Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This tenth anniversary article, written by Nuyorican poet Americo Casiano, recounts the origins of Taller Boricua [Puerto Rican Workshop] as a visual arts organization born from the need to decentralize the dissemination of art from major New York [...]

This introductory statement, written by Kem Poston, and an interview with New York-born artist of Puerto Rican descent, James De La Vega, is from 1998 on the occasion of his first exhibition at the Caribbean Cultural Center. Poston explains how De La [...]

This annotated chronology written by Puerto Rican-born artist Diogenes Ballester, documents the history of Taller Boricua [Puerto Rican Workshop]—the oldest extant Puerto Rican artist collective in New York—from its founding in 1969 to 1989. For [...]

In this typewritten open letter, the artist collective Taller Boricua [Puerto Rican Workshop], criticizes El Museo del Barrio for excluding the work of several New York-based Puerto Rican artists from an unnamed exhibition of Puerto Rican art jointly [...]

In this short essay, Marcos Dimas discusses his participation in a 1969 group show of Puerto Rican artists at the Brooklyn Museum, where he displayed two paintings, and his first assemblage. He notes that he met the future cofounders of the Puerto [...]

Art historian and curator, Julia P. Herzberg, converses with Juan Sánchez on his evolution as a printmaker. Sánchez stated that he became interested in printmaking during college after visiting the Puerto Rican artist collective, Taller Boricua, [...]

Marcos Dimas discusses his participation in a 1969 group show of Puerto Rican artists at the Brooklyn Museum where he displayed two paintings, and his first assemblage. Dimas notes that he met the future cofounders of the Puerto Rican artist [...]

Curator Isabel Nazario compares the emergence of independent Puerto Rican printmaking collectives in New York during the 1970s to the government sponsored graphic art workshops that were instituted in Puerto Rico in the 1950s. She notes that Puerto [...]

In this essay, American curator Lynn Gumpert compares the socio-aesthetic programs adopted by Taller Boricua [Puerto Rican Workshop] and Fashion Moda, two art collectives based in Latino neighborhoods in New York City that were invited to present [...]

In this essay, artist Fernando Salicrup recalls his first years at Taller Boricua [Puerto Rican Workshop]. Salicrup notes that he was introduced to the collective by the artist Jorge Soto, and during the 1970s, he was also influenced by poets such as [...]

In this essay, Rafael Montañez Ortiz, a United States-born artist of Puerto Rican descent, argues that Eurocentrism, patriarchy, and racism have deprecated the art and culture of peoples from the Americas, Asia, and Africa. He notes that the legacy [...]

In this essay, Puerto Rican-born artist, Diogenes Ballester, gives a brief overview of Puerto Rican art and artists working in El Barrio (East Harlem, New York City) from the 1940s to 2000 and categorizes the art produced into three themes: 1) [...]

Marcos Dimas, an artist and cofounder of Taller Boricua [Puerto Rican Workshop], relates the early history and ideals of the Taller. The three main objectives of the artists who founded the collective were: 1) to create a forum for the artistic [...]

In this introduction to the exhibition catalog Taller Alma Boricua: Reflecting on Twenty Years of the Puerto Rican Workshop, 1969–1989, Petra Barreras del Rio, former director of El Museo del Barrio, describes Taller Boricua [Puerto Rican Workshop [...]

Marcos Dimas, artista y cofundador del Taller Boricua, ofrece en este prefacio una breve perspectiva general de la evolución del Taller desde la década de setenta al año 2000. En el texto, Dimas describe las dificultades que tuvo que superar el [...]

In this essay, art critic Lucy Lippard acknowledges that the Taller Boricua artists collective contributed to diversifying the New York art milieu in the 1970s and 1980s by engaging in political actions and creating works that explored issues of [...]