Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

Federico Peralta Ramos writes to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation describing how he has spent the fellowship money awarded him: dinner at the Alvear Palace Hotel, payment of debts, investments, and purchases of a suit and artworks by [...]

María Esther Vázquez interviews artists Antonio Berni and Raúl Soldi who speak of an artist’s commitment to his or her work, the opportunities that they came upon in their early careers, the risks faced by well-established artists, as well as [...]

In 1941, the magazine, Argentina Libre [Free Argentina], did a survey of Argentine visual artists on the system of juried shows and art competitions, and whether or not it served to spur artistic production. In this essay, Antonio Berni responds to [...]

In this document, Argentine artist Antonio Berni voices the outrage felt by artists who––like himself––were associated with Nuevo Realismo [New Realism], artists who defended “the uniquely Argentine in the visual arts.” Berni speaks [...]

Antonio Berni writes about developments in modern art and of formalism in art. He analyzes the artists who adhere to Nuevo Realismo [New Realism] and discusses the meaning of that movement [...]

Berni himself wrote this text explaining the work, La masacre de los inocentes [The Massacre of the Innocents], whose origin, he says, goes back to nativity scenes. Berni also explains the aesthetic and political message of his work. This text was [...]

In order to provide a clear explanation of his great interest in New Realism, Antonio Berni speaks out against the War and fascism [...]

Antonio Berni writes about the Primer Salón de Arte Plástico [First Salon for the Visual Arts], the Uruguayan art exhibition organized by Latitud magazine in 1945. He also reviews paintings by Cesáreo Bernaldo de Quirós, comparing them to the [...]

Kenneth Kemble writes about the architect and painter Clorindo Testa, focusing on his ability to work with the essential. Kemble discusses Testa’s exhibition of abstract paintings at Galería Bonino (Buenos Aires) and is taken aback with the use of [...]

Open letter by Horacio Butler, accompanied by other signatures, in response to Atilio Chiappori, director of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes [National Museum of Fine Arts], published in defense of the production of modern artists. Butler [...]

David Alfaro Siqueiros expresses harsh opinions about the works exhibited at the XXIII Salón de Bellas Artes [23rd Salon of Fine Arts], in Buenos Aires, taking into account its social background. The first prize was awarded to Lino Enea Spilimbergo [...]

Siqueiros calls for the organization of a movement of monumental visual arts in order to bring to the fore social reality. By means of it, he promotes the unionization of artists [...]

Mario Canale criticizes a campaign organized as much by institutions dedicated to arts education, such as the Mutualidad de Estudiantes de Bellas Artes [Society of Fine Arts Students], as by Communist activists under the influence of David Alfaro [...]

Amaro Martínez presents an aesthetic and political critique of David Alfaro Siqueiros’s work and political agenda. The author defends art as an expression of man; he considers proletariat art absurd. At the same time that he defends the concept of [...]

In this interview, artist Antonio Berni explains his vision of North American culture, and contemporary art and techniques. He also speaks about his work in the print medium and his notion of realism [...]

Antonio Berni is interviewed by María Esther Gilio, and talks about his training, art criticism, hyperrealism, and the essential Argentine nature of his work [...]

This is an account of the occasion when Admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera, a member of the ruling military junta, visited the Galerías Pacífico in Buenos Aires in 1978, to observe the mural restoration project in which Antonio Berni was engaged [...]

Jorge Glusberg signed this text about Trans-Vanguard painting in Latin America, mentioning its expressive tradition, its formal precedents, stylistic characteristics, as well as contradictions and originality [...]

Jorge Glusberg authors this text about postfiguration, mentioningthe precedents of this aesthetic viewpoint, along with other historical movements. Moreover, the theoretical aspects of representation, reality, and appearances are analyzed [...]

Guillermo Whitelow explains the origin of the La postfiguración exhibition at the Museo de Arte Moderno (Buenos Aires, 1982). He also aesthetically defines “postfiguration” by exploring the nexus between appearances and reality [...]

Jorge Romero Brest, the art critic and director of the Centro de Artes Visuales [Center for the Visual Arts], writes about the style and attitude he sees in Antonio Berni’s work, discussing the changes that can be observed in the artist’s [...]

Argentine art critic Bernardo Graiver writes on the animated debates occasioned by the work of Antonio Berni, and proposes that it be reassessed. Graiver speaks of the nexus between aesthetics, ethics, and truth. He maintains that Berni’s work [...]

Leonardo Estarico critiques the seven artists (Antonio Berni, Lino Enea Spilimbergo, Horacio Butler, Ramón Goméz Cornet, Héctor Basaldúa, Aquiles Badi, and Emilio Pettoruti) who exhibited at Amigos del Arte [Friends of Art [...]

Antonio Berni introduces the exhibition of drawings by Hugo Pereyra at the Galería Rubbers in Buenos Aires in June 1961. Berni puts on his literary hat to describe the quality of Pereyra’s work and the world it represents [...]

This is the text of Antonio Berni’s lecture to the gathering on the artistic reality in Latin America, the media, and fashions imposed on art. He also underscores the relationship between art from the countries of the center and art from Latin [...]

In this essay, Antonio Berni writes about mural painting in Argentina. He bemoans the fact that it has not fulfilled its potential in spite of the skill of local artists, and refers to the muralist’s dependence on assigned spaces and the limits on [...]

This is a brief literary essay by Antonio Berni on pre-Columbian structures atSacsahuaman (Cuzco), Machu Picchu, Peru, in which he suggests a way to understand the culture of the Incas by means of intuition or thought [...]

Antonio Berni introduces Rodrigo Bonome’s exhibition of landscape paintings at the Galería Velázquez in Buenos Aires (1961) with a formal discussion on order in composition, and on color [...]

In his essay in the catalogue for the exhibition titled Antonio Berni: oleos y collages [Antonio Berni: Oil Paintings and Collages] (Buenos Aires, Imagen Galería de Arte, 1974), Berni writes about the Surrealist influence in his work, and about his [...]

In this essay, Antonio Berni writes about the 19th century Peruvian artist, Pancho Fierro, calling him the first South American to portray a realistic version of the social life of the period and its relevance to traditional folk art [...]

Antonio Berni describes Melchor Pérez de Holguín as the finest artist of the Potosí and Chuquisaca schools. He defines Pérez de Holguín’s work as being in the Spanish tradition, and analyzes the painter’s technique while commenting on [...]

Antonio Berni writes about moral issues, and discusses what people can actually do in response to the injustice and criminal activities in the world. He reviews the work of Raquel Forner, attempting to explain it through a series of formal, technical [...]

In this article, Antonio Berni reviews the exhibition of drawings by Ramón Gómez Cornet at the Viau Gallery (Buenos Aires, 1940) which, in his opinion, represent something new in Argentine art—something with a strong connection to the earth. [...]

In his presentation, Samuel Oliver discusses the new order involved in building form with its own defining formal attributes. He supports his proposal with simple volumes and takes advantage of pure, highly visible colors. The forms are built into [...]

Aldo Pellegrini writes about the current situation of the debate between Abstraction and Figuration (1968) and presents it as something that has been overcome, while he also points out its avant-garde quality as a demonstration of the vitality of the [...]

Damián Bayón writes about the work of Argentinean-Japanese artist Kasuya Sakai by analyzing his different stages; that is, concerning the harmony of contrasting colors; the influence of Hartung and calligraphy; black forms in a more complex [...]

The critic writes about Marcelo Bonevardi’s artworks, comparing them to the fragments or the friezes on the walls of an immemorial temple, stating that they propose a profound contemplative attitude. Aldo Pellegrini mentions the importance of the [...]

In this article, the Argentine critic Jorge Romero Brest compares and contrasts the work of two young artists—Luis Alberto Wells and Pérez Celis—and suggests that they both create something “innovative” and thus connect to what “is real [...]

Art critic Samuel Paz analyzes the work of Carlos Squirru from the concept of advertising, distant from the way in which it is used for carrying out propaganda. Different from the American artists—who handle advertising embedded in a popular trait [...]

Jorge Romero Brest describes Leopoldo Torres Agüero’s work by saying that it is clearly by someone who understands that contemporary creative output does not represent individual expression as much as a manifestation of reality. The critic also [...]

Hernández Rosselot writes about the perishable quality in art, emphasizing the deterioration of contemporary artworks. One of the goals of Rómulo Macció is that his works survive for future observers. The critic mentions the impact of [...]

The Argentinean painter Antonio Berni surmises that the perceived decadence of art is a result of a disconnection between the artist and the public. In his judgment, art has always been firmly rooted in a search for realism. Then, Berni proposes that [...]

This essay by the Spanish writer Guillermo de Torre presents an interesting comparison between avant-garde literature and painting in Argentina. The writer describes the new painters with precise commentaries on the visual arts, as well as touching [...]

The Argentinean sculptor Pedro Zonza Briazo sketches a critique of modern sculpture so that he may defend the concept of the artist as creative genius and nature as the model to be followed. The author believes that modern sculpture has lost its way [...]

Pierre Restany writes that Lea Lublin’s work Fluvio Subtunal [Sub-Tunnel Flow] (1969) is a systematic work about the structures of psycho-sensorial communication. Restany explains the development of Lublin’s production as a research into visual [...]

The Argentinean conceptual artist Lea Lublin describes her work Fluvio Subtunal [Sub-Tunnel Flow] (1969), created from a concept stemming from the opposition between nature and technology. The work consists of a walkthrough through nine zones of [...]

Argentinean conceptual artist Lea Lublin describes with precision the materials, route, and luminous instructions to her Terranauta [Terranaut] (1969) environment, as seen from the perspective of her theory Life/Language= Art, seeking to provoke the [...]

The conceptual artist Lea Lublin writes that her work analyzes the problem of the image stemming from its inscription in space, which is considered as a continuous medium of transformations. For her, the artwork is an image index (which is off- [...]

Conceptual artist Lea Lublin writes that she tries to substitute adaptation for creation and the cultural conditioning for the questioning of all the elements of the system that determine it. In her musings, she explains the system of multiple [...]

The director of the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires [Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art], Hugo Parpagnoli writes about the selection criteria and the organization of the Argentinean painting exhibition in Caracas (1963), a proposal in eight [...]