Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this essay, which appeared in the catalogue for Veinte disecciones (Caracas: Museo de Bellas Artes, 1982), the exhibition of works by Roberto Obregón, the researcher Susana Benko reflects on cultural symbols, conventions, and codes and the [...]

In this brief review Carlos González Bogen, a member of the Los Disidentes group, adopts a rather critical tone to discuss the negative aspects of an anonymous newspaper report—“De nuevo Los Disidentes,” published in the Márgenes column in [...]

In this article, Elsa Flores comments on the performances of a group of “action-language artists” gathered by the actor, Marco Antonio Ettedgui, who is also a performance artist. Together, they designed and presented their plans at the Galería [...]

In this interview, the journalist Rubén Wisotzki asks Eugenio Espinoza about Orla, the exhibition presented at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Sofía Imber in Caracas, in 1993. The Venezuelan artist believes that the exhibition was a moment for [...]

Published in the magazine Imagen in 1969, this article by sculptor and teacher Pedro Briceño takes the reader into the universe of Gego’s Reticulárea. Briceño points out that Gego is an architect as well as an artist, and then describes the [...]

‘Visibilia’ en el punto neutro de la figuración is Alfredo Chacón’s essay about Visibilia, the graphic designer Gerd Leufert’s exhibition at the Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, in 1966. Chacón approaches his review from a comfortable, [...]

In this brief text that appeared in the catalogue of Roberto Obregón’s second solo exhibition held in Caracas at Galería XX2 (1967), the artist presents a creed-like manner in expressing his convictions about art and life, and also commenting on [...]

In this brief prologue to the catalogue of his exhibition Nedo: Reversámbitos held at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas in 1973, Italian-born Venezuelan designer and artist Nedo [Mion Ferrario] describes his experience of space in terms of [...]

This is the preface of a book by Carlos Cruz-Diez, Reflexiones sobre el color (1989) in which the Venezuelan Kinetic artist uses short sentences to set forth the definitions and basic concepts of the art he creates. He also discusses the condition of [...]

[This text is] the first issue of Los Disidentes (Paris, 1950) magazine, in which [the group] explains succinctly the “essential mission” of the eponymous magazine and the “immediate aim” which they are pursuing with this [...]

This preface was written by the artist for the catalogue of his own exhibition Eugenio Espinoza: 1985–1988 at the Galería Tito Salas in Caracas (1988). Here the artist writes an analytical review of the ideas that govern the art he has produced in [...]

Gego—who was an art teacher as well as an artist—wrote “The History of Art Schools” by hand in Spanish in around 1964. In it, she claims that that history is parallel to the creative development of an individual and of his specific works. [...]

This letter-report, dated December 23, 1969, was originally written in English by Stanton L. Catlin, an American curator and director of the Center for Inter-American Relations Art Gallery, New York, to Rachel Conkright, Gego’s gallerist in Caracas [...]

This is a personal letter written to the Venezuelan artist originally from Germany, Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt, 1912–1994), from her friend, Ruth Weddle. Weddle was an editor who was Gego’s classmate at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in San [...]

[This document is] a letter written in English by the architecture professor Sibyl Moholy-Nagy to Stanton L. Catlin, director of the art gallery at the Center for Inter-American Relations in New York, dated January 10, 1970. She writes to say that [...]

This is a letter written by the American entrepreneur and patron, David Rockefeller, to David Bronheim, president of the Center for Inter-American Relations, New York, on January 26, 1970. The letter thanked Bronheim for the good time he had on the [...]

This letter, written in English by Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt, 1912–1994), a Venezuelan artist of German origin, was sent to Stanton L. Catlin, director of the Center for Inter-American Relations Art Gallery, New York, in 1970; it addresses specific [...]

In this letter dated January 7, 1970, Stanton L. Catlin, an American curator and director of the Center for Inter-American Relations Art Gallery, New York, invites a limited number of people to a private viewing of a work, Reticulárea, by Gego; [...]

This letter written in English by Gego, a Venezuelan artist of German origin, is addressed to Mr. James Harithas, director of the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York. Dated July 21, 1972, the letter states that despite her enthusiasm, Gego must [...]

This letter written by Gego in English is addressed to Mrs. Sandra Trop Blumberg, executive director of the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York. In it, Gego acknowledges receipt of Blumberg’s letter, dated July 3, and informs her that she [...]

In this letter written in English and dated May 7, 1974, Stanton L. Catlin informs Gego that he has been named a professor of art, and director of the galleries at Syracuse University, New York. He states that he will also be collaborating with the [...]

This document is a handwritten letter in German to Gego from the German photographer Peter Hönig, dated December 17, 1982, which concerns the photographs of the Reticulárea (1982) that Gego installed in a room at the Alte Oper building in Frankfurt [...]

This document is a letter written to Gego in German by the architect, Christian Thiel, from Frankfurt on October 15, 1982. After a short introduction, Thiel talks about his nostalgia for Reticulárea, installed in the Alte Oper [Old Opera Building], [...]

This document is a letter written to Gego in German by the architect, Christian Thiel, from Frankfurt on September 16, 1983. Thiel tells Gego of the discovery he made while he was reading an essay entitled “Rhizome,” written by the French [...]

This is a text written by Carlos Cruz-Diez for his 1960 exhibition Fisicromías y Color Aditivo held in Caracas. Under the title “Un nuevo concepto del color,” the writer includes one paragraph from an essay by Fernando Á [...]

This is Antonio Berni’s critical review of Latin American art during the last ten years, in which he identifies other problems that, in his opinion, “are still ignored by the critics.” The Argentinean visual artist refers to categories and [...]

In this essay, Jean Clay reviews Fisicromías, the series of works by Carlos Cruz-Diez, and analyzes them from various perspectives. Clay discusses the evolution of the artist’s techniques, examining them through a prism of aesthetic principles. He [...]

In this manuscript, Gego explains what she would say if people asked her about the influences on her work, especially during the 1960s and 1970s. She states that so far she would rather leave the responses to “historians and scholars.” She [...]

This article, written by Elsa Flores for Fotografía anónima en Venezuela—the exhibition organized by Claudio Perna at the GAN (Galería de Arte Nacional) in 1979—is divided into three parts. In the first part, Flores discusses the origins of [...]

This document is an article by artist Carlos Zerpa in which he critiques the opinions historian Mariana Figarella offered in her essay “Los años ochenta. Panorama de una década” on the evolution of his career, the content of his work, and his [...]

In this essay, Luis Enrique Pérez Oramas discusses the typology of Latin American modern art that is designed “to be penetrated” by the viewer, based on an analysis of major works by three Latin American women artists: Brazilians Lygia Clark and [...]

In this essay Eugenio Espinoza names nine artists (himself included) who, in his opinion, have distinguished themselves in the field of contemporary art as being creators of a body of work that “is neither art nor anti-art, but something in between [...]

The catalogue for the exhibition Alejandro Otero, presented at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas, (which opened on January 30, 1949) contains four texts, three photographic reproductions of works and a reproduction of a photographic portrait of [...]

This article by José Gómez-Sicre is on Alejandro Otero’s exhibition held at the Pan-American Union in Washington, D.C., in 1948. On that occasion, the artist showcased his well-known series Las Cafeteras at the OAS’s Salón de las Américas [...]

In this essay, which was published on the occasion of the Cincoincidentes exhibition organized by the Museo de Barquisimeto in 1984, the curator Lourdes Blanco discusses the Viennese training of the Austrian artist who lived in Venezuela, Alfred [...]

This (unsigned) article is a review of the exhibition of photocopies produced by the artists María Zabala, Roberto Obregón, Diego Rísquez, Joe, Lorenzo Berman, Sigfredo Chacón, Héctor Fuenmayor, and Claudio Perna. The exhibition was held at the [...]

The review by Ras (Eduardo Robles Piquer), published in the Revista Nacional de Cultura [National Cultural Review], Caracas, July/August/September 1969, comments on the most important cultural events of the month. It starts out with two exhibitions: [...]

In this editorial, published in the second issue of the bilingual magazine Buzón de Arte/Arte de Buzón, the Venezuelan artist Diego Barboza—who was the director and editor of the magazine—describes the issue, explaining that [...]

This is an article by Venezuelan painter and member of Los Disidentes, Pascual Navarro, in which he responds to a series of accusations made by the realist painter Pedro León Castro in 1949 against the young artists from the same country that were [...]

In this essay, as he discusses the collection of objects created by Armando Reverón, the Venezuelan writer José Balza considers different socio-political ideas about the role played by objects in society and their function as cultural building [...]

In this essay about Cas(A)nto, the installation by Antonieta Sosa at the Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, Luis Enrique Pérez-Oramas describes the Venezuelan artist as the heir to the Latin American Abstract-Constructive tradition, and a member of the [...]

This document is a typewritten letter from Gego to Delpre C.A., Unidad Comercial La Florida, Caracas, dated June 10, 1972; it is addressed specifically to the architecture firm Siso, Shaw and Associates. In the letter, Gego informs the architects [...]

Starting with a poetic image—the work of Reverón made manifest through the “miracle of Reverón”—the French diplomat Gastón Diehl discusses three fundamental aspects of the artist whom he describes in a manner that is almost supernatural [...]

Published in the catalogue for the first retrospective of Armando Reverón, which took place in Caracas in 1951, critic Enrique Planchart discusses the characteristics of Reverón’s “complex and changeable” personality. He describes the artist [...]

This is the main text from the catalogue for the retrospective on Armando Reverón, which took place at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas in 1955. In it, critic Alfredo Boulton proposes to study the artist’s work by dividing it into periods [...]

In his essay, “Reverón y el arte moderno,” Luis Pérez-Oramas suggests that Reverón found his own way to modernism in his painting as a result of the exhaustion of Figuration, independently of the most noted modern artists of the twentieth [...]

This document is an article by Argentinean communication theorist Edgardo Antonio Vigo, published in the second issue of the magazine Buzón de Arte/Arte de Buzón (Venezuela, 1976). After offering some thoughts on the art market in relation to [...]

This document is a Spanish version of excerpts from the book Art-Action and Participation (1975) by Czech scholar Frank Popper, translated into Spanish by Alejandro Useche for the exhibition Diego Barboza: El festín de la nostalgia,presented in [...]

In an attempt at historical reconstruction, and due to the intense political situation in Venezuela (between 1974 and 1978), art critic Roberto Montero Castro attempts to detect the presence of “the Venezuelan identity” in certain artistic [...]

Published in the first issue of Buzón de Arte/Arte de Buzón (Caracas, January, 1976), in this article, Argentinean artists Edgardo Antonio Vigo and Horacio Zabala analyze the interaction that exists between two traditionally different systems of [...]