Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This document contains excerpts from a grant proposal submitted by Eduardo Carrillo to the National Endowment for the Humanities seeking traveling support for an exhibition of California Chicano art entitled Califas, Chicano Art and Culture in [...]

This document is a transcript of the contribution to a panel discussion by the art historian, Amalia Mesa-Bains, in which she addresses the ways in which the social circumstances experienced by Chicanos in the United States have influenced their [...]

Cuban novelist Zoe Valdés pays homage to the work of Dominican artist Darío Suro. Transformed into a perceptive art critic while still displaying her lyrical gift as a fiction writer, Valdés gives literary form to Suro’s art, which she sees as a [...]

This essay by Chicano artist, José Montoya, describes his experience developing and creating his Pachuco Artseries, which he began in 1969. Montoya notes the inspiration of artist Ricardo Favela and his use of the vato (slang for street dude) figure [...]

This document is a brief unpublished autobiographical statement by artist Carlos Almaraz. In it he discusses the early years of his life, from his birth in Mexico City and subsequent moves to Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, where he attended high [...]

This letter by the art historian and critic Shifra M. Goldman responds to a letter from the Chicana artist Judithe Hernandez. The latter’s letter was responding to Goldman’s review of the exhibition Murals of Aztlán: Street Painters of East Los [...]

The document is an undated letter from Juan Carrillo, the interim board chairman of the Concilio de Arte Popular (CAP), to its members. Along with stating its founding history, purpose, names, and affiliations of the founding board members, the [...]

This document is a handwritten letter in Spanish by Leo Tanguma and addressed to Malaquias Montoya. Tanguma informs Montoya of an art project he is planning to do in conjunction with the public school system in Denver, Colorado, to address the high [...]

This document is a letter by Judithe Hernandez to the Los Angeles Times, written in response to the review of the Los Four exhibition by staff writer William Wilson. She refutes Wilson’s statements, that the museum lowered its standards and [...]

This document was written under the letterhead “Tres” [Three], yet signed by artists Carmen Lomas Garza, Amado Maurilio Peña, and César Augusto Martinez. The authors outline their reasons for resigning from the collective Con Safo [sometimes [...]

This document is a letter addressed to the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle and signed by Artists of the Fifth Sun Exhibition. It was written in response to the review of the exhibition The Fifth Sun: Contemporary/Traditional Chicano and Latino [...]

This a letter requesting support for the promotion of the first international conference of Chicano art, organized by Santa Barraza and Consuelo Avila in 1979. The stated objective of the conference is to provide an overview of the history and [...]

In this letter, San Francisco artist and muralist Graciela Carrillo challenges Malaquías Montoya’s essay, “A Critical Perspective in the State of Chicano Art,” on what she describes as its elitist, rhetorical style that made it hard to read, [...]

This letter was written by UCLA professor Chon Noriega to Elizabeth Sussman, a former curator of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Written in 1993, the letter addresses several concerns about the museum’s upcoming Biennial Exhibition with regard [...]

The essay is a brief artist statement in which Amalia Mesa-Bains recounts her beginnings as an altar-maker at the Galería de la Raza in San Francisco in the late 1970s and her subsequent transition from constructing personal altars to public [...]

In this essay, Giulio V. Blanc discusses various reactions to the 1988 burning of a Manuel Mendive’s drawing in Florida, to explain the different attitudes held by Cuban- Americans towards Cuba. He then connects this to the larger issue of exile [...]

This document is a short handwritten entry from the journal of Carlos Almaraz. He begins with a discussion of how his art should be a product of daily practice. He then comments that his aim is to achieve a sense of poetry in his work but at a visual [...]

This document is a statement by Chicano artist Malaquías Montoya on the relationship between art and politics. The author suggests that these are always inextricably linked to one another and that nowhere is this more evident than in the structure [...]

This document is the transcript of an interview between Chicana visual artist Carmen Lomas Garza and Anne-Louise Marquis, curator of Directions, a 1995 exhibition of her works. The interview covers a wide range of topics, including Lomas Garza’s [...]

Cesar Trasobares’ essay is broken down into fifteen separate “notes” that describe the exhibited project or the Quinceañera planning process; they are written from the perspective of Rosata Quinceañera, the fictional heroine that is featured [...]

In this discussion with Geno Rodriguez, Eleanor Heartney, and Victor Zamudio-Taylor, the three scholars consider the work of Cuban-born artist Luis Cruz Azaceta. They analyze the subject matter of his work, and all agree that it is melancholic and [...]

This document is the transcript of an interview between arts writer Meredith Tromble and Chicana visual artist Amalia Mesa-Bains. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship awardee, Mesa-Bains talks about her motivations as an artist, and her particular [...]

This manifesto written by Chicano artist Malaquías Montoya and his wife, Lezlie Salkowitz-Montoya, derides the developing trend of Chicano artists moving away from a community focus to individual artistic pursuits. According to the Montoyas, the [...]

This document is a review by Alfred Frankenstein of The Fifth Sun: Contemporary/Traditional Chicano and Latino Art exhibition at the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum in 1977. Frankenstein begins by describing the show, detailing the [...]

In this manifesto, Sue Martinez, an artist from San Jose, California, exemplifies by means of the 1981 exhibition Califas: An Exhibition of Chicano Artists in California held at the University of California, Santa Cruz to present the argument that [...]

In this document, Professor Amelia Malagamba explores how Afro-Mexican icons and symbols, as well as sociopolitical issues in the African-American community, have been transformed into what she terms “cultural capital.” A “cultural capital”as [...]

This artist’s statement by Carmen Lomas Garza was included in the catalogue for the exhibition of her work, A Piece of My Heart/Pedacito de Mi Corazón, which traveled to various cities in the states of Texas, California, and Illinois, in 1991. In [...]

In this essay, Shifra M. Goldman discusses the Chicano poster movement by considering its historical background, followed by an examination of poster collectives and the work of individual Chicano poster artists, including Rupert Garcia, Malaquías [...]

In this essay, Tere Romo explores the syncretic nature of Chicano spirituality manifested in Chicano art and rooted in the initial encounter between indigenous American cultures and Europe, as well as in the Chicano movement of the 1960s and 1970s. [...]

“A True Barrio” by Edy (Eddie Ytuarte) is part essay, part interview. Edy introduces the essay with a brief review of the work by Harry Gamboa, Gronk, and Willie Herrón exhibited at Mechicano Art Gallery in East Los Angeles in 1972. The author [...]

This brief document by writer José Armas summarizes the ideas of a group of Chicano writers and artists from the states of Washington, California, Texas, and New Mexico who met in Lubbock, Texas, with the intention of forming an artistic and [...]

In this essay, written for the catalogue of the exhibition La Frontera/The Border: Art About the Mexico/United States Border Experience (1993), artist and professor David Avalos describes his experience working at San Diego’s Centro Cultural de la [...]

In this essay, art historian Margarita Nieto critiques the tendency to trace the genealogy of Chicano art to Mexican art. She locates the roots of the Chicano art movement and the art organizations that emerged within it to the countercultural [...]

This document, written by curator Rolando Castellón, introduces the exhibition, Aesthetics of Graffiti, held at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art between April and July 1978. The statement defines the scope of the show, suggesting that two [...]

In this essay, Ramón García explores the foundations and essential qualities of Chicano camp (rasquache) and its artistic and literary manifestations. García begins with a discussion of the walking murals of the Los Angeles conceptual art group, [...]

In this essay, Guisela Latorre examines the reinterpretation by Chicano/a artists of photographs of soldaderas (female soldiers who participated in the Mexican Revolution) by the Mexican photographer Agustín Víctor Casasola. According to Latorre, [...]

Iván de la Nuez’s entry for the exhibition catalog Cuba siglo XX: Modernidad y sincretismo [Twentieth-Century Cuba: Modernity and Syncretism] focuses on Cuban art made on the island as well as art made in exile from the onset of the 1959 Cuban [...]

This document is a chapter from a book on “Hispana” and “Hispano” artists from the New Deal Era (1930s and ‘40s). In it, art historian and scholar Tey Marianna Nunn focuses on the lives and works of several artists working under the Works [...]

In this document, Amalia Mesa-Bains writes about the women’s practice of altar-making, suggesting that while there has been a decline in the performance of and engagement with popular ritual in contemporary life, the creation of altars as both [...]

This document is a statement by Carlos Almaraz in which it is outlined his approach to his own artistic practice as well as his ambitions for the creation of a broader program of social engagement on the part of Chicano artists. The document [...]

Amalia Mesa-Bains’s essay proposes a historical lineage of heart imagery and the concept of “lo del corazón” [that which comes from the heart] that begins in the Mexico’s Aztec ritual of human sacrifice and culminates in public and popular [...]

In this essay, Alejandro Anreus outlines the cultural and historical conditions that have influenced what he terms the “iconography of Latin America.” He emphasizes the role of U.S. cultural imperialism and exploitation in the development of a [...]

In this interview with Jacinto Quirarte, César Martinez recounts his early years and education at Texas A&I in Kingsville. While studying as an artist, he was attracted to Abstract Expressionism and color field painting, although involvement [...]

This essay by Tomás Ybarra-Frausto is included in the 1981 catalogue of selected works from the Mexican Museum in San Francisco, California. Ybarra-Frausto presents a historiography documenting the trajectory of Mexican American artistic traditions [...]

In this short, early artist statement, Cuban-born artist Ana Mendieta explains that the first part of her life was spent in Cuba from where she believes her interest in primitive art and culture probably originated. As a child growing up in Cuba, she [...]

This document is a short interview with photographer Andrés Serrano, conducted by Enrique Chagoya. Along with recounting his personal background, Serrano discusses how he got interested in photography, which he said was the result of his failure as [...]

As the curator of Another Life Up Inside Her Head (1995), an exhibition of seventeen emerging Chicana/Latina artists, Amalia Mesa-Bains considers the precedents for their work, as well as the contemporary contexts in which it has been produced. She [...]

In this statement, artist Raphael Montañez Ortiz describes the process by which he created Archaeological Find, Number 9. Through a ritualistically-prescribed series of destruction sessions, Ortiz recounts how he ripped the sofa apart, thus “ [...]

This article by Ricardo Pau-Llosa focuses on the motif of the human body as the one theme that constantly recurs throughout the work of Cuban-American artists. He notes that this is unique given the distance that they live from one another. So that, [...]

In this article, San Antonio, Texas, artist César Augusto Martínez writes about Chicano art and the struggle for legitimacy and its acceptance, particularly within the academic community. Martínez argues that Chicano art resists clear stylistic [...]