Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

The art critic Justo Pastor Mellado examines the connections between politics and the visual arts in Chile from 1970 to 1983, from the election of Salvador Allende and the Unidad Popular (1970–73) to the tenth anniversary of the dictatorship [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado’s essay “Breve nota sobre pintura chilena: 1950–88,” introduced the traveling exhibition Cirugía Plástica [Plastic Surgery] to Berlin audiences. Mellado mentions certain specific features of [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado wrote this introduction to El deseo de Antígona (The Desire of Antigone), the exhibition of works by Patricia Israel. In a review of earlier projects and exhibitions, the critic explains how the artist researches and [...]

In 2003 Justo Pastor Mellado wrote an essay for the catalogue for La quinta del sordo, the exhibition of works by Guillermo Núñez. On this occasion Mellado looks back to the retrospective Núñez presented in 1993, for which [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado discusses Juan Downey’s work in the audiovisual series titled Transamérica and Ojo Pensante (Thinking Eye). He believes it is especially necessary to view the video Moving (1974) and draws attention to several shots [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado writes about Los nómadas del mar, the selection of photographs taken by Paz Errázuriz. The text is divided into four sections, beginning with comments on the artist’s work as a whole, which Pastor Mellado [...]

In this essay Justo Pastor Mellado discusses the autobiographical nature of Juan Downey’s work, referring to the links to that genre to be found in Chile and stating that this suggests the emergence of a lesser, secondary, and recently [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado writes about the life and work of José Balmes, taking as his starting point an exhibition of two of the painter’s works that Mellado defines as paradigmatic: No (1972) and El luche (1994), both of which are [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado discusses the Escena de Avanzada twenty years after Nelly Richard coined the term. Though it originally had militant undertones, the term evolved into a historical category. It applied to a set of texts and artworks that Richard [...]

The critic and curator Justo Pastor Mellado writes about Gonzalo Díaz’s participation in the exhibition Cuatro artistas chilenos en el CAYC de Buenos Aires: Díaz, Dittborn, Jaar, Leppe. Pastor Mellado discusses the role that D& [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado studied the work of Gracia Barrios in great detail. He suggests that her career could be divided into two phases that were not chronological but rather two different ways of approaching painting. He dubs one of them an optical- [...]

As part of his curatorial plan for the exhibition 1973–2000: Transferencia y densidad (1973–2000: Transfer and Density), Justo Pastor Mellado proposes that museums should reinstate works that, though ignored by the critical discourse of [...]

The theorist Justo Pastor Mellado outlines his curatorial approach for the exhibition 1973–2000: Transferencia y densidad. He begins by defining concepts such as “curator,” discussing the term’s evolution in Chile and its [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado discusses the unofficial shipment of Chilean art to the 12th Paris Biennial arranged by Nelly Richard, which he describes as a key moment in the birth of the Escena de Avanzada. Mellado also focuses on several landmark art events [...]

In 1983 Justo Pastor Mellado addressed some discussions that were begun a couple of years earlier in his essay about Tránsito suspendido, the exhibition of works by Carlos Altamirano. He described this text as a second part, focusing the [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado wrote three interventions for the Seminario de interpretación de la coyuntura plástica. This third “polemical” text ranges from what was taking place in the visual arts field in Chile to what was [...]

In this review of an exhibition of works by Juan Domingo Dávila, the curator and art critic Justo Pastor Mellado posits a connection between the artist’s work and three critical works (by Eugenio Dittborn, Carlos Altamirano, and Gonzalo [...]

In this essay, written for the solo show of works by Patricio de la O, the art critic and curator Justo Pastor Mellado discusses the catalogue, the gallery, and the relevant demands on both the painter and the painting itself. Pastor Mellado claims [...]

In this essay, Justo Pastor Mellado discusses the works by the painters Pablo Burchard, Gracia Barrios, and José Balmes at the exhibition curated by Francisco González. Pastor Mellado notes that González’s curatorial plan [...]

In discussing the work of Eduardo Vilches, the critic Justo Pastor Mellado refers to two stories, or legends. The first is about the prehistoric origins of painting found on cave walls at Lascaux. The second is about the Italian painter Giorgio [...]

In this essay Justo Pastor Mellado presents an extension of his theory concerning the vital contribution made by printing to the emergence of “modernity” in Chilean art. The text, arranged in 21 sections, describes the evolution of [...]

In this essay Justo Pastor Mellado discusses Quadrivium, the exhibition of works by Gonzalo Díaz, presenting a critical overview of the latter’s production since 1982. Mellado’s review could be split into two parts, each of which [...]

In this text Justo Pastor Mellado discusses the concept of “theoretical transference,” an idea that is mentioned in several of his publications. He uses two fictional models: one refers to the origin myth in Chilean painting, the other to [...]

In this article, Justo Pastor Mellado explores the immediate connections that Nicanor Parra created for objectual (object-based) drawing in his Trabajos Prácticos series on the occasion of his exhibition in Madrid. The author raises [...]

In this essay Justo Pastor Mellado discusses four works produced by Alicia Villarreal in 1996–97 that were shown at various exhibitions. He sees similarities in them, in both thematic and material terms, based on their focus on books and [...]

In this text written for an exhibition of works by Patricio de la O, the art critic and curator Justo Pastor Mellado reviews the artist’s painting from his student days until his return to Chile after living in exile from 1974 to 1978 during [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado reviews Paisaje (Landscape), the exhibition of works by Francisco Brugnoli and Virginia Errázuriz, within the context of the contemporary approach in Chilean painting. According to the curator and art critic, the [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado explains the reasons that motivated the Chilean submission to the X Mostra da Gravura, which was a desire to articulate a new artistic cartography. The hypothesis he lays out in this text points to formal movements in the field [...]

In this article, the critic and curator Justo Pastor Mellado reviews SEMI YA [a phonetic pun on the Spanish word for ‘seed’], the exhibition of works by the Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuña at the Galería Gabriela Mistral in [...]

In this essay, Justo Pastor Mellado reviews Tránsito suspendido, an art action presented by Carlos Altamirano. The work consists of a number of moments that are referred to in a newspaper story that the author uses to explain the steps [...]

The curator and critic Justo Pastor Mellado wrote this essay to be included in the catalogue for Se me nubla la cabeza. Te quiero y no puedo amarte más, the exhibition of paintings by Samy Benmayor at the Galería Sur (Santiago, 1984). [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado discusses the evolution of Chilean painting, from its roots to the 1980s. He divides his essay into six sections that explore the field’s history, from José Gil de Castro to the early twentieth century, remembering [...]