Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this text, artist and essayist Francisco Tomsich interviews Clemente Padín about his artistic career and the performance he did at the Boxing Club de Barrio Sur in Montevideo in 1987 in which he condemned the forced disappearance of individuals [...]

This article is about the group, led by Clemente Padín, which created the magazine Los Huevos del Plata, a departure from the literary style that was favored in Uruguayan cultural circles in the 1960s. The Uruguayan author’s goal was to present [...]

The art critic Fernando García Esteban discusses the XVI Salón Nacional de Artes Plásticas, closely inspecting the paintings presented by each of the participating artists. He describes what he sees as the “epigonal poverty” of Uruguayan [...]

In an artistic “manifesto” published on a flier to be handed out to the audience, Teresa Vila explains the aims of her “action art,” also called “actions with theme,” which had political and media impact in Uruguay in the sixties. Her [...]

In this essay published in 1985, educator and literary critic Roberto de Espada describes the situation of the visual arts in Uruguay in the sixties. He analyzes how informalism was assimilated and internalized by important artists in the country and [...]

This text is the manifesto of Latin American art issued by the Sindicato Uruguayo de Artistas Plásticos (SUAP) in 1991, after the Primer Congreso de Arte Hispanoamericano held in La Paz, Bolivia. It addresses issues facing the region as a whole, [...]

On the occasion of a retrospective exhibition of works by Uruguayan draftsman who were active in the 1960s (a movement that was known as the Dibujazo), Gabriel Peluffo’s essay seeks to place the movement in the relevant socio-political context, [...]

In this article, written in 1964, Humberto Tomeo, an educator and visual artist, underscores the importance of industrial design in the modern world, and its impact on pedagogical aspects of art instruction in secondary education. The author refers [...]

This essay published in June 1959 by Grupo 8 in the Boletín N° 1 de Artes Visuales expresses the desire to create common work spaces for artists working in different techniques in order to cross skills and generate new goals for each area. This [...]

In this text, architect and art critic Fernando García Esteban addresses the meaning as well as the repercussions of the sixth São Paulo Biennial. He discusses the problem of the criteria used to allocate awards and the difficulties faced by [...]

In this text, the painter, sculptor and art and music critic for the weekly Marcha, Pablo Mañé Garzón, criticizes the IX São Paulo Biennial and what he calls “the art of biennials” in general. He argues that art displayed on a mass scale in [...]

In this text, art critic Fernando García Esteban argues that the organization of the XVI Salón Nacional held in 1962 was “incompetent” and that the art scene reacted to it with “indifference.” The government-run Salón Nacional was an art [...]

This text provides an overview of the work of the Círculo de Bellas Artes school in Montevideo, which was founded in 1905—thirty-three years before this report was published. The text describes the consistent quality of teaching in different [...]

This 1920 article by Sebastián Viviani was published in Trabajo, a periodical that was a vehicle for the Consejo Superior de la Enseñanza Industrial in Uruguay. The text is a summary of the lecture given by sculptor Antonio Pena—who taught [...]

In this essay, Uruguayan painter Carmelo de Arzadun advocates providing the women studying manufacturing at the Escuela Industrial N°3 with artistic knowledge. In the 1920s, many important modern painters in Montevideo gave classes at the Escuela [...]

In this 1920 article published in Trabajo, a conduit for the Escuela de Industrias, painter and printmaker Guillermo Rodríguez places emphasis on the practical nature of drawing instruction at industrial schools—an approach advocated by the Unión [...]

In this essay, the members of AIAPE (Asociación de Intelectuales, Artistas, Periodistas y Escritores [Association of Intellectuals, Artists, Journalists and Writers]) lays out the basic program structure of the association, emphasizing a class-based [...]

This essay is on the author of the speech delivered at the Ateneo de Montevideo, Antonio Miguel Grompone, on “the culture of liberation,” where he highlights the cultural and political importance of the “peoples” universities or adult [...]

In this essay the objectives of the Asociación de Intelectuales, Artistas, Periodistas y Escritores (AIAPE, Association of Intellectuals, Artists, Journalists and Writers) are presented, which, were in line with the French and in accordance with the [...]

This essay proposes that a “Latin American identity” was an idea based on two facts: the influence of the decadent post-war European culture and secondly, the geopolitical circumstances of Latin American governments confronted with North American [...]

This article announces the founding of the Bolivian AIAPE (Agrupación de Intelectuales, Artistas, Periodistas y Escritores) a few years after the founding of homonymous associations in Argentina and Uruguay. The Bolivian group basically embraced the [...]

This essay expresses the dissatisfaction felt by the group of AIAPE intellectuals (represented in this case by Leónidas Spatakis) over the approach taken by most of the participating artists at the VI Salón Nacional. In the author’s opinion, the [...]

In this insightful review of the V Salón Municipal de Bellas Artes, the critic Cipriano Vitureira takes for granted that the worldwide political and social events of the early 1940s demand a renewal in both artistic and thematic terms, particularly [...]

This article by Marcel Gromaire was published in AIAPE magazine—a champion of social realism in art—at a crucial point in the debate over aesthetics in Montevideo: the beginning of painting’s slide toward a “politically committed” form of [...]

Cipriano Vitureira was one of the main intellectuals who feted Candido Portinari during his visit to Uruguay in 1947. On the whole, the Brazilian painter was well liked by members of the PCU (Partido Comunista Uruguayo) and artists working in the [...]

This exhibition was organized by a group of independent artists associated with the AIAPE (Agrupación de Artistas, Intelectuales, Periodistas y Escritores) working with a recently created State agency, the Comisión Municipal de Cultura. All parties [...]

This article reports on the destruction of a theater set made by Antonio Berni at the Teatro del Pueblo in Buenos Aires. The report mentions the situation that artists were facing under the repressive measures of the G.O.U. (a group of Argentinian [...]

The AIAPE’s magazine published this report on the activities of Olimpia Torres, Joaquín Torres García’s daughter. In late 1936, after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Olimpia was in Madrid with her husband, the Spanish sculptor Díaz [...]

In the early twentieth century, Europe—which had, until that time, been Latin America’s cultural referent par excellence—was deeply immersed in a devastating socio-economic crisis brought about as a result of the First World War. Fascism and [...]

This article quotes comments made by David Alfaro Siqueiros about contemporary art (in 1940) that appeared in the Mexican magazine Romance (a popular magazine in Latin America). Seven years after his visit to the Río de la Plata region, Siqueiros [...]

This anonymous article mentions three important events in the Uruguayan visual arts calendar in 1940: the exhibition of French painting, the Salón Municipal de Artes Plásticas, and the critiques of the Salón Nacional de Artes Plásticas. These [...]

This essay notes the bonds of friendship and ideological affinity that existed between the multifaceted Antonio Berni, whose paintings are steeped in realism and social awareness, and his fellow travelers in Uruguay. This friendship between the AIAPE [...]

In the 1930s the ideological frictions sparked in intellectual circles by the dictatorial government of Gabriel Terra were not just a local problem; they were a reflection of the global conflict presaged by the unstoppable advance of fascism, the [...]

This essay by Atahualpa Del Cioppo, the art critic and theater director, was written as a tribute to the Uruguayan printmaker Leandro Castellanos Balparda on the occasion of the latter’s exhibition at “Amigos del Arte” in Montevideo. [...]

Eduardo Blanco Acevedo was ideologically conservative and participated in the 1933 coup d’état of Gabriel Terra. During the elections of 1946, he self-directed the “blancoacevedismo” movement, a major force of conservative ideology within [...]

Revista Nacional was a quarterly journal published by the Academia Nacional de Letras del Uruguay [National Academy of Letters]. This article refers to one of the most important figures in the intellectual history of the River Plate [region], Pedro [...]

In this essay by Adolfo Halty, ideas are espoused about the controversial “social” sense of art and “folkloric art” at a time in Uruguay when debates about the notions of “cultural heritage,” “popular art,” etc., were beginning to be [...]

The Argentinean visual artist Antonio Berni frequently visited the city of Montevideo from 1938, producing various exhibitions; in this article, he expressed his social and political vision of mural art, attributing it with a “constructive” [...]

In this article, Luis Eduardo Pombo reveals himself as the first Uruguayan art critic to ideologically wrap himself in the aesthetics of David Alfaro Siqueiros. Generally, even the commentaries made by those intellectuals closest to the Mexican [...]

The declaration of principles of the Visual Arts Union were in fact taken and inscribed from the general declaration of the C.T.I.U. (Confederación de Trabajadores Intelectuales del Uruguay [Confederation of Intellectual Workers of Uruguay]). This [...]

The Union of Visual Artists was part of the structure of the C.T.I.U. (Confederación de Trabajadores Intelectuales del Uruguay [Confederation of Intellectual Workers of Uruguay]) federation created in Montevideo at the request of David Alfaro [...]

By illustrating the work of the Peruvian artist Cossio del Pomar, the author exposes his concept of the artist as “the laborer of the idea,” a cultural humanistic model and an agent in pursuit of new forms of social consciousness. In a way, this [...]

According to the Uruguayan artist Julio Verdié—a member of the board of directors of the C.T.I.U. (Confederación de Trabajadores Intelectuales delUruguay [Confederation of Intellectual Workers of Uruguay]) founded in Montevideo in 1933, the [...]

In this essay, the students at the Montevideo Círculo de Bellas Artes vilify the critical situation affecting the institution due to cuts in state subsidies. The publication Movimiento incited the students to fight for restoring quality in the [...]

In this article, Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros explains his vision of art history which, in his view, wavers between moments of socialization (or social integration) and moments of individualism (or decadence). It is on those grounds that [...]

This document invites the Unión de Artistas Plásticos (UAP), a division of the Confederación de Trabajadores Intelectuales del Uruguay (C.T.I.U.), to the Exposición Internacional de Artes Plásticas Revolucionarias, an event organized by the [...]

This article discusses the rise of universities of popular education in a situation of political and social crisis in the Oriental Republic of Uruguay. The idea of the popular university looks to experiences in Latin America starting in the late [...]

This article by Francisco R. Pintos is a response to the one by Juvenal Ortiz Saralegui published in the previous issue of Movimiento journal. Whereas Ortiz Saralegui was conciliatory in his approach to the problem of the relationship between “pure [...]

This article by Juvenal Ortiz Saralegui formed part of the early debates in the leftist press in Uruguay on the relationship between art and politics, debates that largely ensued in the publication of the Confederación de Trabajadores Intelectuales [...]

This essay analyzes the posture taken by the Uruguayan intellectuals when faced with the dictatorship of Gabriel Terra (1931−38). This 1933 coup d’état provoked a shift in the political stance of the intellectuals and particularly of the [...]