Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This excerpt from the landmark text, Antiestética, was penned by Argentine artist and author Luis Felipe Noé. This work famously problematized the polarizing relationship between nationalist and avant-garde art movements in Latin [...]

In the following passages, Luis Felipe Noé reflects on the function and methods of art in the contemporary atomized society. He asserts that transformations of art imply a constant revolution. Today’s artists must examine and expose the [...]

In this text, Luis Felipe Noé explains his theory that the shared impulse that defines Latin American painting is its preoccupation with “inventing history.” He argues that this impulse is a direct result of Latin American artists’ experience [...]

In these two essays by Argentine artist Luis Felipe Noé and Mexican writer Juan García Ponce respectively, the authors discuss the originality of the prints by Colombian artist Omar Rayo. Noé first states that in his prints, Rayo attempts to [...]

Luis Felipe Noé’s response to the summons to express against the 1971 São Paulo Biennial. Noé responds by his drawing a painting hanging on the wall that has his signature. The image’s area is occupied by a text in which he states that Latin [...]

Luis Felipe Noé writes that the work of the Spanish artist Antonio Clavé tends to expand, leaving the frame in order to develop its vitality, thus making the history of art present. In Noé’s opinion, Clavé’s work is dominated by the concept [...]

Luis Felipe Noé, the artist and art critic, portrays León Ferrari as someone who questions reality, particularly the justice as well as aesthetics and existence itself. He places Ferrari in the hierarchy of generations, pointing out that the artist [...]

Luis Felipe Noé considers the critic’s function to be the comprehension of the “artistic will” of an artwork, without positing a value judgment. The aforementioned act of understanding requires something of intuition. Noé offers an example, [...]

TheBuenos Aires magazine Hoy en la cultura [Today’s Culture] proposes an interview with three basic questions: Mexican Muralism and its continuity, the validity of pre-Columbian culture and folklore for artists, and the local features of [...]

In Noé’s opinion, the image of man has changed. It operates in existential relationship to his fellow men as well as to all things; this is the fundamental nexus for his group Otra Figuración [Another Figuration] given that things exist in a [...]

In his text, Luis Felipe Noé launches the following questions: Does a Latin American art exist? Should it exist? Taking into account what assumptions? What is the artist’s responsibility? Should an artist leave or remain in his country? In his [...]

Luis Felipe Noé writes an assessment of the artistic scene in New York in 1966. The city is the commercial center of the art world, although he judges it to be not the international center, but the national center of the world’s most important [...]

Luis Felipe Noé states that the work of Fernando Maza is connected to the rise of a vital artistic trens, and that it implies a maturing of expression in the visual arts of Argentina. In his opinion, Maza[both connects himself to and differentiates [...]

Luis Felipe Noé wrote on the difficulty of an artist understanding the work of another painter, which, in his opinion, required a relinquishing act. Noé’s interpretation of the works of Jorge López Anaya, seen within an Informalist trend context [...]

In this text Luis Felipe Noé refers to the political climate; he states: “it is painting that left me.” Noé discusses the development of his work as well as his relationship with the market in order to question whether painting is still [...]

Luis Felipe Noé begins with the notion that the artistic milieu in which he operates is still in formation, just as the artists of the Grupo Buenos Aires come together through their relation with the societal background. In his judgment, art is just [...]

Luis Felipe Noé writes a letter directed to the viewer containing ironic commentary on exhibition catalogs. He supports art as a permanent adventure in revelation and man as the instrument of new quests. Noé proposes “chaos”as the only truth of [...]

Noé’s essay begins with two terms, “technology” and “rebellion,” which involve the challenge that confronts contemporary society. The first term did not then pertain to art; the second did, having been considered such since the rebellion [...]

With regard to theory, Luis Felipe Noé summarizes the artist’s path in the term “chaos.” In his judgment there is no order in Latin America—not only in contrast to the United States, but also owing to his not yet having formulated his own [...]

Oscar Masotta wrote to Luis Felipe Noé a letter of apology for his mala fe [bad faith] and pedantería [piece of pretentiousness], and made a promise to respond, by carefully reflecting on the letter sent by Noé at the end of 1967 from New York, [...]

This document is a letter discussing the book Happenings, written by Oscar Masotta in 1967: his need to break with painting, that is not concerned with the specifics of a work, but with coming to an understanding with the natural environment through [...]

Luis Felipe Noé defines his personal relationship with the canvas as a human relationship; his painting is simultaneously figurative and abstract. Its abstraction is found in its] method in bringing the paint taut, thus a pictorial event is [...]

Luis Felipe Noé delves into the work of Carlos Torrallardona as a search for geometry within reality. Also, Noé reviewed the exhibition by five artists at the Galería Peuser to establish the nexus between surrealism and abstraction, particularly [...]

Luis Felipe Noé comments on various shows in Buenos Aires, from which he highlights the work of Leónidas Gambartes, while also classifying the themes of his work: the earth and its mysteries; the image of woman as closer to both the earth and its [...]

Luis Felipe Noé considers Raúl Soldi a master who uses sensitive language as a veil over a distant world, a world that is not easily approached. Noé proposes a reading of Soldi’s career in three phases, all geared toward work that is essentially [...]

Luis Felipe Noé briefly critiques various exhibitions. Noé states that the pastel artist Mario Darío Grande borders on abstraction as he merges figure with nature; additionally that the engravings of sculptor Alfredo Bigatti place the figure in [...]

Luis Felipe Noé analyzes the work Novoa exhibited at Van Riel, beginning with its form, as planes contained within lines. He later asserts Novoa’s work is determined by two worlds: the natural world and the world of the gesticulating human being. [...]

Noé presents the work of three artists exhibited at Galería Bonino, while at the same time discussing abstraction theoretically: its limits and relation to the problem of figuration as well to concrete art. Noé points to the work of Jorge de la [...]

Commenting on the work of Argentine painter Juan Batlle Planas exhibited at Galatea, Noé praises the artist’s capacity for self-renewal after having completed a cycle of rigorous work in the realm of symbology. Noé also comments on the work of [...]

Luis Felipe Noé reports on an exhibition by three Italian artists at Galería Bonino. While noting Bruno Cassinari’s work, he finds the lithographs to have been influenced by Pablo Picasso; in his judgment, Cassinari’s work is static, albeit [...]

Luis Felipe Noé highlights the work of architect Clorindo Testa: his conception of movement in space as well as his existential affirmation.  On the other hand, he points out Gertrudis Chale’s preoccupation with the existence of man in the Andean [...]

Luis Felipe Noé  analyzes the formal characteristics of the work of three Brazilian artists exhibited at Galería Pizarro in Buenos Aires.  He comments on the latest exhibitions, from which the northern landscapes of Horacio March and the work of [...]

Luis Felipe Noé makes a distinction between abstract and concrete art. He defines Abstraction as an expressive process that intellectually separates the elements of reality to reach its essence. Concrete art, on the other hand, fixes abstract [...]

This document is a formal commentary in Plástica [Visual Arts] regarding the Joaquín Ezequiel Linares exhibition. Upon analyzing the suburban landscapes of Antonio Berni, Noé states that expressionist realism is the best outlet to social realism. [...]

Luis Felipe Noé reviews several exhibitions in which precise and formal analyses of diverse languages (from painting, to drawing to sculpture and engraving) are carried out. Highlighted here is the one written on the Spanish painter Joan Navarro-Ram [...]

Luis Felipe Noé studies the Premio Palanza [Palanza Prize] submissions, opting for the work by Santiago Cogorno, given its existential abstraction. Standing out among his assessments are: the depletion of Luis Seoane’s painting in poster-making, [...]

Luis Felipe Noé states that the modest work of Primaldo Mónaco is the proper preservation of childlike grace. In another part of his article, he comments on the work of Chilean sculptor Lorenzo Domínguez who exhibited his illustrations of Don [...]

Luis Felipe Noé defines the landscapes that Horacio Butler exhibited at Galería Bonino as a rare example of artistic gravity and balance in Argentine painting. Butler's work resolves the problems of figuration in the visual arts through the initial [...]

Luis Felipe Noé states that the work of Luis Seoane is the search for the natural aspect of what is substantial. The drawings of Ramón Gómez Cornet, on the other hand, are paintings without color. Noé also critiques various exhibitions, providing [...]

Luis Felipe Noé comments on the exhibition by Orlando Pierri at the Galería Pizarro. In Noé’s opinion, all that remains of Surrealism is the concept of dissociation of the light now representing not what is beneath reality but what is above it. [...]

Luis Felipe Noé writes that a show of drawings by Swiss children at the Pestalozzi Museum in Zurich presents the dilemma between reality and spontaneity at work within chlldren’s drawings; he also maintains that the evolution of adult art can be [...]

Luis Felipe Noé writes that the non-figurative work of Juan Del Prete is sustained by his inquiry into the autonomy of medium, form and color, remaining beyond the limitations of concrete and abstract art. In another section of the text, Noé [...]

Luis Felipe Noé analizes the work of Argentinian set designer Gastón Breyer as the manifestation of the contemporary visual arts experience. Regarding the work of Kantor, Noé affirms that it possesses classical rigor and freedom of line, similar [...]