez drafts twelve points that, in his view, serve as a guide for an analytical approach to the work of Miguel von Dangel, La Batalla de San Romano. The author points to the contradictory vision projected by the [...]

The critic and historian Francisco Da Antonio writes the prologue in the catalogue for Cristos (Caracas: Galería El ave que llovía, 1972), the exhibition of works by the visual artist Miguel von Dangel. The critic interprets the work Retrato [...]

In the second part of her review of La Batalla de San Romano—Miguel von Dangel’s version of the Renaissance painter Paolo Uccello’s work by the same name— María Luz Cárdenas describes the different sections in von Dangel’s version. She [...]

In this essay the critic Francisco Márquez reviews three series of paintings by Miguel von Dangel: Mapas, Oro de América [or Calcos en Oro], and Tierras [or Encapsulados], in which he detects three different ways to approach the Venezuelan and [...]

This interview was conducted by researcher María Cristina Valera with Miguel von Dangel, the Venezuelan artist born in Germany, in which he comments on the background, character, and the possible interpretations of his exhibition De engaños y otras [...]

This essay, written by the critic and historian Juan Carlos Palenzuela, appeared as the prologue in the catalogue for De engaños y otras lidias, the exhibition of works by the visual artist Miguel von Dangel held at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo [...]

In the first part of her review of La Batalla de San Romano—the German-born Venezuelan visual artist Miguel von Dangel’s version of Paolo Uccello’s Renaissance painting by the same name— María Luz Cárdenas analyzes similarities between the [...]

This interview with Miguel von Dangel, conducted by journalist María Josefa Pérez, covers his aesthetics, his most recent work, and how he thinks he is perceived by critics and the public. Responding to critics who describe his work as ugly and [...]

Critic Roberto Montero Castro examines the roots of the modernist aesthetic, its evolution, and its characteristics up to the 1970s, which was marked by a rupture with the formalists and rationalists that preceded it. This gave birth to a new ( [...]

In this essay, Iris Peruga analyzes most of the work created by Gego between 1955 and 1990. The curator examines the similarities between Gego’s artwork and that of her contemporaries. Examining the artist’s relationship with the trends of [...]

In this essay, Luis Enrique Pérez Oramas studies Gego’s work, Reticulárea (1969) as Venezuela’s first real incursion into contemporary art. The critic contrasts the premises maintained by Venezuelan Syntheticism (which claims to be the last [...]

Lorena González sees similarities between works by Gego and those by the Venezuelan writer Antonia Palacios, in that they are both based on a noticeable sense of temporality. According to González, “the line”—the fundamental element in Gego [...]

In this essay written for the exhibition Jump Cuts: Venezuelan Contemporary Art, Colección Mercantil, held in 2007, Venezuelan critic and curator Jesús Fuenmayor uses the cinematographic notion of “the jump cut” to formulate a vision of [...]

In this 2002 lecture, the American art history professor, Richard Shiff, analyzes specific aspects of Gego’s use of materials and her manual sensibility. As a theoretical basis for the study, Shiff proposes the concepts of “vectors”— [...]

Julieta González reflects on the major trends in contemporary Venezuelan art, suggesting that the dominant movement among them is art derived from a particular context and involving a predetermined space and discourse that expresses local themes. [...]

The German curator, writer, and art historian, Dr. Dietrich Mahlow wrote a study of the spaces created by the [installation] of Reticulárea, created by the Venezuelan visual artist originally from Germany, Gego [Gertrud Goldschmidt, 1912–1994]. [...]

In this essay, Roberto Guevara gives an overview of Gego’s career, [based on a selection of works that are] on display at the São Paulo Biennial. Guevara describes how Gego’s work has evolved from her early sculptures in the 1950s to her latest [...]

With this text, Mariela Avellaneda de Luna officially presents Gego at the twenty-third São Paulo Biennial. Avellaneda points out the importance of the line in Gego’s large structures, such as the versions of Reticulárea, emphasizing the way the [...]

In this essay, Mónica Amor analyzes the contribution that the work by Gego, Reticulárea, has made to contemporary art. She claims that Reticulárea is a radical attack on the way architecture defines space, as well as the conventions of sculpture, [...]

This analysis by Catherine de Zegher focuses on Gego’s drawing in space. After an introduction in which she describes earlier works by important artists that engage the notion of drawing in space, as well as those by Gego’s contemporaries, de [...]

The synopsis and the annotations in English are coming soon.                                However, our bilingual readers can click on “Español” to access this information in Spanish [...]