Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this text, Sergio Benvenuto, director of Artes journal, describes and analyzes the visual arts in Uruguay and its connections to the rest of Latin America; he points out cultural differences from Anglo-Saxon America. Benvenuto asserts that [...]

This article was published in El País, a newspaper run by sectors of the Partido Nacional, one of Uruguay’s two traditional political parties. It reports on the occupation of the Subte exhibition space in Montevideo by a group of visual artists [...]

In this leaflet Nelbia Romero expresses her goal of recognizing the identity and ethnicity of the indigenous race that once lived on the land that is now Uruguay. That race was, in fact, exterminated during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. [...]

Vicente Basso Maglio sees “creative freedom” as a constant that lies outside historical time. In his view, it is intrinsically human—a pure concept not bound to questions of style in art, which are to his thinking, vulgar, ornamental, and [...]

This text was written in 1950 by Guillermo de Torre, a year after the death of Joaquín Torres García. In it, he made a brief assessment of the artistic master relating to modern art from his beginnings as a muralist in Barcelona, while [...]

Other than the intimate details of the communication between Siqueiros and Brum, this letter provides extremely interesting insights into Siqueiros’s public relations in Buenos Aires, as well as his opinions and intentions concerning the local [...]

As the director of the Círculo de Bellas Artes School in Montevideo, painter Carlos María Herrera wrote this letter to Martín Lasala, the president of that institution’s board, with a number of proposals, chief among them was the elimination of [...]

In this letter to the writer José Enrique Rodó, Joaquín Torres García discusses the affinity they share for the Greco-Latin tradition, and expresses his wish to be in touch with contemporary Uruguayan art because, though living in Spain at the [...]

This letter from Joaquín Torres García to his Uruguayan compatriot, the renowned writer José Enrique Rodó, suggests that both men agreed on the need to encourage the emerging art in their country by exposing young Uruguayan artists to what was [...]

In this letter, Joaquín Torres-García declares his intention to promote contemporary Uruguayan art to European audiences. The objective is to create a program designed to provide scholarships or grants from the Uruguayan government for [...]

In this letter Guillot Muñoz, the distinguished writer and journalist, tells his friend Pedro Figari about the critiques that his paintings were receiving in Montevideo at that time, and about the unconditional support for Figari there was among a [...]

In this letter, David Alfaro Siqueiros tells Blanca Luz Brum that the Troubadour—the ship on which he sailed from Buenos Aires in December 1933—had arrived in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. Siqueiros talks about the book he wrote on the trip [...]

This letter from the Asociación Estímulo de Bellas Artes (AEBA) in Argentina to the Federación de Estudiantes Plásticos del Uruguay (FEPU) invited the Uruguayan students to attend the opening of the exhibition Arte argentino del pasado y del [...]

In this letter to critic Fernando García Esteban, José Cúneo celebrates the recent publication of the critic’s Panorama de la plástica contemporánea uruguaya (Montevideo: Editorial Alfa, 1965). Cúneo then explains his ideas about color in the [...]

This essay is on the letter from Antonio Berni (Buenos Aires) to Leonilda González (president of the Club de Grabado de Montevideo [Engravers Club of Montevideo], CGM) on occasion of the twenty-year anniversary of the CGM and on having requested [...]

In this letter to Uruguayan artist Leonilda González—secretary general of the Club de Grabado de Montevideo (CGM)—multifaceted Puerto Rican creator Antonio Martorell conveys his interest in organizing a group show of the CGM in San Juan. He [...]

This document is a letter from Leonilda González, former secretary general of the Club de Grabado de Montevideo (CGM), to Óscar Ferrando, who took charge of the institution when González left the country in exile. The letter is a confidential [...]

After Oscar Ferrando, the secretary of the Club de Grabado de Montevideo (CGM), visited the Escola de Artes Visuais do Rio de Janeiro, Rubens Gerchman, the director of that school in Rio, expressed his interest in organizing a number of exchanges [...]

This is the Brazilian art critic and curator Walter Zanini’s official invitation to Clemente Padín, asking him to take part in the XVI Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, in 1981. The document created a “diplomatic” incident that was solved [...]

While stating his unflinching loyalty to the communist cause, David Alfaro Siqueiros also provides some important autobiographical information in this letter to the Uruguayan Communist Party Central Committee. He talks about being under house arrest [...]

In 1930, Wladimir Raykis (director of Galerie Zak in Paris) sent this letter inviting Uruguayan artists José Cúneo and Bernabé Michelena to exhibit at his exhibition venue which promoted Latin American art between the wars. The dialogue and [...]

This document is a letter sent by two Uruguayan intellectuals to David Alfaro Siqueiros, who had been held at Lecumberri jail in Mexico City since 1960; the letter was sent through the artist’s wife, Angélica Arenal. It was a message of solidarity [...]

The magazine Los Huevos del Plata founded in Montevideo by Clemente Padín, published the manifesto of the Brazilian group Maldoror that politically identified itself with revolutionary and antimilitaristic principles that were plainly active during [...]

This is an example of the Mail Art correspondence delivered by Octaedro, a group that emerged in late 1978 in Montevideo. In this case,  Juan Carlos Iglesias, one of the members of the Uruguayan group, is the author. It consists  [...]

In 1965, the original manifesto of the magazine Los Huevos del Plata was an avant-garde platform advocating against Uruguayan cultural dominance by the so-called Generación del ’45, a group of writers who exerted and promoted their strong [...]

This document is a confidential report, perhaps to be sent to the KGB, on the three Uruguayan artists selected to participate in the 1961 São Paulo Biennial. The text addresses other aspects of the art scene in Uruguay as well, among them the group [...]

This printed, folded sheet of paper provides a chronological history of the CGM (Club de Grabado de Montevideo) that spans its first thirteen years of operation, from 1953 to 1966. It includes a report on the Club’s sources of inspiration in the [...]

There are basically three sections in the catalogue for the Primer Salón Independiente de Artes Plásticas: (1) Statement of principles; (2) List of participating artists; and (3) The text of the tribute to the painter Milo Beretta, mentor to young [...]

This article published in El Mate journal in 1967 supports the stance embraced by a group of artists in Uruguay who, thirty years earlier, had decided not to submit work to the Primer Salón Nacional de Artes Plásticas during the dictatorship of [...]

This special edition of the magazine AIAPE (Agrupación de Intelectuales, Artistas, Periodistas y Escritores) was devoted entirely to the first Salón Municipal de Artes Plásticas (Montevideo, 1940). The sole article in the magazine was written by [...]

This document contains information on an exhibition of the Federación de Estudiantes Plásticos del Uruguay (FEPU) held in 1942. A pro-Soviet text is transcribed and a list of participants in the show appears, among them eminent local artists. The [...]

Los Otros was a group active in Uruguay from 1979 to 1982, at the end of the military dictatorship (1973–84). It formulated innovative and ephemeral projects for alternative spaces. This text, written by the group, levels harsh and ironic criticism [...]

In his 500ª Conferencia (the five hundredth lecture given in the six years since he returned to Montevideo in 1934), Joaquín Torres García (JTG) presents what he calls “a new theory.” This is his final attempt to adapt his universalist model [...]

This essay is on the work of Victor Varsarely that in 1958 was exhibited for the first time in Montevideo, giving rise to glowing journalistic commentaries. A commentary was also written on the TTG (Taller Torres García [Torres Garcia Workshop]) [...]

After spending four years in prison in Mexico for an obscure “crime of social dissolution,” Siqueiros was released in July 1964. He then wrote this letter to all the friends in various parts of the world who had demanded his freedom. In [...]

This article analyzes the varied impact generated by the happenings in Europe and the United States and the repercussions on those taking place in Latin America, highlighting the ethical and political particularities of the latter. In this case, it [...]

This essay, is on the art critic Fernando García Esteban and on his noted intellectual presence in Montevideo during the fifties and the sixties. The art critic echoes the difficulties encountered when critiquing local art and the differences in [...]

This is an interview by the art critic Rosa Queralt with Yamandú Canosa in regard to his 2003 exhibition held in Spain, named La línea h (iceberg), at the Art Center of Salamanca. It was published in the catalogue Premio Pedro Figari (2007–08 [...]

This article by Sarandy Cabrera, which appeared in Removedor, the journal published by the TTG (Taller Torres-García), is an example of the magazine’s colloquial—and aggressive, “from the trenches”—discourse. This [...]

This interview with Uruguayan artist Jorge Damiani addresses the Primer Encuentro de Artistas Plásticos del Cono Sur held in Santiago, Chile. As the Uruguayan delegate, Damiani took part in debates on art in Latin America, specifically in relation [...]

In this text, Alicia Haber analyzes how a large and complex installation by Nelbia Romero shows the toponymic-linguistic legacy of Guarani culture in a country as European as Uruguay. From the mid-eighties to the mid-nineties, there was a social [...]

This is the public statement made by Uruguayan artists who rejected the invitation to submit their works to the Primer Salón Nacional de Bellas Artes and called for an exhibition that had nothing to do with the government. Their main argument was [...]

This article announces the founding of the Bolivian AIAPE (Agrupación de Intelectuales, Artistas, Periodistas y Escritores) a few years after the founding of homonymous associations in Argentina and Uruguay. The Bolivian group basically embraced the [...]

Pablo Mañé Garzón discusses some of the thoughts expressed by Umbro Apollonio, the director of the Biennale di Venezia’s Historic Archive of Contemporary Art. The Uruguayan critic refers specifically to the concept of “freedom” that [...]

This essay is on an interview [conducted] by Gabriel Peluffo with the sculptor Germán Cabrera, the artist and performer Teresa Vila, and the painter and engraver Anhelo Hernández. He questions them on the role of the visual arts within the social [...]

In this brief essay Joaquín Torres-García outlines the goals he developed at the AAC (Asociación de Arte Constructivo) and explained in the association’s magazine. He describes the difficulties he had in trying to make [...]

In 1943, an exhibition of one hundred and seven Argentinean artists, consisting of late 19th- century and early 20th-century painters and sculptors, was held in Montevideo under the auspices of the National Commission of Fine Arts of Montevideo and [...]

From a Uruguayan perspective, visual artist and performer Clemente Padín discusses the importance of Mail Art in Latin America, as well as the problems it faces. In this article, he explains the origins of Mail Art as a movement for international [...]

In this essay, critic and performer Silvio de Gracia explains the importance of and provides context for “action art” in Latin America. He demonstrates its specificity in the region, showing how it differs from similar tendencies in Europe and [...]

In this essay, the artist and performer Clemente Padín explains the concept of “street art and urban art” following the alternative art exhibition, Tomarte, held in the city of Rosario, Argentina, in April 1990, with the pretense of injecting [...]