Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In the prologue to the catalogue of the 1935 exhibition of contemporary Mexican art, Mexican artist Jorge Juan Crespo de la Serna provides a brief overview of Mexican art from the time of the Mayans until the present. He asserts that Mexican art, [...]

The way Crespo de la Serna sees Leonora Carrington is that, in spite of being English-born, her artistic temperament is not of a kind to be circumscribed or limited by a specific geographic environment. Hence, “the world in which she breathes has [...]

Critic Jorge Juan Crespo de la Serna reviews the content of the newly opened Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. After several visits to take in the breadth of the collection, he concludes that the Mexican painting section [...]

In this article, the critic Jorge Juan Crespo de la Serna discusses the Asociación Internacional de Críticos de Arte (AICA) [International Association of Art Critics], that was founded in Paris in 1949. Prompted by his recent meeting in Mexico with [...]

In this article, art critic Jorge Juan Crespo de la Serna wrote about mural painting and its importance in the evolution of Mexican art. He believed the murals should be intimately connected to the life of the country that produces them given their [...]

This short article documents the anticipated consequences of a new tax system implemented by the Ministry of Finance, which required artists to pay taxes for the first time. As a special concession, artists could make the payments with a donation of [...]

This article includes a collection of remarks made by a number of Spanish and Mexican critics on the occasion of the exhibition of works by the caricaturist Eduardo Robles “Ras” at the Ateneo Español de México. The critic Margarita Nelken, who [...]

Art critic Jorge Juan Crespo de la Serna believed that it was unfair to lodge harsh criticism against an international art competition like the first Bienal Interamericana de Pintura y Grabado [Inter-American Biennial of Painting and Printmaking], [...]

A number of art critics were surprised by the small exhibition of works by Remedios Varo at the Galería Diana in 1956. This was the first time that many of them heard that the Spanish émigré was a painter. Crespo de la Serna was surprised to find [...]

The art critic Jorge Juan Crespo de la Serna was very disappointed that Rufino Tamayo had not participated in the Bienal Interamericana de Pintura y Grabado [Inter-American Biennial of Painting and Printmaking], and felt it was a capricious decision [...]

Fernando Gamboa, assistant director of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, was in charge of organizing the Mexican pavilion for the Venice Biennial. Working with the Biennial director (the well-known composer Carlos Chávez), Gamboa carried out [...]

This monograph about the artistic production by Ramón Alva de la Canal makes a general evaluation of his paintings. It starts with his didactic activities in cultural missions, his relationship with the Estridentista group, and above all his [...]

After seeing Celia Calderón’s exhibition in a Galería de Ventas Libres [at 154, calle de Puebla, [Mexico City] the art critic Jorge J. Crespo de la Serna reviews her work. The critic shares the opinion of Miguel Salas Anzures that, in spite of [...]