Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this article, the writer Luis Cardoza y Aragón reviews the Tratado de Estética [Aesthetics Treatise] by Luis Vidales Jaramillo, a few months after it was published. The Guatemalan author contextualizes Vidales Jaramillo’s work, describing its [...]

In this text, Luis Cardoza y Aragón presents the early work (1920–27) of painter Carlos Mérida as the paradigm of a new kind of modern American art. He begins the text by characterizing Mayan culture as sensual (colorful and physically effecting [...]

This essay praises the work of José Clemente Orozco and considers him one of the greatest painters in the world. Luis Cardoza y Aragón analyzes Orozco’s article step by step in a rather poetic manner. He mentions the great complexity of his work [...]

According to Luis Cardoza y Aragón, poetry enjoyed greater development in Mexico than the visual arts because the former was situated on the margins of the national-pictorial movement. The proof of this can be found in the confluence of the Mexican [...]

The fourteen tenets upheld by Luis Cardoza y Aragón—those that were to be debated among the members of the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR) [League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists]—proposed an art movement free of [...]

This article praises the artistic qualities of the work of Agustín Lazo, who participated in the international surrealist exhibition a few months later. Cardoza mentions the visual interpretation of the work of Giorgio de Chirico, as well as the use [...]

The Guatemalan writer established in Mexico, Luis Cardoza y Aragón, focuses Emilio Amero’s work from a lyrical perspective. In fact, Amero weaves the “snapshot of the word” (poetry), with the photogram (a short space of light and emotion). To [...]

Supported by a quote from André Breton —who himself quoted Karl Marx—, Luis Cardoza y Aragón again refutes the exploitation of art by revolutionaries. The tenets that composed the introductory document of the Congreso de Escritores [Writers’ [...]

In the 1990s, the magazine Memoria reported on a controversy that led to the great 1936 exhibition organized by the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR) [League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists]. The article explains that the [...]

“I believe that the LEAR is on the completely wrong path . . . , it is the only organization in Mexico that is against art.” With these terms, the writer Luis Cardoza y Aragón stated his disagreement with the selection of works presented by the [...]

In this article, Cardoza y Aragón discusses Federico Cantú’s painting, referring particularly to its “fuerza lírica” [lyrical power.] According to the critic, Cantú was a good representative of a new generation of modern Mexican artists. [...]

Both Jorge Juan Crespo de la Serna and Luis Cardoza y Aragón agreed that the deliberations of the International Jury’s Panel (which had established the parameters for awarding the prizes) for the Bienal Interamericana de Pintura y Grabado [Inter- [...]

The short article written by the Guatemalan writer extols the artwork of Emilio Amero, who had lived in the United States in the 1920s, enjoying a certain success in the U.S. market. The writer praises the characteristics of the artist’s work— [...]

In this article, Luis Cardoza y Aragón reviews the events of 1957, and laments the deaths of Diego Rivera and Miguel Covarrubias. He lists the various exhibitions taking place in Mexico City, including different murals, such as the Fanny Ravel in [...]

Cardoza y Aragón writes about a supposed commission for a mural painting dedicated to José Clemente Orozco, meant for the recently considered monument to the revolution “little known to the majority of the inhabitants.” He describes the work, [...]

In 1936 Luis Cardoza y Aragón—the writer who was involved with the surrealist avant-garde while he was in Paris, and later lived in Mexico—heard from the poet André Breton, who asked him for an introduction to the art of Mexico, where he was [...]

In his article on the young painter Jesús Guerrero Galván, whose 1939 work amounted to a reinterpretation of European classicism, critic Luis Cardoza y Aragón placed more weight and validity on the formal and visual components of the work of the [...]

Cardoza y Aragón believes Mexican painting had reached a unique and magnificent era and in his judgment, some of the works by Frida Kahlo were “some of the best” that had been produced in the last fifteen years. He describes her work as “ [...]

In this article, Luis Cardoza y Aragón identifies the cinematographer Agustín Jiménez as one of the best photographers in Mexico, placing him in the company of Manuel Álvarez Bravo and Emilio Amero. The critic explains the differences between the [...]

This is a marvelously eloquent essay about photography by the learned Guatemalan writer, Luis Cardoza y Aragón, on the occasion of the exhibition organized by Enrique Fernández Ledesma and Manuel Álvarez Bravo at the Sala de Arte in 1933. The [...]

Together with an article published by David Alfaro Siqueiros in México en el arte [Mexico in Art], the current document is part of a conversation between the artist and the Guatemalan critic Luis Cardoza y Aragón, concerning the current state of [...]