Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this essay—a historical reflection on the Cuban landscape over the centuries—Cuban critic and historian Adelaida de Juan asserts that, starting in the second half of the nineteenth century, Cuban painters began to envision the natural [...]

Argentine critic Marta Traba considers Puerto Rican artist Julio Rosado del Valle a key figure in Puerto Rican art because he was among those who paved the way for innovative approaches and experimentation in painting. She asserts that in the work of [...]

In this lecture, Puerto Rican artist Lorenzo Homar asserts that the ideological content of art is determined by its stance on society since “art for art’s sake” is devoid of ideological content. For Homar, “socialist art” is a question of [...]

Puerto Rican writer Felix Joaquín Rivera interviews the artists Teo Freytes and Yrsa Dávila, who are both members of M.S.A. (Manifestación Sintetista Actualizada) [Manifestation of Synthetism Today], a nonprofit organization that provides space [...]

On the occasion of the exhibition La casa de todos nosotros: Antonio Martorell y sus amigos [A House for Us All: Antonio Martorell and Friends] held at El Museo del Barrio in 1992, Puerto Rican curator Susana Torruella Leval analyzes Antonio [...]

Puerto Rican journalist and professor Félix Jiménez comments on the “spatial” concept of the MSA (Manifestación Sintetista Actualizada) group and the freedom that it provides artists who participate in exhibitions that are not inhibited by any [...]

In this essay, Samuel Cherson, a Cuban critic living in exile in Puerto Rico, discusses the abstract work produced by the Puerto Rican painter, Wilfred Chiesa. Cherson begins with a brief description of the abstract movement and its major exponents. [...]

In this set of four brief poems, Ralph de Romero, a Puerto Rican artist born in New York, expresses his thoughts about painting and art. Some of the themes he addresses in his poems are related to defining art and its elements, and he also reveals [...]

In these two brief articles, Ralph de Romero, a Puerto Rican artist born in New York, states that he feels no responsibility for art history. In other words, it is the artist’s privilege to call anything he creates whatever he wants to call it. De [...]

Lorenzo Homar begins these brief notes on Puerto Rican art and artists by discussing painter Francisco Oller. He goes on to state that art should be at the service of society and that artists should not be concerned with imitating avant-gardes who [...]

Chilean artist Mario Toral speaks of his experiences when he arrived in New York as an exile in 1973, immediately after the coup d'état led by General Augusto Pinochet. He compares the squandering of North Americans, who throw everything away, with [...]

This text consists of comments by Puerto Rican artist Elizam Escobar, regarding the various concepts and functions of art. In the quotations alongside or below the illustrations of his paintings, Escobar talks about what it means to be Puerto Rican. [...]

This timeline tracks the life of Puerto Rican artist Rafael Tufiño, who lived in New York and in Mexico City. Puerto Rican intellectuals Manuel Cárdenas Ruiz and Eugenio Fernández Méndez review the graphic work produced by Tufiño between the [...]

This is a quote from Ralph de Romero, a Puerto Rican artist born in New York, which is accompanied by a pen and ink drawing: “Depression limitates [sic] the creative activity, deteriorates the involvement and mutilates the concept.” Written in [...]

In this short essay, the Puerto Rican attorney, Eladio Rodríguez Otero, comments on the work of Domingo García shown at a 1966 solo exhibition. The writer states that García’s work includes techniques that lead critics to characterize his [...]

In the introduction to the exhibition Solidaridad held at the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogota, Colombia, in 1976, Argentine critic Marta Traba—who lived in Puerto Rico for many years—explains that the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende was [...]

This caricature by Puerto Rican artist Lorenzo Homar depicts United States President Lyndon Baines Johnson climbing a staircase, enveloped in flames, which represent the Vietnam War. Johnson is dressed like a cowboy with boots, cowboy hat, belt, and [...]

In the introduction that Rolando López Dirube wrote for the exhibition catalog Dirube, La Romana, the artist—a Cuban exiled in Puerto Rico—mentions that the works in the show were produced between 1973 and 1975 in a studio on La Romana beach in [...]

This is the introduction to the first portfolio, published to commemorate the first anniversary of the Centro de Arte Puertorriqueño [Puerto Rican Art Center] (CAP) that was established in 1950 in San Juan. The essay describes the goals and [...]

This promotional pamphlet was produced by the MSA (Manifestación Sintetista Actualizada) group to announce the event “Poema del pueblo” held on the occasion of May Day or International Workers’ Day. The event took place at [...]

In this short poem, Ralph de Romero, a Puerto Rican artist born in New York, explains why he has always been an artist, never paying any attention to other people’s opinion [of him]. In the poem, de Romero explains that his dedication is documented [...]

[This document provides] confidential information written by José Meléndez, a police sergeant with the Puerto Rican Intelligence Office, naming those who had attended a meeting chaired by Juan Mari Bras, the president of the Movimiento Pro [...]

[This document is] a confidential report, written by detective Enrique Torres for the Puerto Rican Intelligence Office, about an event at the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña [Puerto Rican Cultural Institute] (ICP) on January 29, 1972. The [...]

In this text written on the occasion of the exhibition L’Avant-Garde held at the Galería Colibrí (1965), Puerto Rican critic Ernesto Ruiz de la Mata discusses what he considers an interesting show of avant-garde prints by artists from different [...]

Lorenzo Homar believes that the jury of the Ateneo Puertorriqueño’s art competition—Ketty Rodríguez Benítez, Harold Lasky, and Osiris Delgado—acted irresponsibly in rejecting four of the eight prints presented. One of the rejected works was [...]

In this short poem, Ralph de Romero, a Puerto Rican artist born in New York, criticizes a Christian prayer by repeating “blah, blah, blah, blah . . . ” to show his lack of interest in either prayers or the Ten Commandments. Romero concludes his [...]

In this letter, Uruguayan artist and academic Luis Camnitzer tells printmaker Lorenzo Homar that he and the other artists at his New York Graphic Workshop had managed to get the Center for Inter-American Relations to suspend a New York exhibition of [...]

In this long letter to his Colombian colleague Pedro Alcántara, Puerto Rican artist Lorenzo Homar discusses a number of topics including the technical procedure by which to create a coat with a patina that looks like bronze on a sculpture made from [...]

In this brief letter to Pedro Alcántara, Puerto Rican printmaker Lorenzo Homar expresses his view of art biennials. He states that many of them “act as lackeys to the North American market.” Homar believes that the jury should not be indifferent [...]

In this letter, Nitza Tufiño, the Mexican born Puerto Rican artist, and daughter of the printmaker Rafael Tufiño, tells Lorenzo Homar that the capitalist system gives artists exhibitions, biennials, and museum shows in exchange for their silence. [...]

This is the fourth account sent by Puerto Rican artist Lorenzo Homar during his year-long sabbatical in Europe. In it, he tells Ricardo Alegría, director of the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña (ICP), about the tapestries he saw at the Musée [...]

Mexican artist Alberto Beltrán requests authorization from Lorenzo Homar to send his series of Puerto Rican prints to an exhibition in the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). He mentions that the president of the Taller de Gráfica Popular ( [...]

Lorenzo Homar believes that the jury of the Ateneo Puertorriqueño’s art competition—Ketty Rodríguez Benítez, Harold Lasky, and Osiris Delgado—acted irresponsibly in rejecting four of the eight prints presented. One of the rejected works was [...]

This is an essay written by José R. Echevarría about Surrealism and the creative life. He believes that all creative acts are a protest against a “given” reality. He adds that dreams, delirium, fantasy, and memory are all means of accessing [...]

Mexican artist Alberto Beltrán informs Puerto Rican artist Lorenzo Homar that a number of people have shown interest in exhibiting works by Puerto Rican artists outside of Mexico. He also mentions an exhibition of Soviet art that has had a major [...]

The Puerto Rican artist, Félix Rodríguez Báez, wrote a letter to all the members of the Galería Campeche [Campeche Gallery] in which he asked them to read and comment on the rules. He also sent them two invitations in which he established the [...]

Oscar Colón Delgado, a Puerto Rican painter, sends Puerto Rican printmaker Lorenzo Homar a copy of the letter he wrote to the publisher of the 1961 Almanaque Mundial de Selecciones [Selecciones World Almanac] to thank him for including his name in [...]

Mexican artist Alberto Beltrán thanks Puerto Rican printmaker Lorenzo Homar for sending him the publication Cine y Cultura [Film and Culture]. Beltrán remarks on the method used to illustrate the publication, El corno emplumado [The Plumed Horn], [...]

In this letter to Puerto Rican artist Lorenzo Homar, Mexican artist Alberto Beltrán comments on the new issue of the publication, El coyote emplumado[The Plumed Coyote], which will cover topics relating to the campaign being waged by right-wing [...]

Mexican artist Alberto Beltrán (Mexico City, b. 1923) informs Puerto Rican printmaker Lorenzo Homar that he is retiring from journalism, and his editorial responsibilities at the supplement to El Día newspaper, El Gallo Ilustrado, in order to spend [...]

In this letter, José Antonio Torres Martinó tells Lorenzo Homar that the Mexican artist Alberto Beltrán greatly enjoyed the book that Homar had sent him, and would like to publish it in El Gallo Ilustrado, the supplement put out by El Día (a left [...]

The Puerto Rican artist and critic José A. Torres Martinó writes to Lorenzo Homar to tell him that he will try to raise the necessary fundsto meet him in Europe. Torres Martinó then continues bringing Homar up to date on what their colleagues [...]

The president of the Puerto Rican company United Promoters and Advertisers, Juan Luis Márquez, sends Lorenzo Homar the article he wrote for El Mundo newspaper, “Entre Mayas y Cundeamores” [Between Mayas and Bitter Melons], in which Márquez [...]

The Puerto Rican artist and critic José A. Torres Martinó writes to Lorenzo Homar to describe the technique that was used to remove the tiles of the mural installed in the pool area of El Escambrón (the project was undertaken in 1966), and how [...]

This is the third report that Puerto Rican artist Lorenzo Homar sent to Ricardo Alegría, executive director of the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña (ICP), while he was on sabbatical in Europe. Homar provides an overview of everything he has seen [...]

In this letter that artist Lorenzo Homar wrote to Ricardo Alegría, director of the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña (ICP), while he was in France, Homar states that there has been a problem with the glue used to stick the tiles on the mural of [...]

The Puerto Rican artist and critic José A. Torres Martinó writes to Lorenzo Homar to tell him that he will soon be reinstalling the mural tiles that were originally installed in 1966 in the recreation area at El Escambrón. Torres Martinó refers [...]

Lorenzo Homar, who was on a yearlong European sabbatical, writes to the Puerto Rican artist and critic, José Antonio Torres Martinó, with a summary of recent events. Homar explains that the glue used for the murals at the Olympic Pool at El Escambr [...]

The Mexican printmaker, Alberto Beltrán, thanks Lorenzo Homar for the invitation to the Bienal de San Juan del Grabado Latinoamericano [San Juan Biennial of Latin American Graphic Art]. However, given the late date on which the news reached him, he [...]

Mexican printmaker Alberto Beltrán writes to his Puerto Rican colleague Lorenzo Homar about the controversy stirred up by Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes and his group, following the announcement in the press that he [Fuentes], José Luis Cuevas, [...]