Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this article the head of the AIAPE, Juvenal Ortiz Saralegui, condemns the incompetence of the jurors who were appointed by the Ministerio de Instrucción Pública y Previsión Social to grant “artistic salaries.” In 1935 the jury that had been [...]

This article by Fernando García Esteban appeared in the weekly journal Marcha and is part of a controversy with the writer Juan Carlos Somma. All in all, the critic’s rant revealed behavior and decisions, both governmental and private, when he was [...]

Rafael Squirru introduces María Elena Sieburger’s exhibition of paintings (Galería Lirolay, Buenos Aires, August 21–September 2, 1961), noting that?following a period during which she hewed closely to Joaquín Torres García’s legacy?she is [...]

Following harsh criticism of positivism (and eclecticism) of the intellectual environment of Montevideo, Joaquín Torres García presented his ideas about metaphysics, ethics, and religiosity in art. This text makes several important points about the [...]

Víctor Bacchetta was part of the board of directors of the magazine CLINAMEN up through its third publication along with Manuel Claps, Ángel Rama and Ida Vitale. The second issue of the magazine published a brief notification on the appearance of [...]

This is an editorial note appearing in the magazine NÚMERO written in 1949 on occasion of the death of Joaquín Torres García that same year and in commemoration of the bicentennial of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s death. The note stressed the [...]

Carmelo de Arzadun stresses the importance of creating intellectual groups in Montevideo, explaining that their conversations about their various aesthetic preferences would enrich the debate in local art circles. On the whole, the article does not [...]

In this article, which appeared in the final number of the magazine Círculo y Cuadrado (December 1943), J. Luis San Vicente discusses the spirit of cooperation among members of the TTG (Taller Torres-García). The writer also provides a [...]

Sarandy Cabrera, the author of this article, seeks to make an apologetic review on the life and work of Joaquín Torres García on occasion of his recent death on August 8, 1949. Cabrera (who was a member of the Torres García Workshop) highlighted, [...]

This article by Héctor Ragni—one of Joaquín Torres García’s “devout” disciples—reveals the author’s profound understanding of the maestro’s doctrinaire corpus of constructive universalism [...]

José Cúneo’s text entitled “Arte Abstracto” was read at a lecture that he gave in Montevideo. Although the exact date when it was written is unknown, the lecture appears to have been given in 1956 or 1957 at the Escuela de Bellas Artes in [...]

In this text, Damián Bayón introduces a collection of essays on Latin American art with a broad overview of what he argues are the most critical issues when considering the historical and contemporary art of the region as a whole. He begins by [...]

This document is a transcription of a lesson that Joaquín Torres García (JTG) gave in January 1935, nine months after his return to Uruguay. It may have been given at Estudio 1035 or at the Escuela Taller de Artes Plásticas (ETAP). JTG attempts to [...]

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 [...]

This essay by Frederico [de] Morais accepts as a given that the stigma of Latin American marginalization is due to its absence from the field of universal art or to its exclusion from metropolitan history and criticism of art. At the same time, some [...]

“Reflexiones” is just that, a collection of thoughts related to the essence of the constructivist doctrine and the concrete strategies to be adopted in an environment that was not particularly receptive to the doctrine. The intent is to [...]

In this article, the Venezuelan painter, draftsman, and graphic designer Víctor Hugo Irazábal shares some of the notes he made during his travels to the state of Amazonas in Venezuela in 1995. The artist discusses his reflections on the exploration [...]

The art critic Fernando García Esteban points to a local artistic reality that is in grave crisis, as it is out of touch with the concerns inherent to contemporary European artists, in his opinion. This a characteristic was considered to be “ [...]

The article by the art critic and columnist of the weekly journal Marcha, Fernando García Esteban, was written in immediate response to the published complaint made by Juan Carlos Somma regarding the imminent restoration and transfer of the murals [...]

The exhibition “Salón de Bellas Artes de ayuda a los niños de España republicana” was the first political event of this kind organized in support of the children in the Second Spanish Republic (1931–39). It consisted of an exhibition and a [...]

La Escuela del Sur magazine was published by the TTG (Taller Torres García). The first issue appeared in 1958, five years after Removedor—the Taller’s previous journal—ceased publication. The article “Salutación a Torres García,” written [...]

This article includes the text of a section that appeared before the introduction in Joaquín Torres García’s book, Universalismo Constructivo (published in Buenos Aires in 1944). Here the maestro refers to “the modernity” of current art, an [...]

In the article, Tomás Maldonado discusses the concepts brought forth by Joaquín Torres-García and his followers against the Inventionist group postulates, published in issue number 2 of the Removedor [Thinner] journal. It refers to the following [...]

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, [...]

Luis Camnitzer discusses Joaquín Torres García’s exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and assesses reactions to his work among North American audiences and intellectuals. The Uruguayan artist and critic, who lives in New [...]

In the Montevidean press, the controversy between the writer Juan Carlos Somma and the art critic Fernando García Esteban developed and was published in installments. It revolved around the governmental and private decisions that were made in [...]

In the Montevideo-based weekly Marcha, writer Juan Carlos Somma condemns a series of confused decisions the Uruguayan government made about the preservation and restoration of murals by Joaquín Torres García and members of his workshop at the [...]

In this article, Guido Castillo portrays Joaquín Torres-García as one of the most representative artists in the field of modern art. According to Castillo, Torres-García’s excessive aestheticism makes him an “out of the ordinary” man in [...]

This document is a transcription of one of the last lectures Joaquín Torres García gave at the Escuela Taller de Artes Plásticas (ETAP) in Montevideo. In it, he paves the way for cutting short the series of lectures he had been giving at that [...]

The article “Universalidad del Constructivismo” is essentially a monologue about a painting by Joaquín Torres García. The author of the article, Francisco Lanza Muñoz, muses on the subject of abstraction and its metaphysical underpinnings, [...]

In his series of four articles, José Cúneo challenges Joaquín Torres García for having submitted to the VIII Salón Nacional de Bellas Artes—where he won the Grand Prize—a painting that, in the author’s view, has nothing to do with his [...]

By means of an overview of modern art and its development, Joaquín Torres García lays out his Constructivist theory as the culmination (or convergence) of various strains of Western art. In his view, the moral value of the artist’s position lies [...]

The article was motivated by the book published by Michel Seuphor, a year before in 1949, in Paris, the spirit that integrated magazine Cercle et carré two decades prior. The book aimed to formulate a brief history on European abstract art. The [...]

This essay praises the uniform quality of the work presented during the eighth Salón Nacional de Bellas Artes of 1944 in Uruguay. It also analyzes the grand prize awarded in that annual exhibition to Joaquín Torres García for painting, as well as [...]