Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this essay, Venezuelan artist Víctor Valera discusses many of the concepts crucial to his work in sculpture. He describes, for instance, his conception of form as volume incorporated or projected into space. He mentions a number of [...]

In this essay, Italian critic Umbro Apollonio analyzes Jesús Rafael Soto’s vibrational work, particularly his production from the fifties. Apollonio starts out with a brief description of common, albeit distorted, perceptions of contemporary art. [...]

In his text, Pedro Briceño describes how the work of another Venezuelan sculptor, Pedro Barreto, has evolved from his early work (“totems”) of tropical and chain-like forms, to his new work. The latter is characterized by a greater preoccupation [...]

In this essay, the Spanish artist Angel Luque, then living in Venezuela, performed a point-by-point review of the pictorial characteristics of his work and his general world attitude. He states that he is in search of a type of painting that is [...]

In his essay, the curator Miguel Arroyo states his opinion about the lethargy that has overcome the sculpture world in Venezuela. He is struck by the movement of young sculptors stepping up to continue the work started by Francisco Narváez, Gego [ [...]

In this document, the critic Francisco Da Antonio develops a chronological essay on the life and work of Domenico Casasanta, starting in 1958, when the artist arrived in Venezuela. After almost a decade in which he produced no work, in 1968, the [...]

In this text, Juan Calzadilla analyzes Luisa Richter’s work in drawing while also providing an overview of the drawing genre in the post-World War II era—a time when there was widespread interest in the graphic arts in general. Calzadilla [...]

In this essay, Hans Neumann discusses José María Cruxent’s kinetic work. He describes the experience of first seeing Cruxent’s “parakinetic” work and analyzes the way the artist turns light—whether natural or artificial—into an integral [...]

In his essay, the museum designer Miguel Arroyo examines the range of art created in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He reaches the conclusion that the arrival of photography, film, and television led painters to abandon traditional [...]

In this essay, the Spanish artist Angel Luque—who lived in Venezuela from 1955 to 1967— analyzes the factors that led him to painting. He describes what the concept of “risk” means to him, as applied to both art and life in general. Luque [...]

In this essay, French critic and curator Bertrand Lorquin analyzes the work of sculptor Cornelis Zitman. He discusses the range of influences on Zitman’s production, from classical Greek and Renaissance artists to Giacometti, Picasso, and Maillol, [...]

The theoretician Frank Popper analyzes the Kinetic aspects of the artwork of Jesús Soto, whom he identifies by his repetition of both visual and plastic elements in one object to obtain vibration. Popper also notes that this reading of what is known [...]

describing her beginnings and her handling of the potter’s wheel and moves on to describe her turn toward modeling clay. He also mentions the short period in which she creates geometric work, to then return to “the material.” The critic reviews [...]

The promoter Aquiles Ortiz Bravo states that José Jesús Moros is trying to give his sculpture a transcendent meaning in keeping with the standards of the classical school. He adds that regarding the different visual elements, the Venezuelan [...]

In this essay, Juan Calzadilla provides a chronological overview of the life and work of Venezuelan artist Maruja Rolando. He begins with her artistic training in the fifties, mentioning her most important teachers and influences, as well as the [...]

In this essay, the critic Carlos Silva provides a general description of Luisa Richter’s work. He mentions her main influences, in particular German post-Expressionism and the German maestros Hans Fähnle, H. Dähn, Rudolf Müller and, especially, [...]

In this essay on Marisol [Escobar], Venezuelan curator and gallery director Águeda Hernández analyzes her creative concept by drawing relationships between the works that (at that moment) were in Venezuela, in both public spaces and museums, and [...]

In this essay, the historian José María Salvador identifies the salient features of Carlos Medina’s work—such as his use of basic geometric elements and the material importance of stone—which provide the Venezuelan sculptor with a range of [...]

In this critical essay, Roberto Guevara reviews Elsa Gramcko’s geometric abstraction work. Guevara discusses the importance of the abstract movement (to which he belongs) in Venezuela in the 1950s, which he sees as a new and vigorous expression of [...]

In this text, the Venezuelan art critic Roberto Guevara analyzes the visual art of Spanish-born artist Ángel Luque. He relates the new chromatic experimentations made by the artist to works by such artists as Herbin, Manessier, Picasso, and the [...]

In his essay about the Venezuelan sculptor Víctor Valera’s synthesis of the arts, Ariel Jiménez discusses the concepts of “artistic integration” and “the synthesis of the visual arts,” highlighting the social and collective ramifications [...]

In this essay, Antonio Muiño Loureda reviews artistic syntheses that have occurred throughout history up to the industrial era, mentioning some of the most significant collaborations of this period. He describes different aspects of the project [...]

This essay by the Spanish writer Guillermo de Torre is divided into two separate sections. The first is about the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (located in Mexico City, in Valle del Pedregal de San Ángel), a project in which several [...]

In this essay, the Venezuelan critic Roberto Guevara not only addresses the Pop art work of the Venezuelan-North American sculptor Marisol [Escobar] but also the varied characteristics of her personality. Guevara examines the underlying true [...]

In her essay about the work of the Spanish-born Venezuelan artist Gabriel Morera, Iris Peruga provides a chronological timeline of his career, analyzing most of his works of art and suggesting that his work should be divided into four different [...]

María Luz Cárdenas talks to the Venezuelan sculptor Víctor Valera in a three-part interview arranged in chronological order. In the “Background” section, Valera describes his early academic training in Venezuela and his art residency in Paris [...]

In this essay, Marta Traba presents a broad overview of contemporary sculpture. She bases her report on the writings of Werner Hoffmann, Gillo Dorfles, and Jean Clarence Lambert, who provide a breakdown of the various movements, trends, and artists [...]

In this essay, which is arranged in five sections, María Elena Ramos discusses Cornelis Zitman’s sculptures and drawings. In the first section Ramos explains how the artist has chosen to portray the female form with exaggerated features that do [...]

In this essay, Ángel Luque, the Spanish artist who lived in Venezuela from 1955 until 1967, criticizes both the exaggerated rationalism of the twentieth century (that rejects any form of subjectivity) and the capitalist system. He also dismisses the [...]

In his review of Luisa Richter’s paintings, Kurt Leonhard lists the criteria that might be used to rate a work of art, such as its originality, openness, innovative expression, and “energy for change.” Leonhard studies her work, paying [...]

In this essay, the historian and art critic Alfredo Boulton discusses the thinking and artistic philosophy of Jesús Rafael Soto (1923–2005), to whom he assigns a place of honor within the pantheon of the artistic avant-garde—calling him the [...]

The biography by María Luz Cárdena of Catalan-born Venezuelan artist José María Cruxent contains five chapters. The first one, an introduction, provides an overview. In the second, Cárdena analyzes Cruxent’s ideas and philosophy. The following [...]

The journalist Emilio Santana interviews Ángel Luque (1927?2014). The latter, a Spanish artist who lives in Venezuela, describes Informalism as an avant-garde form of expression, stressing its relationship to the concept of “chaos.” He discusses [...]

In this text, the Antilles-born writer Boeli van Leeuwen studies the sculpture of Cornelis Zitman, the Venezuelan artist of Dutch origin, offering a narrative description of the walkthrough that extends from the entrance of La Trinidad Hacienda to [...]

This essay by Elizabeth Schön relates the life and work of the Venezuelan artist Elsa Gramcko. She establishes a chronology of her life, explaining her creative phases, and analyzing her philosophy and artistic work. She also places special emphasis [...]

In this text, gallerist Clara Diament de Sujo offers a poetic description of the work of Venezuelan artist Elsa Gramcko. She mentions specifically how the work transforms form and matter and uses light and color. Sujo places emphasis on the [...]

This essay by Venezuelan writer Oswaldo Trejo analyzes the art of Elsa Gramcko. It describes a number of characteristics of the Venezuelan artist’s creative world, specifically how she uses matter as the defining “content” of her work. Trejo [...]

In this essay, Venezuelan artist Elsa Gramcko offers a very personal overview of her creative process. She describes what drives her to create and the importance of the intellectual relationship between artist and artwork. She believes art to be the [...]

In this essay, the critic Juan Calzadilla discusses the exploration of Informalist abstract movements by Venezuelan artist Elsa Gramcko, who was in search of new “textures” with which to express her ideas in physical form. Calzadilla describes [...]

The Venezuelan artist Elsa Gramcko is interviewed by Teresa Alvarenga, who describes Gramcko’s house as dark and dismal. The artist tells the journalist about her creative process, and talks about her daily life and her relationship with the [...]

In his essay about Elsa Gramcko’s life, the curator Juan Carlos López Quintero provides a chronological account of her work; he reviews most of her creations and lays out a detailed timeline of her various creative periods. He mentions the [...]

In this essay, the journalist Alberto Anzola assesses the work of Elsa Gramcko. He mentions some of the elements used by the Venezuelan visual artist: scrap metal, storage batteries and other rusty metal. Anzola makes the connection with Renaissance [...]

The French curator DanielAbadie’s interviews with Jesús Rafael Soto. Structured as a biography, it begins with the art world of Venezuela, in Ciudad Bolívar, where Soto was born, and tells us of his work at the Escuelas de Bellas Artes in Caracas [...]

Ariel Jiménez interviews the Polish-born Venezuelan sculptor Harry Abend. The resulting article focuses on the differences and similarities between the current exhibition, at the Sala Mendoza, and the one presented in 1992 at the GAN (Galería de [...]

This article is written in the form of an interview; it consists of a series of questions that the critic Juan Calzadilla asked the Venezuelan visual artist Elsa Gramcko. The questions focus on Gramcko’s artistic development and especially on her [...]

In this interview, Claude-Louis Renard seeks insights into the Venezuelan visual artist Jesús Rafael Soto’s thinking and character. Chronologically structured along biographical lines, the conversation begins with Soto’s early days as an artist [...]

In this essay, the Venezuelan historian and art critic Juan Carlos Palenzuela reviews the latest work by the Venezuelan sculptor Pedro Barreto. The author points to the relationship between Barreto’s forms and their equivalents in nature and the [...]

In this essay, Marco Rodríguez del Camino mentions all the exhibitions that the German-born Venezuelan artist Luisa Richter has presented during the course of her career, while focusing on the issue of composition, which is the central theme of the [...]

In her essay María Elena Ramos assesses the philosophical and aesthetic ramifications of the notions of “object” and “form” based on her study of the works of Georg Hegel, Thomas Aquinas, Umberto Eco, and Walter Benjamin. Once she has [...]

The university professor Christiane Dimitriades studies the assemblages (“boxes”) by Gabriel Morera, analyzing the main features—such as their varied contents and three-dimensional nature—which make them so much more than simply painting and [...]