Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this commentary by Jorge Luis Borges on the book of poems by Manuel Maples Arce, Andamios interiors [Interior Scaffolding], published in the latter half of 1922, the Argentine writer contrasts his urban vision of poor neighborhoods against the [...]

Jorge Luis Borges points out the cultural distance that separates the Americas from Madrid, which then makes evident the impossibility of Guillermo de Torre’s proposal. Borges states: “Madrid does not understand us”; he enumerates a list of [...]

In this prologue, Jorge Luis Borges defends his position that Pedro Figari’s work belongs to the lyrical genre in the way it paints Argentinean remembrance and memory: both the Criollo man and his world yielding before the “new man,” in whose [...]

In this text, Jorge Luis Borges writes about the dichotomy created between what later became the two most important literary tendencies in the 1920s Buenos Aires: “el grupo de Boedo” [The Boedo District Group] and “el grupo de Florida” [The [...]

This article describes, by and large, the character embedded in the literary works of Spaniard writer Ramón Gómez de la Serna, and then finally pauses to briefly describe the book La Sagrada Cripta de Pombo [The Sacred Crypt at Pombo] (1924). “ [...]

This text extols the Ultraist aesthetic above that of the current literature; represented by the Rubenists on one side, who “only occupy themselves by organizing and reorganizing ornamental junk […] that they inherited from Góngora,” and “ [...]

Jorge Luis Borges declared that the “newest aesthetic,” Ultraism, is the poetic alternative to “the prevailing Rubenism and Anecdotalism.” He remarked that one of the harbingers of these previous movements’ terminal state is that their own [...]

This text refers to the second issue of Prisma: revista mural; underscoring the bold and at times inscrutable quality that characterized the first number of the magazine—which did not exclude the unusual way in which it was published. In this sense [...]

Text by Jorge Luis Borges written as a tribute of the well-known Spanish writer Ramón Gómez de la Serna upon his imminent arrival to Buenos Aires. In a literary prose, Borges mentions a number of writers, including himself, that consider the [...]

In this document, a prologue of his book of poems, Fervor of Buenos Aires (1923), Jorge Luis Borges explains certain aspects of the works: due to the book’s title, the possible misinterpretation regarding the verse development; the theme which is [...]

Jorge Luis Borges answer to an opinion poll conducted by the Nosotros [We] journal of writers younger than thirty and trying to determine the existence and qualities of Argentina’s “new literary generation.” The poll consisted of seven [...]

Jorge Luis Borges’s response to the survey sponsored by the magazine Contra [Against]: “Should art serve social problems?” Borges asserts that art should not serve political causes. He then continues with his humorous response, distinguishing [...]