Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

The author of this document claims that Colombian painting has no past. According to the Argentine critic Marta Traba, the visual arts produced in Colombia from the late nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century are of no interest [...]

Renowned Latin American art historian, Marta Traba, establishes a theoretical link between cultural-economic dependency and the art of developing countries in these two milestone texts, “La resistencia” and “La cultura de la Resistencia.” [...]

Based on “the tradition of the national”—described as the assemblage of historical reflections regarding said subject on Latin American culture—the Argentina-born but Colombia-based critic, Marta Traba, performed a review of the documentary [...]

Critic Marta Traba’s premise in this essay is that the process by which art emerges has been a constant in the history of Colombia’s national culture. Traba uses the word “emerging” in reference to artistic expressions that transcend local [...]

In this article, the Argentine critic Marta Traba (based in Puerto Rico at the time) declared herself an “admiradora” [admirer] of the Mexican artist, José Luis Cuevas. In her opinion, he was the best draftsman on the continent and one of the [...]

This is Marta Traba’s critical review of América Latina, Antiguas culturas precolombinas [Latin America: Ancient Pre-Columbian Cultures] (Mexico City, Vol. 21 of the Historia Universal del siglo XX published by Editorial Siglo XXI) the book [...]

This text by Marta Traba—a well known Argentine critic who lived in Venezuela at the time—introduces the exhibition Los novísimos colombianos held at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Caracas in 1977. Traba analyzes the overall development of [...]

This document is excerpted from the catalogue for Los que son [Those Who Are], the exhibition organized by Marta Traba at the Galería Marta Traba in Bogotá (May 3–16, 1968). The catalogue includes ten brief critical and biographical reviews of [...]

This essay by Argentine critic Marta Traba discusses Salmos[Psalms], the folderof verses by Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal with woodcuts by Puerto Rican artist Antonio Martorell. Traba praises this work, which she believes voices protest in a [...]

Marta Traba, the Argentine critic who lived in Puerto Rico for some time, claims that there is a form of Puerto Rican art that can be understood and recognized elsewhere. As examples, she mentions portraits by the Puerto Rican painter Francisco Rodó [...]

Argentine critic Marta Traba, who lived in Puerto Rico in the early 1970s, comments on the figurative paintings and landscapes by Puerto Rican artist Myrna Báez. Traba asserts that Báez has become a significant artist due to “the variety and [...]

In this article, Marta Traba maintains that an artist should use a repertoire of forms from nature, without trying to copy its objective appearance. The elements taken from reality should be used as aesthetic tools that offer an artist a chance to [...]

The text “Negret” by the Argentine art critic based in Colombia, Marta Traba, consists of an analysis of the entire body of work of the sculptor Édgar Negret up to 1964. This is probably one of the first articles on the artist to present all his [...]

In this article, written after the final debate at the Ateneo in Caracas, Marta Traba reviews the controversy that was unleashed by her ideas in 1965. She comes to the conclusion that there was no controversy, just an ongoing rebelliousness, as shown [...]

In early 1965, Marta Traba placed the exhibition by Norman Mejía, a Colombian artist, in the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá, as one that would serve to represent “a questioning of values and of the real position of the neo-figurative art trend [...]

This document is the catalogue in brochure form accompanying an exhibition of work by Pablo Solano (1928?2013), entitled Óleos y Dibujos [Oil Paintings and Drawings], that opened at the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá (MAM) on June 8, 1965. The [...]

In this article, Marta Traba provides a critical analysis of the different stages of Luis Caballero’s career from the time he was awarded first prize at the Primera Bienal de Coltejer (held in Medellín in 1968) until 1980. Traba begins by [...]

The Museo de Arte Moderno [Museum of Modern Art] of Bogotá (MAM) printed this catalog to introduce the exhibition, Pantoja de Bolivia [Pantoja from Bolivia] (1964). The document provides a biography of Óscar Pantoja in which he is shown to be a [...]

In this text written on the occasion of the Primer Salón de Pintoras Colombianas o Residentes en Colombia [First Salon of Colombian or Residents of Colombia Women Painters] (held at the Compañía Colombiana de Seguros in September 1957), Marta [...]

In this article Marta Traba takes the thoughts expressed by her opponents in their ongoing debate—in particular those by J. R. Guillent Pérez—and distills them down to what she considers to be the focal point of the controversy, which is her [...]

This fully illustrated catalogue to the Primer Salón Intercol de Artistas Jóvenes [First Intercol Salon of Young Artists] (1964) is divided into five parts: the cover, featuring a photograph of the exhibition that took place at the first seat of [...]

In this article, Argentine art critic Marta Traba presents the outcome of the Primer Salón Intercol de Artistas Jóvenes [First Intercol Salon of Young Artists] (1964), which she describes as a way to come into contact with emerging trends in [...]

Marta Traba begins the fourth chapter of her book Historia abierta del arte colombiano [Open History of Colombian Art] (1970) with a quote from the Colombian art historian Eugenio Barney Cabrera, from which she extrapolates the three points around [...]

In her essay, Marta Traba launches an argument in five parts against nationalism in recent Latin American painting. In the first part, she identifies nationalism as the main problem with regard to contemporary painting. Although it poses as a path to [...]

The article “Propuesta para una doble lectura” is a statement of principle as well as a thesis that Marta Traba formulated on the occasion of an exhibition of Modern Colombian art in Paris. In this text, Traba provides a periodization of [...]

In this article, which appeared in El Espectador (Bogotá), Marta Traba defends the portrait of Simón Bolívar (“El Libertador”) made by Beatriz González from the attacks of conservative members of the Academia [...]

In this text, Marta Traba rejects the notion that Latin American art exists as a distinct form of expression. She begins her essay by explaining that the global culture generated by the industrialized nations move within certain established [...]

In this text art critic Marta Traba analyzes the production of Colombian sculptor Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar up to 1963. Written for the catalogue of the exhibition Seis artistas contemporáneos colombianos, organized by Traba and Hernán Díaz [...]

In this text, critic Marta Traba reviews the exhibition entitled Pintura y Grabado Hoy en Venezuela [Painting and Printmaking in Venezuela Today] held at the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango in Bogotá in 1968. She questions the representativeness of [...]

In this 1968 article, Marta Traba discusses the conservative, violent reaction to the exhibition Espacios Ambientales [Environmental Spaces] at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Bogotá. Traba defends the exhibition and supports the experimental approach [...]

In her essay “Reverón descansa en Juanita,” Marta Traba explores Armando Reverón’s tendency to choose women as the subject matter of his paintings. Traba pays particular attention to how Reverón uses his wife, Juanita, to express memories of [...]

In this essay, Marta Traba, an Argentine critic living in Puerto Rico, mentions that Puerto Rican painter Francisco Rodón won an award at the 1972 edition of the Bienal de Medellín thanks to the criticism of the Latin Americans participating in [...]

Art critic Marta Traba assesses the work on exhibition at the Salón de Arte Moderno [Salon of Modern Art] that took place at the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango of the Banco de la República de Colombia. Traba claims that this event was the best [...]

In this text, Marta Traba discusses painter José Campos Biscardi’s solo show Campos (Galería Living Art, Caracas, 1973) as well as his participation in different art salons in Venezuela in 1972 and 1973, asserting that his work has grown more [...]

This text entitled “Ars política” by critic Marta Traba discusses Lo que comen los que comen (Caracas, 1973), a show of works in clay by artist Tecla Tofano. Traba analyzes the formal changes that Tofano’s work underwent in the sixties. She [...]

This document is an excerpt from the first chapter of Curso de historia del arte [Art History Course] (broadcast by Radiotelevisora Nacional de Colombia [Colombian National Radio Television], 1957–58), the television series that was directed and [...]

The Argentine critic Marta Traba wrote a weekly column for the Bogotá newspaper El Tiempo in which she discussed the theories of the Uruguayan maestro Joaquín Torres García. On the occasion of the arrival in Bogotá of the latter’s student, [...]

In this article, the well-known art historian, Marta Traba, summarizes the content of the three lectures she gave at the Museo de Bellas Artes [Museum of Fine Arts] in Caracas in 1965. The purpose of the lectures, Traba explains, was to provide the [...]

The catalogue for the exhibition Tumbas (1963) by Juan Antonio Roda consists of a two-page leaflet; on the first page, which is fully illustrated, is the exhibition title and artist’s name. On the next page, there are four paragraphs written by the [...]

For Marta Traba, the Fernando de Szyszlo exhibition in Bogotá (Colombia) evidences that “the mistake does not lie in wanting to be American, but in how one is American.” In her opinion, the series of works by the Peruvian painter inspired by the [...]

In this article, the theoretician Marta Traba critiques the 1978 Salón Nacional de Artistas. The Salón has been an annual fixture since 1940, and is considered the most important event on the Colombian visual arts calendar. In her article, Traba [...]

As the editorial to the first issue of the magazine Prisma, this text by Marta Traba introduces the magazine of art criticism, which was committed to publishing research and “objective” studies of local and international art. The members of the [...]

The Argentine critic Marta Traba reviews the 1979 retrospective exhibition of the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. She discusses one of the great themes of his work: death—real, experienced death. The [...]

In this article, Marta Traba maintains that the German artists Guillermo Wiedemann and Leopoldo Richter achieved an understanding of, and transmitted the essence and spirit of “the black race and the Indian race, and the ambience characteristic of [...]

In this article, Marta Traba once again addresses the harsh and unsympathetic attitude of the Latin American public toward modern art. She explains that a lack of knowledge and a disinclination to learn, coupled with a presumption of connoisseurship [...]