Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

Puerto Rican art historian and curator Petra Barreras describes Rafael Montañez Ortiz’s work as startling and demanding of responses from viewers. She calls Ortiz “a shaman” who has continually looked for ways to heal society through art. [...]

In this curators’s statement, Regina A. Corritore and Miriam Hernández, the cofounders of the Latina artist collective, Vistas Latinas, explain that their mission is to validate the work of Latina artists and advocate for better representation of [...]

In this essay, curator and art historian Susana Torruella Leval provides an overview of the development of Puerto Rican art institutions and artist activism in New York, from the 1950s to the 1990s. She argues that Puerto Rican artists have played [...]

This essay, written by curator Susana Torruella Leval, provides a biographical overview of the careers of mural artist, Nitza Tufiño, and her father, Rafael Tufiño—a renowned Puerto Rican painter and printmaker. Leval describes the relationship [...]

“The Artists Respond: Art, Culture, Politics” is a transcript of artists’ responses to questions posed by Juan Sánchez, curator of the exhibition The Puerto Rican Equation: Puerto Rican Artists Ponder 100 Years Since the 1898 Invasion. Among [...]

In this essay, Nuyorican artist Juan Sánchez explains that The Puerto Rican Equation commemorates the centennial of the United States invasion of Puerto Rico in 1898. Sánchez writes that the work of the artists in the exhibition demonstrates that [...]

In this essay, Hugo Martinez chronicles the formation of United Graffiti Artists, a collective of New York City graffiti artists. Analyzing the graffiti scene from a sociological perspective, Martinez reports that the majority of graffiti artists in [...]

Writer and artist Nicholasa Mohr gives an overview of the development of popular art by Puerto Ricans in New York City, and ties these artistic manifestations to political struggles. She observes how graffiti and murals produced by Puerto Rican youth [...]

Poet Miguel Algarin maintains that rather than a sign of ignorance the mixing of Spanish and English words by Puerto Ricans in New York expresses linguistic creativity. He argues that Puerto Ricans in New York are forging a new language and culture [...]

In this essay, New York-based Puerto Rican artist Marcos Dimas discusses how participating in an exhibition of Puerto Rican artists at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1969 led to his involvement in forming the Puerto Rican Art Workers Coalition (PRAWC [...]

Artist Rafael Montañez Ortiz describes the assemblages of Marcos Dimas, Puerto Rican artist based in New York City, as an extension of his childhood experience of digging up bits of pre-Columbian Taino artifacts in the fields of Puerto Rico. He [...]

Art historian and curator Susana Torruella Leval provides an overview of the development of Puerto Rican art institutions and artist activism in New York from the 1950s to the 1990s. She argues that Puerto Rican artists have played key roles in [...]

In this brief statement, Nuyorican artist Jorge Soto provides an historical overview of El Museo del Barrio. The author contends that the institution emphasized the educational value of Puerto Rican culture, but did not attend to the needs of Puerto [...]

Artist Rafael Colon Morales criticizes the selections for the exhibition of recent acquisitions of El Museo del Barrio for lacking consistent coherent criteria. He observes that there are few high-quality works on display, and therefore he does not [...]

In this brief artist statement, Puerto Rican-born artist José Caraballo posits that El Museo del Barrio’s exhibition of recent acquisitions serves as a reminder of the existence of Puerto Rican artists, and their struggle for recognition in the [...]

Art historian Mario Cesar Romero asserts that Puerto Rican-born artist Rafael Colón Morales draws from “irrationalist” schools of Western art—such as the romantics, the Surrealists, and the Abstract Expressionists. The author compares Colón [...]

In her brief introduction to the exhibition catalogue, Children of Darkness: Rafael Colón Morales, curator Gladys Peña asserts that Colón Morales broke away from the traditional painting of Puerto Rico by experimenting with both surrealist and [...]

In this essay, art historian Kristine Stiles provides the most comprehensive essay written to date on the work of Rafael Montañez Ortiz, who is recognized as an innovator in the destruction art movement of the 1960s. Stiles’s essay chronicles [...]

Betty Wilde-Biasiny recounts the emergence of the photography collective, En Foco [Focused], to the rise of alternative artist-run spaces and collectives in New York City during the 1970s. Wilde-Biasiny states that En Foco’s promotion of cultural [...]

Photographer Charles Biasiny-Rivera recounts the history of En Foco [Focused], the first Puerto Rican photographers collective in New York City. Founded in 1973, En Foco’s community-based programs in the Bronx included operating a street gallery, a [...]

En Foco founding director, Charles Biasiny-Rivera, and Nuyorican artist Adal Maldonado discuss the latter’s transition from documentary projects in the 1970s, to the employment of photography in conceptual installations in the 1990s. Adal relates [...]

In this essay, Carmen Bardeguez-Brown weighs the influence of the Berlin Dadaists (1918–22) on photomontage artist Catalina Parra. Of Chilean descent, Parra went to college in Germany where she was exposed to Dada art in 1968. She was drawn to the [...]

The author, Susan Keller, ponders the work of Amalia Mesa-Bains within the context of the Mexican-American social empowerment movement of the 1960s and 1970s, also known as the Chicano Movement. A figurehead of her generation, Mesa-Bains looked to [...]

The author, Susan Keller, ponders the work of Amalia Mesa-Bains within the context of the Mexican-American social empowerment movement of the 1960s and 1970s, also known as the Chicano Movement. A figurehead of her generation, Mesa-Bains looked to [...]

In this essay, Michael Crockford discusses how the artistic practices of Yolanda Lopez combine feminism, activism, and community building. He observes that Lopez challenges indeed lowly depictions of Mexican-Americans in the United States by [...]

In this essay, Michael Crockford discusses how the artistic practices of Yolanda Lopez combine feminism, activism, and community building. He observes that Lopez challenges indeed lowly depictions of Mexican-Americans in the United States by [...]

The authors of this essay describe Coco Fusco as one of the most highly visible and vocal members of the Latino artistic community in the United States. The author, Mary Ellen Croteau, provides an overview of Fusco’s family background and academic [...]

José Luis Falconi discusses Nuyorican photographer Adal Maldonado’s series, Out of Focus Nuyoricans, as a metaphorical depiction of the mutable nature of Puerto Rican identity and nationhood. By choosing to portray his Puerto Rican subjects as [...]

Literary critic Doris Sommer and Adal Maldonado discuss his transition from documentary projects in the 1970s to the employment of photography in conceptual installations in the 1990s. He relates the importance of prior works, such as Portraits of [...]

Nuyorican poet Pedro Pietri describes in this text the difficulty of classifying Puerto Ricans with standard racial and ethnic categories employed by United States government agencies. He commends Puerto Ricans for living lives that resist [...]

In 1995, Nuyorican poet Pedro Pietri wrote “El Manifesto: Notes on El Puerto Rican Embassy,” which describes the sociopolitical condition of Puerto Ricans as a colonial people whose sense of nationhood is expressed and maintained through the [...]

In this essay, Angela Coldsmith examines the varied printmaking techniques of Anaida Hernández, and her work on behalf of women’s issues in her practices as an artist, activist, and educator. In particular, they note that Hernández organized an [...]

In this essay, Angela Coldsmith examines the varied printmaking techniques of Anaida Hernández, and her work on behalf of women’s issues in her practices as an artist, activist, and educator. In particular, they note that Hernández organized an [...]

The authors of this essay describe Coco Fusco as one of the most highly visible and vocal members of the Latino artistic community in the United States. The author, Mary Ellen Croteau, provides an overview of Fusco’s family background and academic [...]

The author of this essay, Adrianne Dwyer, discusses the autobiographical references found in Magdalena Campos-Pons’s work that relate to her Afro-Cuban background, specifically the spiritual tradition of Santeria. Campos-Pons explains that her [...]

This annotated chronology written by Puerto Rican-born artist Diogenes Ballester, documents the history of Taller Boricua [Puerto Rican Workshop]—the oldest extant Puerto Rican artist collective in New York—from its founding in 1969 to 1989. For [...]

In this typewritten open letter, the artist collective Taller Boricua [Puerto Rican Workshop], criticizes El Museo del Barrio for excluding the work of several New York-based Puerto Rican artists from an unnamed exhibition of Puerto Rican art jointly [...]

In this essay, Corinne Robbins praises the expansive artistic vocabulary of Nuyorican artist Jorge Soto Sánchez that drew from myth, street art, religious iconography, and fine art. Robbins places Soto Sánchez within the Surrealist tradition. She [...]

The author of this essay, Adrianne Dwyer, discusses the autobiographical references found in Magdalena Campos-Pons’s work that relate to her Afro-Cuban background, specifically the spiritual tradition of Santeria. Campos-Pons explains that her [...]

Judith Brodsky, director of the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper, and Isabel Nazario, director of the Center for Latino Arts and Culture at Rutgers University, outline the reasons that led them to invite Latina artists to serve as [...]

Judith Brodsky, director of the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper, and Isabel Nazario, director of the Center for Latino Arts and Culture at Rutgers University, outline the reasons that led them to invite Latina artists to serve as [...]

The catalogue essay for the exhibition, Bridge Between Islands: Retrospective Works by Six Puerto Rican Artists in New York, offered overviews of the works by Olga Albizu, Tony Bechara, Eloy Blanco, Marcos Dimas, Evelyn Lopez de Guzmán, and Jorge [...]

Susana Torruella Leval relates her experience as curator and director of El Museo del Barrio throughout the 1990s. She discusses the process of maintaining professional standards of care for the museum collections of Puerto Rican, Latino, and Latin [...]

In this short introduction to the exhibition catalogue, Jorge Soto Sánchez: Works on Paper, 1974–1979,Jack Agüeros—director of El Museo del Barrio from 1977 until 1986—maintains that while the artist was well known as a painter and sculptor, [...]

The group—calling itself the Colectiva de Artistas Puertorriqueños—articulates the concern that the policies of El Museo del Barrio marginalize the production of Puerto Rican artists in New York in favor of promoting well-established artists [...]

In this autobiographical timeline covering from 1947 to 1977, Nuyorican artist Jorge Soto Sánchez describes his childhood in the South Bronx where he took great delight in drawing from an early age. Conversely, he also found disillusionment in the [...]

Art critic and scholar Myrna Rodriguez writes that the work of Jorge Soto Sánchez should be seen within the context of Latin American art. His grotesque depictions of the human figure bring to mind the work of such artists as Fernando Botero, [...]

In this letter, artist Marcos Dimas writes to art critic Lucy R. Lippard and invites her to review his exhibition at El Museo del Barrio. Dimas discusses his participation in an activist artist collective, known as the Art Workers’ Coalition, and [...]

In this short essay, Marcos Dimas discusses his participation in a 1969 group show of Puerto Rican artists at the Brooklyn Museum, where he displayed two paintings, and his first assemblage. He notes that he met the future cofounders of the Puerto [...]

In her review of a retrospective exhibition of the art of Marcos Dimas at El Museo del Barrio, Grace Glueck discusses the following works: El Bohique, Ritual Assemblages, Tribute to Tito, The Voyager, and Dream Room. She describes Dimas as fusing [...]