Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This text was the introduction to the Iª Bienal do Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, written by the art director for the exhibition, Lourival Gomes Machado. The text explains the form in which this exhibition was proposed by the organizers, who [...]

Lourival Gomes Machado criticizes the fact that the São Paulo Biennial has been declared a success on the basis of numbers: number of people who attended, number of works exhibited, amount spent on materials, etc. The critic, who was the artistic [...]

This is a letter from Lourival Gomes Machado, director of the I Bienal do Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, to Yolanda Penteado, one of the organizers of the event. Gomes Machado is writing to update Penteado on negotiations with representatives [...]

On the basis of a text by Robert Fontené, Lourival Gomes Machado formulates a criticism of theorists of abstraction, specifically of Fontené himself and of Belgian curator Léon Degand. Gomes Machado sees both those critics as advocates of a [...]

In this article, Lourival Gomes Machado discusses the major contribution that Concrete artists have made to the São Paulo art scene. In his view, their stimulating presence provoked a wide range of reactions years after the first exhibition of the [...]

In this article, the art critic Lourival Gomes Machado elaborates on the work by Francisco Rebolo and Clóvis Graciano. It is significant, in his opinion, that both artists would start their artistic careers ten years after the Semana de 1922,thus [...]

In this text written in the late fifties, art critic Lourival Gomes Machado offers a critical overview of the state of Brazilian art while attempting to avoid the polemics that riddled the art milieu of the era, as he himself asserts. His assessment [...]

This text by art critic, professor, and journalist Lourival Gomes Machado takes stock of Brazilian art criticism after the II Congresso de Críticos held in 1961.  Gomes Machado was the coordinator of the section of that event dedicated to the [...]

Here, art critic Lourival Gomes Machado discusses Brazilian painting from the point of view of a critical debate that he sees making the rounds in Brazil. A number of art critics judge Brazilian painting based on their belief in the opposition [...]

Lourival Gomes Machado evaluates the works exhibited at the V Bienal de São Paulo, where he was once again the artistic director. He identifies a radical shift in the approach of both the Brazilian and the international works; whereas they had [...]

In this newspaper article, Lourival Gomes Machado observes that art criticism in Brazil has finally started considering Concrete art as an important form of expression in Brazilian art. In his opinion, the idea of “rupture” with the art world— [...]

This critique is on the book Evolução Social da Pintura (1942), written by Luiz Martins,a book written on the conferences he held at the Biblioteca Municipal de São Paulo. Lourival Gomes Machado states that the author, Luiz Martins, understands [...]

In this book the critic Lourival Gomes Machado discusses the origins and consequences in Brazil of the modernist movement, basing his arguments on the famous Semana de Arte Moderna of 1922 and the works of modernist artists. His goal is to ascertain [...]

This is the third chapter of the book by Lourival Gomes Machado that analyzes the development of modern art in Brazil, in which the author includes a reference to the contribution made to contemporary painting by the “spontaneous” artists (whose [...]

In September 1944 the Livraria Brasiliense in São Paulo held an exhibition of works by Francisco Rebolo. The art critic Lourival Gomes Machado, in his review, said that the work of artists identified as “people from a good Family”—a reference [...]