Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this text, researcher Carmen Hernández examines the visual discourse on gender issues of women artists from Latin America. She concludes that there is no artistic movement in the region that specifically reflects on gender of the sort that [...]

Chilean art critic Miguel Rojas Mix provides an overview of the exhibition Art in Latin America held at the Hayward Gallery in London in mid-1989. Rojas Mix’s account attempts to explain the curatorial criteria underlying the show, its organization [...]

In this document, Margarita Nieto details the influence of the School of Mexican Painting on the artistic production in the United States during the twenty-year period preceding World War II. She argues that contact between the two countries during [...]

In this text, Guillermo Gómez-Peña declares the new dominant U.S. culture “border culture,” and assesses how Latino culture has infiltrated U.S. culture writ large. U.S. culture has, he argues, become fundamentally multicultural, and the “ [...]

In this interview conducted by Mexican performance artist and writer Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Chicano artist Rupert Garcia discusses his perspective on Chicano art, particularly its relation to mainstream institutions and current theoretical trends. [...]

The author, Susan Keller, ponders the work of Amalia Mesa-Bains within the context of the Mexican-American social empowerment movement of the 1960s and 1970s, also known as the Chicano Movement. A figurehead of her generation, Mesa-Bains looked to [...]

The author, Susan Keller, ponders the work of Amalia Mesa-Bains within the context of the Mexican-American social empowerment movement of the 1960s and 1970s, also known as the Chicano Movement. A figurehead of her generation, Mesa-Bains looked to [...]

According to Ceferino Palencia, the Spanish art critic living in exile in Mexico, Frida Kahlo’s pictorial art was an eloquent example of will in service to sensitivity. Palencia speaks of Frida’s lifelong rebellion against her mother’s violent [...]

In this essay, Tere Romo explores the syncretic nature of Chicano spirituality manifested in Chicano art and rooted in the initial encounter between indigenous American cultures and Europe, as well as in the Chicano movement of the 1960s and 1970s. [...]

In this article, the author Icleia Borsa Cattani discusses her opinion that a particular artistic process is an intrinsic aspect of modernity: repetition. She analyzes the portrayal of the human body in the works of Frida Kahlo, Ismael Nery, and [...]

The Argentine critic Silvia de Ambrosini claims that there have always been “opponents” in the art field. In her opinion, these “opponents” are what revitalizes the creative atmosphere. She says that in Latin American art & [...]

The Puerto Rican critic Efraín Barradas writes about the full schedule of exhibitions in the United States, where he lives; according to him very few include Latin American art, since little is known about Latin American artists and their work. Be [...]

This article tells the story of the first exhibition of women’s art held under the name, Frida Kahlo Salon, at the gallery directed by Lola Álvarez Bravo. The show brought together the works of 40 artists as dissimilar as Remedios Varo, Machila [...]

In this review of the exhibition Art of the Other Mexico: Sources and Meanings, Victor Alejandro Sorell writes that the border is the exhibition’s overarching and master trope. The exhibition features works of art by the “greater Mexican [...]

In commemoration of the XV anniversary of the weekly magazine Hoy [Today], the Instituto de Bellas Artes (INBA) suggests the periodical publish a selection of images representing local painting throughout the ages. An article written by the critic [...]

In this text, Jesse Gonzales presents an overview of Latino art in Michigan, from the nineteenth-century to the time when he published this essay, touching upon key moments from the 1920s to the 1990s. Gonzales features early fiestas patrias [ [...]

Carlos Chávez tells the press that he had received an order not to exhibit the painting Pesadilla de guerra y sueño de paz [Nightmare of War and Dream of Peace]. As such he had only two choices: remove the painting or close the museum; he opted for [...]

Carlos Chávez announces the opening of the Mexican art exhibition organized by the governments of Mexico and France, in which a very carefully selected collection of masterpieces would be presented, beginning with the pre-Cortés era and continuing [...]

This document is Carlos Chávez’s response to the letter that Rufino Tamayo had written to Fernando Gamboa on August 20, 1951. In it, Tamayo asks to know the government’s point of view on the Mexican Art Exhibition that would take place in Europe [...]

According to Rafael Heliodoro Valle, the distinguishing feature of the Surrealist movement is that it has “old roots” that set it apart from the rest of the avant-garde. And that, “Mexico, [which] is not a myth,” but has a mythical past has [...]

The article mentions several of the traits that make Frida Kahlo quite unique, even today, and combines some of them with certain elements that gave her production its distinct quality. Kahlo’s work, according to Cardona Peña is distinguished by a [...]

The critic Antonio Rodríguez sings praise for the life and work of Frida Kahlo in this posthumous tribute. He reviews the salient events of her career, stressing the martyrdom that haunted her work with a mood of constant struggle. Rodríguez refers [...]

Cardoza y Aragón believes Mexican painting had reached a unique and magnificent era and in his judgment, some of the works by Frida Kahlo were “some of the best” that had been produced in the last fifteen years. He describes her work as “ [...]

This article covers Frida Kahlo’s first solo exhibition, organized by Lola Álvarez Bravo’s gallery in Mexico City. Moreno Villa believes it was impossible to separate Kahlo’s work from her life. He lists a series of points that must be taken [...]

Paul Westheim believes that, as an artist, Frida Kahlo belongs to an alternative trend, and he describes her as a “outstanding painter.” The critic emphasizes Kahlo’s pictorial qualities, a “subtle and expressive” technique, a palette “ [...]

Flores Guerrero believed that as an artist Frida Kahlo had been honest with herself and with her era. Her subjective expression in painting was a natural process that mirrored her innermost life as well as an awareness of her body. As an exponent of [...]

In Palencia’s view, Frida Kahlo is one of the best representatives of the oneiric or surrealist genre. Nevertheless, he believes she should be included within this group with certain restrictions and limits. The quote by André Bretón (“Frida [...]

From her perspective as a foreigner, Gisèle Freund regarded Frida Kahlo’s painting as an interpretation not only of the Mexican people, both their problems and aspirations, but also of the problems of all the peoples on the earth. Freund believed [...]

The author believes that Frida Kahlo was the creator of a visceral and deeply dramatic type of painting, in which the artistic creation and personal life of the artist cannot be separated. Monteforte describes her work as "universally popular," as [...]

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York inaugurated an exhibition of Mexican art that encompasses from the pre-Hispanic era up to and including examples of contemporary art, noteworthy among them the work by painters such as Orozco, Siqueiros, [...]

In this article for the magazine Vanity Fair, Marie Brenner writes a biographical sketch of her aunt, Anita Brenner, about the relationship that is established with Mexican art and culture, particularly during the 1920s. During that decade, Anita [...]

In this essay, North American critic and art collector MacKinley Helm analyzes the work of those artists whose style and content did not fit into muralism or the so-called “Mexican School of Painting.” Helm discusses, in the context of the 1920s [...]

Diego Rivera maintains that the crisis in Mexican painting is an invention. It may be a crisis invented by the literati so they will have a pretext for writing their books, or perhaps created by critics so they will have material to send to their [...]

From a European perspective, Paul Westheim gives his first impressions on modern art in Mexico. He identifies two of its qualities: first, an originality and independence from European art and, second, a rebirth of folk art that is removed from the [...]

Diego Rivera lays the groundwork for his article about Frida Kahlo by tracing a path through the history of the founding cultures of the Pre-Hispanic and Spanish periods and the nineteenth-century. In his opinion, Mexico’s social evolution can be [...]