Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

While the first issue of Actual contained a directory of avant-garde artists, this third issue held an index of avant-garde books and magazines. Listings include: La vie des lettres, a French magazine begun in 1913 and headed by Nicolas Beauduin; an [...]

Irradiador magazine—subtitled, “Avant-garde magazine: an international project devoted to the new aesthetic, directed by Manuel Maples Arce & Fermín Revueltas”—was published in Mexico City in 1923. El restorán [The Restaurant], a [...]

In the same year that the Estridentista manifesto was written, Manuel Maples Arce recounts the progress of both the literary and artistic avant-gardes in Mexico observing that indeed: “the few intellectuals who joined the revolution were corrupt [...]

To the Estridentista poet Manuel Maples Arce, the generation of young painters represents the most serious effort in the history of Mexican painting. He considers this group strong and homogeneous in its aesthetic principles and bound by spiritual [...]

The poem Revolución [Revolution] by Manuel Maples Arce describes the negative aspects of war and his fascination with machines such as trains and airplanes. He tells how the wind of the iron-man dictator shudders and in the afternoons, there are [...]

This is the poster-manifesto that gave rise to the Estridentista movement in Mexico. Manuel Maples Arce, a poet born in Xalapa (Veracruz), launched his avant-garde publication Actual as a provocation directed against the acclaimed literary figures of [...]

Manuel Maples Arce traces an overview of the sculptor Germán Cueto’s avant-garde œuvre, in Mexico as well as in Spain, followed by Cueto’s collaboration with the estridentista movement, his later stay in Paris and his return to Mexico. He [...]

In this text, the poet Manuel Maples Arce connects the use of the “sidero-cemento” [iron and steel cement] to geometric purity, monumentality, and the workers’ progress. He writes about the construction system of primitive peoples and [...]

Metropolis —a translation written by John Dos Passos of Urbe—Bolshevik Super Poem in Five Cantos is a collection of poems dedicated to the workers of Mexico, in which Manuel Maples Arce shapes his conception of a city, at the same time [...]

This is the second manifesto made public by a new estridentista front located in the city of Puebla. This manifesto makes fun of the local literary glories, but especially of the patriotic values with such deep roots in that city, such as the hero of [...]

This is a book of poems which attempts a synthesis of the avant-garde, the city, and the workers’ revolution. The idea that prompted Manuel Maples Arce’s composition of the poems in Urbe was to “provide an aesthetic intention to the Revolution [...]

This is the manifesto poster that gave rise to the Estridentista movement in Mexico. The poet Manuel Maples Arce issued the leaflet Actual as an aggressive vexation against the consecrated personalities of the literary milieu; said proclamation was [...]