Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This article by Diego Rivera denounces the “reactionary” agents of Delahuertismo who were the true architects of the conspiracy to infiltrate Masonic lodges at the beginning of 1924 in order to murder the governor of Yucatan, Felipe Carrillo [...]

This document is a didactic-political text directed toward the working class organized around identification of its enemies. These include the fake socialist parties (equated with the Italian fascists). And also the intellectuals unable to understand [...]

After a scandalous raid in Mexico City in which forty-two homosexual men were detained, known as the Ball of the Forty-One, the poem describes the possible foundation of a mutual aid society in which a dance was mentioned: “El traje debía de ser [...]

Fausto Castillo interviewed Mr. Miguel Salas Anzures who—when asked about the accusation that he was spending a great deal of money on the first Bienal Interamericana de Pintura y Grabado [Inter-American Biennial of Painting and Printmaking], [...]

This was the headline of the supplement—dedicated to the muralist on the centenary of his birth—that published a document dated December 19, 1929 in which Diego Rivera explained “My Expulsion from the PCM.” The text discusses [...]

Juan B. Climent interviews Manuel Rodríguez Lozano, who leaves no doubt about his position regarding the figures of Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros in Mexican art. Lozano talks about the need to vindicate the native figure stemming from [...]

In this interview, David Alfaro Siqueiros expressed his views on the Biennial. He began by critiquing the paintings exhibited by the United States, and warned Latin American painters against imitating hybrid ideas that made no sense, such as Tachisme [...]

The art critic Juan Climent thought that Rufino Tamayo’s painting was caught in the crossfire of conflicting opinions. Some thought that his œuvre represented the decadent formalism of the School of Paris, but others saw it as the dawn of a new [...]

In 1952, Daniel Mont invited Mathias Goeritz to construct “whatever he wanted.” Given such freedom, the sculptor developed the idea of Arquitectura Emocional [Emotional Architecture]: a structure that would contain the arts with the purpose of [...]

The exhibition at Perls Gallery in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, presented Rufino Tamayo as one of the four great Mexican artists. His works were part of the great modernism and, unlike those of his colleagues, no Communist symbols could be found in [...]

José Clemente Orozco believed that opposition to political painting was nothing new in Mexico; it had been around since the start of the mural movement. Some painters tried to stamp out all forms of figurative or representative expression. When [...]

This interview consists of fourteen questions regarding the reception that the Mexican art exhibition experienced from the Parisian public. Fernando Gamboa believed that the event was a great opportunity for the Mexican people, and also was a great [...]

In the Survey Section, the journalist Ortega decided to go to the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria to ask the painters there the following question: Who is the greatest painter in Mexico? The caricaturist Ernesto García Cabral ironically responds that [...]

In artistic circles in those days, according to Rufino Tamayo, anything that was not purely Mexican was roundly rejected, and works that reflected our own experience and personal expression were lavishly praised. This had its positive aspects, but it [...]

In this short article by Antonio Rodríguez, the art critic shows his support for an article published in the previous issue of the journal Espacios by the artist Roberto Berdecio, in defense of “social painting.” Rodríguez believes that “ [...]

In “¿Hay problema indígena en México?” Mexican writer and anthropologist Manuel Gamio examines the “indigenous problem,” or the question of how to integrate indigenous Mexicans into Mexican society. Gamio argues that the government of the [...]

Antonio Rodríguez analyzed Rufino Tamayo’s work, basing his remarks on the retrospective of his paintings exhibited at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. According to the exhibition catalog, Tamayo’s greatest contribution was his handling of color. [...]

Based on the criticisms that the emergence of Estridentismo gave rise to, Oscar Leblanc, a journalist of El Universal Ilustrado carries out a survey about the movement, interviewing several personalities. The responses are really extreme. The writer [...]

Most of this short article consists of the words of the artist from Guatemala, Rina Lazo—a naturalized Mexican—from an interview with the critic Raquel Tibol. Lazo recalls her training and the reasons she came to Mexico in 1946. At that time, [...]

The critic Antonio Rodríguez uses this article to defend the murals painted by Jorge González Camarena in the main hall of the Edificio Guardiola, in the center of Mexico City. The author believes that the short newspaper article calling for these [...]

This brief article, illustrated by a large caricature, uses a humorous tone to comment on the disputes generated by the declarations of sculptors, who were unable to reach an agreement. “Instead of joining forces to fight the little dictator who [...]

José Clemente Orozco did not publish any more political caricatures after the 1913 Decena Trágica [Tragic Ten Days]. This paragraph discusses at length the late-nineteenth-century transition from the end of the traditional press to the efficiency [...]

Mathias Goeritz describes two projects proposed to the then-president of the organizing committee of the 19th Olympic Games, architect Pedro Ramírez Vázquez: the International Meeting of Sculptors and The Route of Friendship. The artist describes [...]

The dispute begun by Luis Cardoza y Aragón against the frente único [single front] policy of the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR) [League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists] culminated with this declaration in El Machete. The [...]

Antonio Rodríguez portrayed painter David Alfaro Siqueiros as an avant-garde artist because of his approach to using new pictorial materials. In this interview, Siqueiros declared that contemporary painters remained “impassive before the progress [...]

In this article the Spanish writer José Bergamín analyzes the mural, La Piedad [Mercy] that Manuel Rodríguez Lozano painted at the Lecumberri prison in Mexico City. He finds aspects of Lozano’s work within the Hispanic heritage adopted by [...]

This issue contains more than 400 engravings by José Guadalupe Posada, with a preface by Diego Rivera, in which he redefines the engraver as a “worker,” “warrior of leaflets,” the “greatest artist” produced by the people, and the [...]

André Salmon introduces Lola Cueto’s work by referring to certain moments that he considers important. He suggests that Edouard Manet’s painting, La Muerte de Maximiliano [The Death of Maximilian], was Mexico’s debut in the visual arts. [...]

This print by Leopoldo Méndez was used for the cover of the first issue of Frente a Frente [Face to Face], in which the inauguration of the Palacio de Bellas Artes was satirized as an act of cultural exclusion. At the bottom of the page, a policeman [...]

This communiqué outlines the growth of the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR) [League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists] in the last ten months, explaining the organizational structure and activities. It highlights the [...]

This text underscores the originality, expression and strength of the works created at the Escuelas de Pintura al Aire Libre [Open-Air Schools of Painting], arguing that these qualities are the product of racial purity and that as mestizaje [racial [...]

This stylized painting portrays some of the members of the Estridentista movement in their meeting place: El Café de Nadie [No Man’s Café]. Manuel Maples Arce is in the upper center of the picture, flanked by both Germán List and Salvador [...]

In this essay, the painter Carlos Mérida emphasizes Germán Cueto’s capacity to work with different materials such as iron, tin, and plastics, by connecting them to a new aesthetic modality called “design.” For Mérida, design is the vital [...]

Luis Mario Schneider carried out the first documented study on Etridentismo; he interviewed the members of the group and thoroughly examined the archives of this 1920s avant-garde movement. Although the group left some accounts to history, this was [...]

In this book, Margarita Nelken, a Spanish critic based in Mexico, discusses the development of Expressionism in Mexican art. She argues that Mexican Expressionism has a native origin that, with the passage of time, has been enriched by the different [...]

This text, attributed to Fernando Gamboa, defines how Mexican Art is to be classified in the coming decades: Pre-Hispanic, colonial, nineteenth-century, popular, and contemporary art. His department’s fundamental goal was to create a Museo Diná [...]

In the introduction to this catalog, César Moro (a celebrated Peruvian poet and artist) alludes to the antecedents of Surrealism within the avant-garde movements of the beginning of the twentieth century. He also identifies the contact points that [...]

This text by Fermín Revueltas, the director of the Escuela al Aire Libre de Guadalupe Hidalgo [Open-Air School of Guadalupe Hidalgo], is very concise. He states that the school he directs teaches art methods so that works can be created to be both [...]

This text presents the Escuelas de Pintura al Aire Libre [Open-Air Schools of Painting] and its creative production as evidence that Mexican children have a natural artistic disposition. It also associates this disposition with their indigenous blood [...]

Mathias Goeritz states that he is fed up with logic and reason; with functionalism, decoration, and individualism; with the fashion of the moment, with vanity, ambition and egocentrism; with the -isms and -ists, both figuration and abstraction. He is [...]

The Taller de Gráfica Popular (TGP) [People’s Graphic Workshop] explained its working plan for graphic propaganda in a flyer that specified the following: it could be incorporated into wall newspapers, mailed as if it were postal correspondence, [...]

This document is an anthology containing a collection of etridentista poems and manifestos. It includes an extensive bibliography. Luis Mario Schneider [L. M. Sch.] contextualizes their works within the cultural panorama of that time [...]

This novel by Eduardo A. Castrejón is based on the Baile de los 41 [The Dance of the 41], a notorious raid that took place in Mexico City in which 42 homosexual men were arrested. It tells the tale of a gathering hosted by a couple, Mimi and Ninón, [...]

Carlos Mérida sets forth eleven tenets on the development of painting in relation to the integration of the arts; these function both as a manifesto and as an introduction to the catalog. For the artist, functional painting is equivalent to [...]

During the presentation of the catalog for the first exhibition by the Sociedad de Arte Moderno it is established that Mexico must become “one of the most important cultural centers of the world, since its great past and vigorous present compel it [...]

This essay, written by Francisco Díaz de León, director of the Escuela de Pintura al Aire Libre [Open-Air Schools of Painting] in Tlalpan, explains that the Schools favor an aesthetic education and individual expression over technical education. He [...]

The letter from Ricardo Gómez Robelo to Edward Weston is an emotional letter thanking Weston for the gift of some photographs, but, above all, he is grateful for Weston’s friendship. Robelo acknowledges that they [the group of friends around [...]

In this letter, Fernando Gamboa tells José (his last name is illegible) that the exhibition has been received positively. According to Gamboa there are those who have discovered an authentic pictorial path in Mexican painting, a possible escape from [...]

David Alfaro Siqueiros sent a letter to the Minister of Public Education, José Manuel Puig Cassauranc, when he was dismissed from his ministry job as professor of drawing and manual works, for which he was paid three pesos a day. His dismissal was [...]

In this letter, the interim director of the Escuela Central de Artes Plásticas [Central School of the Visual Arts] informs the rector of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México [UNAM National Autonomous University of Mexico], and attorney-at- [...]