Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In his review of the XIX Salón de Arte Venezolano (1958), the critic Perán Erminy notes the ingenious reliance on historical criteria in the arrangement of works selected for the event, from the old landscape masters to the new style of Abstract [...]

In this second piece about Abstract painting, the historian and politician Mario Briceño Iragorry revisits some of the ideas he expressed in his first article, “Abstraccionismo y carillones,” and takes a new, more sociological approach to [...]

In this essay, Spanish journalist Francisco Villanueva y López de y Uralde asserts that an American awakening is underway in the New World, particularly in Mexico, Peru, and Cuba, owing to thinkers in each republic, such as José Vasconcelos, Juan [...]

In this article, the journalist Víctor Alberto Grillet describes both the legend of “María Lionza” and the painting by Pedro Centeno Vallenilla. Grillet speaks highly of the Venezuelan painter’s Americanist style—which he says differs from [...]

In this first chapter of his book Del buen salvaje al buen revolucionario, Carlos Rangel Guevara presents the Europeans’ mythical view of the Americas. He emphasizes that even today, the myth of the “noble savage,” associated with a Golden Age [...]

Poet and critic Carlos Augusto León envisions the exhibition of work by Venezuelan painter Rafael Monasterios reviewed in this text as part of a process of discovering the country through art. As precedents for the work of Monasterios, he cites [...]

Here, the art historian Rafael Delgado develops a biographical and critical sketch of the Venezuelan painter and draftsman Pedro Centeno Valenilla. The article includes notes on his academic background as well as his early group and individual [...]

In the last few pages of the book Hacia la democracia: contribución al estudio de la historia económica-político-social de Venezuela (Mexico City, 1939), the Venezuelan historian and diplomat Carlos Irazábal acknowledges his country’s [...]

This brochure corresponds to the catalogue for the collection of the Museo Criollo Raúl Santana, which is part of the Consejo Municipal of Caracas; [the collection] is made up of sculptures created on a 1:16 scale by Venezuelan sculptor Raúl [...]

The critic and curator Francisco Da Antonio salutes the Venezuelan folk painter Bárbaro Rivas and reintroduces him with biographical details and an explanation of the circumstances involved in the production of some of his works. The critic mentions [...]

In this text, the critic Perán Erminy proposes a visual and symbolic analysis of the popular style of landscape painting practiced by Josefa Sulbarán, in recognition of her twenty years of creating art in Venezuela. Erminy divides his essay into [...]

In this article, the painter and critic Carlos Contramaestre writes about the Venezuelan folk artist Josefa Sulbarán, explaining how she got her start and describing the environment in which she trained as a painter. The critic explains how Sulbará [...]

Carlos Contramaestre, a member of the El Techo de la Ballena group, reviews the life and work of the Venezuelan painter, photographer, and writer Salvador Valero. He discusses Valero’s rural origins, his early introduction to drawing and painting ( [...]

This is Carlos Contramaestre’s account of his mule-back ride from San Rafael de Mucuchíes (in the state of Mérida) to El Potrero, at an altitude of four thousand meters, to meet Juan Félix Sánchez, the blanket weaver, sculptor, and architect. [...]

This booklet by the German critic Karin Jezierski offers a perspective on the artistic development of ten Venezuelan painters based or born in the state of Zulia: Francisco Hung, Ender Cepeda, Carmelo Niño, Edgar Queipo, Pedro Morales, Diego Barboza [...]

In this essay, Francisco Da Antonio discusses the career of the Venezuelan naïf painter Elsa Morales, whom he discovered, promoted, and studied. The essay refers to the major reviews of her exhibitions, beginning with the first one in 1969 (written [...]

Cultural activist Manuel Rodríguez Cárdenas calls the attention of the public authorities of Venezuela to the visible deterioration of the monument created by Alejandro Colina in homage to María Lionza, the protector goddess of the forest, water, [...]

The Brazilian art researcher Luciano Alves Duffrayer believed that thanks to the nationalism of the 1920s and the assimilation of the European avant-gardes led the way to overcoming the 19th century prejudices tacitly fostered by art academies. These [...]

In this essay, the poet Carlos Augusto León writes at length about what is going on in the field of art criticism; he is responding to the debate sparked by an article by Alejandro Otero (“¿Dónde está Guayasamín?” 1953). León does not agree [...]

In this essay, Manuel Rodríguez Cárdenas intentionally breathes new life according to his own “yaracuyano” [from Yaracuy, Venezuela] memories into the myth of María Leonza inspired by the monumental sculpture made by Alejandro Colina for the [...]

This short text was written [in 1965] to introduce the recently discovered Venezuelan popular artist Antonio José Fernández, known as “the man with the ring.” The writer Carlos Contramaestre describes the working environment and strange [...]

In this four-part essay, the critic Francisco Da Antonio discusses—extensively and for the first time—the naïf painting produced by the Venezuelan folk artist Bárbaro Rivas. Da Antonio recalls the discovery of this folk painter, an illiterate, [...]

In this article, Víctor Alberto Grillet introduces Feliciano Carvallo as a “primitive artist,” discovered a year earlier by the painters Louys Rawlinson and Alirio Oramas and the Cuban writer María Luisa Gómez Mena in a small village on the [...]

In his speech at the dedication of the monument to the Battle of Carabobo, in El Paraíso, Caracas, the historian and essayist José Gil Fortoul, who at the time was the Minister of Public Education, referred to the decree approved by the Congreso [...]

In this essay, Francisco Márquez analyzes Miguel von Dangel’s work La Batalla de San Romano, a version of a work of the same name by Renaissance painter Paolo Uccello. For the Chilean critic, this contemporary piece largely represents an “ [...]

In this critical essay introducing the book Pintores populares de Caracas, Perán Erminy explains his view of the problems of the valorization and understanding of vernacular art. The author clarifies that he was not responsible for the selection of [...]

This text, presented as the manifesto of Galería Cuatro Muros [Four Walls Gallery], is based on the idea that all true artists are both “creators” and, therefore, “destroyers.” It recognizes the worth of abstract art for displacing interest [...]

Painter and sculptor Alejandro Otero [Rodríguez] develops the third and final part of his response to Miguel Otero Silva (“Conceptos concretos sobre el arte abstracto”) [Specific Concepts of Abstract Art]; within the text he discusses how [...]

Following the method he used in the first part of his response to Miguel Otero Silva, artist Alejandro Otero [Rodríguez] quotes his opponent and refutes each of his assertions by pointing out their contradictions. Although he recognizes that Miguel [...]

Artist and art critic Alejandro Otero [Rodríguez] offers examples that support this first response to the texts published by Miguel Otero Silva (under the title “Conceptos concretos sobre el arte abstracto” [Specific Concepts of Abstract Art], [...]

In his weekly newspaper article, Cuban writer and musicologist Alejo Carpentier—who lived in Caracas for a time—upholds the value of abstract art in the context of an exhibition of work by painter Mateo Manaure held at Cuatro Muros gallery. [...]

In this article César Rengifo explains why the art world is disappointed in abstract formalism, and notes a resurgence of the realist movement. He refers to statements made or positions taken by artists such as Salvador Dalí, Giorgio de Chirico, [...]

In the final article in his series “Conceptos concretos sobre la pintura abstracta,” the Venezuelan journalist and writer Miguel Otero Silva refers to a poll conducted by the French magazine Preuves [Proofs], in which the forty-eight young [...]

Adopting a different tone from the one he used in his previous article (“El regreso a lo funcional y a lo decorativo”), Miguel Otero Silva assures his readers he has nothing against new trends in art; but he objects to the assumption that [...]

In this article, the writer Miguel Otero Silva criticizes the functional nature that abstract artists try to give their work by the subordination of them to the decorative whims of architecture. According to the author, this brings painting down to [...]

In this article, Miguel Otero Silva expresses his reservations concerning abstract artists who presume to see their subjectivity or internal world in universal human terms. Given their provincial origins and limited schooling, Otero Silva maintains [...]

This is the fourth article in the series by writer Miguel Otero Silva on “Conceptos concretos sobre la pintura abstracta,” in which he discusses abstract painting from an ideological instead of a visual perspective. He believes that art can be [...]

In this article, Miguel Otero Silva discusses the similar origins of abstraction in two painters who helped to inspire two major movements: the Russian (lyrical) artist Wassily Kandinsky and the Dutch (geometric) artist Piet Mondrian. Otero Silva [...]

In the second article in his series “Conceptos concretos sobre el arte abstracto,” the writer Miguel Otero Silva rejects the idea of dividing art into two camps: abstract and figurative art. In his opinion, this makes as little sense as talking [...]

In his introduction to the debate that pitted figuration against abstraction, Miguel Otero Silva discusses recent Venezuelan art. He identifies the main teachers at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas y Aplicadas de Caracas and the members of the jury at [...]

In this final article in his polemic against the opinions of painter Alejandro Otero, writer Miguel Otero Silva recapitulates the arguments put forth in the other eight articles in the series Conceptos concretos… He repeats, for instance, his [...]

In this essay, the Venezuelan painter and art critic, Alejandro Otero, questions the chronicler of the city of Caracas, Mario Briceño Iragorry, about his article “Abstraccionismo y carillones” [Abstract Art and Carillons]. The painter finds [...]

In this article, Mario Briceño Iragorry, a historian and journalist from Caracas, reflects on the traditional value placed on religious bells, over foreign novelties, such as abstract painting. He juxtaposes his “primitive and simple tastes” for [...]

In his second open letter to the writer and editor Miguel Otero Silva, the young painter Alejandro Otero Rodríguez, who was a member of Los Disidentes, refers to three statements Otero Silva wrote against Abstract artists. The statements were made [...]

In this essay about the exhibition of paintings by the Ecuadorian artist Oswaldo Guayasamín at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas, Alejandro Otero discusses the question of influences in art and originality. Following a detailed analysis of many [...]

Alejandro Otero publicly expresses his disagreement with the choice for the Official Sculpture Prize, which the jury at the XVIII Salón Oficial de Arte Venezolano awarded to the Spanish sculptor Eduardo Gregorio shortly after the latter’s arrival [...]