Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

Written in Paris on April 29, 1918, this letter from sculptor Marco Tobón Mejía to his friend Carlos E. Restrepo reveals the nature of the relationship between the Colombian artist and one of the most important representatives of Colombia’s [...]

On the premise that “national art has yet to come into being,” Germán Arciniegas levels harsh criticism at the works by Colombian artists Francisco Antonio Cano, Ricardo Gómez Campuzano, and Domingo Moreno Otero included in an exhibition held [...]

Professor Nicolás Bayona Posada, who was also a journalist, interviews the caricaturist Ricardo Rendón, who states that “the essential element in a caricature is not the drawing; it is the model.” Rendón also says that to capture the spectacle [...]

This biographical overview—the first one ever published in Antioquia on an artist from the region—begins by describing Colombian artist Francisco Antonio Cano’s humble background and difficult childhood. From a young age, Cano took an interest [...]

This unusually incisive and analytic speech given by Pedro Nel Ospina at the concert held in Medellín in 1898 to support painter Francisco Antonio Cano demonstrates the social situation of the artist from the Antioquia region at the turn of the [...]

The article “En el Salón de Pintura” [At the Painting Salon] (1919)—published (anonymously) in the magazine El Gráfico—advocates a conversation to review the exhibition organized by the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes [National School of [...]

In this little known interview, Colombian painter Francisco Antonio Cano provides an emotional account of his early days in Yarumal, “a village nestled in the mountains of Antioquia [Colombia].” He mentions his early accomplishments in Medellín [...]

In this article written in 1923, Roberto Pizano analyzes the specificities of a painting exhibition held at the Parque de la Independencia in Bogotá that brought together work by a large number of local artists. Pizano used the exhibition as an [...]

The researcher and art historian Santiago Londoño Vélez writes a thorough account of the life and work of the well-known Colombian photographer Melitón Rodríguez. Londoño describes various economic and sociocultural aspects of the development of [...]

This one-page article addresses the recent death of Colombian artist Francisco Antonio Cano. Although it is an obituary, the text presents keys to understanding Cano’s final years and how the myth surrounding his figure as an academic artist was [...]

In this article, journalist Fidel Cano, founder of the newspaper El Espectador (in circulation in Medellín since 1887) writes enthusiastically about Horizontes [Horizons], an oil painting that Francisco Antonio Cano had made in Bogotá; the work was [...]

This article provides a brief overview of Colombian art and a diagnosis of its general state in 1942. Luis Alberto Acuña asserts that Colombian art history can be divided into three distinct periods: the pre-Hispanic, the viceregal, and the [...]

The synopsis and the annotations in English are coming soon.                                However, our bilingual readers can click on “Español” to access this information in Spanish [...]

Writer Alfonso Dávila divides this text on the work of Colombian artist Francisco Antonio Cano into three parts: (i) “El estudio,” (ii) “Lo místico,” and (iii) “Pintor objetivo.” The first section briefly describes Cano’s studio. The [...]

In 1901, after having studied painting in Europe, Francisco Antonio Cano returned to Colombia and resumed his work teaching painting in Medellín. His students included Luis Eduardo Vieco, who wrote these notes on Cano’s lessons, chiefly on color [...]

On the occasion of an exhibition at the Instituto de Bellas Artes de Medellín that included paintings by Colombian artists such as Paulina Uribe de Escobar and Carlos Correa, the journalist José Mejía y Mejía published an article in which he [...]