Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

 Damián Bayón reviews an article by J. M. Richards that appeared in the magazine Architectural Review in March 1950 that questioned some aspects of modern architecture. Bayón analyzes its development within the discipline and believes it is the [...]

In this article, Damián Bayón analyzes the work of Argentine painter Ramón Gómez Cornet. He states that coming to a just “judgment” of the work will be difficult because he is one of “those [artists] who goes directly to the sensibility of [...]

Damián Bayón begins with a brief characterization of the conflicting personalities of Van Gogh and Gauguin, and then characterizes their respective pictorial qualities—drawing, composition, color, impasto, and light—always examining them from a [...]

In this article, Damián Bayón addresses some of Auguste Rodin’s ideas on creation and art. Bayón describes certain aspects of the French sculptor’s working method and personality, while also analyzing some specific works. Before doing so, the [...]

This article by Damián Bayón presents and analyzes the book by Wilhelm Wörringer, Form in Gothic [Formprobleme der Gotik, 1912]. He states that it is a “masterpiece,” but this does not prevent Bayón from pointing out certain discrepancies [...]

In this article, Damián Bayón deals with the pictorial production of Jorge Larco. He analyzes his use of materials (oil as well as watercolor), motifs and color, among other elements. Bayón concludes that he is “a great painter” for he [...]

This article deals with the work of the different Spanish artists that Damián Bayón had the opportunity to analyze during his stay in Barcelona, where he was reporting for Ver y estimar. He covered the sets and costumes that Salvador Dalí designed [...]

In this article Damián Bayón interviews art historian Pierre Francastel (1900–1970) regarding the problem of abstract art, based upon what Bayón read in [Francastel’s] books. Before beginning [the interview], he states that the questions he [...]

This article is an interview that Damián Bayón conducted with Henry Russell-Hitchcock on the subject of modern Latin American architecture. Bayón praises Russell-Hitchcock, the scholar and curator, as “one of the great world authorities on [...]

In this article Damián Bayón conducts interviews with two Italian artists: the first with Massimo Campigli and the second with Léon Gischia. Bayón formulates his questions to both interviewees around the problem of explaining the “success” of [...]

In this article Damián Bayón comments on an exhibition of work drawn from museums in Berlin, which was held at the Petit Palais in Paris. Based on his observations of the European public, Bayón states that the way “to recognize the superior [...]

In this article, Damián Bayón focuses on a description of the formal characteristics of the work each of the fourteen Czechoslovakian painters who exhibited at the Asociación Estímulo de Bellas Artes (Buenos Aires). He maintains that despite [...]

In this article, Damián Bayón analyzes the work of Carlos Torrallardona. To do so, he focuses on the composition, iconography, lines and use of color among other elements, including the adequate (or inadequate) visual tension he observes within [...]

In this article, Damián Bayón describes and analyzes the painting of Juan Batlle Planas, an Argentine painter influenced by surrealism. Bayón believes him to be one of the “most gifted surrealists, replete with great pictorial knowledge and a [...]

In this article Damián Bayón critiques the book Espacio, tiempo y arquitectura [Space, Time and Architecture] by S. Giedion. He focuses on the research methodology of the author, whose objective it was to prove, according to Bayón, “the [...]

In this article Damián Bayón questions the general state of the art world and the place occupied by Latin American artists within it. He defines the preeminent art trends of the time and then analyzes the way in which Latin American [...]

Damián Bayón analyzes some of the reports by critics, both French and North American, on the Latin American exhibition that was held in Paris from August to September 1962 at the Musée de la Ville. In these reports he finds lines of reasoning that [...]

In this text, which is the foreword to the catalogue for the exhibition 22 Contemporary Argentine Painters, Damián Bayón establishes the exclusive relationship with Europe of the visual art culture in Argentina, since there was “no relationship [...]

In this text, Uruguayan artist Luis Camnitzer recounts the experience of The New York Graphic Workshop. In addition to describing the early days of the group, he explains its three principal aims: 1) to redefine printmaking on the level of theory and [...]

Miguel Angel Rozzisi writes about Antonio Berni’s art as though it has overcome the decadence of the system. He maintains the existence of class warfare between the official culture and that of the people, with Berni as the representative for the [...]

Eduardo Zaldívar writes about the Antonio Berni exhibition at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, where the artist presented his series of prints on Ramona Montiel [...]

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 [...]

This document is an interview with Antonio Berni in which he describes the relationship between the landscapes he painted in the 1950s and the collages of his Juanito Laguna and Ramona Montiel series. He also comments on some aspects of his engraving [...]

Santiago A. Ferrari writes about meeting Antonio Berni in New York; he discusses the artist’s everyday life and the changes in his political views concerning Marxism [...]

In this essay, Hernández Rosselot claims that reality competes with art in Antonio Berni’s work. He writes about the materials Berni uses and reviews the collages in the Juanito Laguna and Ramona Montiel series. Rosselot goes on to compare Berni [...]

Antonio Berni states his position on hyperrealism; he mentions the work of his surrealist stage in order relate the mechanisms of creation for photomontage and the collages from his Juanito Laguna series [...]

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 article, dated October 14, 1981, describes the death and burial of Antonio Berni, the artist, and mentions the official visitors at his funeral service [...]

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 [...]

This article summarizes the protest initiated against the authorities by the students at the Escuela de Bellas Artes Prilidiano Pueyrredón [Prilidiano Pueyrredón National School of Fine Arts] in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It argues that the [...]

This article reviews the state of art education in the wake of the Argentine student protests in 1955 that demanded changes in the syllabus that were finally implemented in 1958. It also reports that the teacher commissions that were supposed to have [...]

Statement by a group of professors of their concern about the events that took place at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Prilidiano Pueyrredón [Prilidiano Pueyrredón National School of Fine Arts] [ENBAPP] and the Escuela Nacional de Bellas [...]

This article reports on the liberation of the students at both Escuelas Nacionales de Bellas Artes [National Fine Arts Schools], the Prilidiano Pueyrredón and the Manuel Belgrano (Buenos Aires, Argentina). It points out that the judge ordered that [...]

The article reports on the public demonstration of the families and close friends of the students at the Escuelas Nacionales de Artes [Fine Arts Schools]—both the Prilidiano Pueyrredón and the Manuel Belgrano (Buenos Aires, Argentina)—who at [...]

This text reports that the students at the Bellas Artes schools, both the Prilidiano Pueyrredón and the Manuel Belgrano (Buenos Aires, Argentina), were detained and accused of usurpation; they had been meeting to guarantee the continuance of the [...]

This article reports on the judicial proceedings against the detained students, all of whom were affiliated with both Escuelas Nacionales de Bellas Artes [National Fine Arts Schools], the Prilidiano Pueyrredón and the Manuel Belgrano (Buenos Aires, [...]

The article reports on the continuing detention of the students from both the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Prilidiano Pueyrredón and the Manuel Belgrano (Buenos Aires, Argentina); they had been arrested while attending an assembly within the [...]

The article reports the arrest of 139 students from the two arts education centers, the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Prilidiano Pueyrredón [Prilidiano Pueyrredón National School of Fine Arts] and its counterpart, Manuel Belgrano, both in Buenos [...]

This article reports on the peaceful occupation by student groups of the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Prilidiano Pueyrredón and its counterpart, Manuel Belgrano, both in Buenos Aires, Argentina. At the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Manuel [...]

French art critic Miguel Ragon writes about Antonio Berni’s engraving technique, as well as the question of narrative in his work with regard to the development of his chief characters: Juanito Laguna and Ramona Montiel [...]

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 [...]

Originally published in Romanian, this unsigned text describes the career of Antonio Berni, who is presented as an intellectual and artist deeply committed to the social situation of the Argentine people. This essay was written on the occasion of the [...]

Braulio Solsona writes about the success Antonio Berni achieved with his exhibition in Paris (Galerie R. Creuze, 1955), while also affirming the importance of representing local problems; he also comments on the introduction by Louis Aragon [...]

Rubén Vela writes about the relationship of Argentine artists to international art. He believes that Argentine artists are working on a purely aesthetic plane of creation. He studies the Juanito Laguna series in Antonio Berni’s work, previously [...]

Gérald Gassiot-Talabot writes about discovering Antonio Berni’s work at the Venice Biennial, and describes the Ramona Montiel series. He speaks poetically about the artist’s Monsters, discussing the allegorical aspect of Berni’s production, [...]

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 [...]

Horacio Safons reports on Antonio Berni’s exhibition at the Centro de Artes Visuales (Buenos Aires, 1965) at the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, principally analyzing his Ramona Montiel series from a formal perspective and with regard to the nature of [...]