Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This document is a dialogue maintained between the Colombian artists Carlos Correa and Pedro Nel Gómez, in September 1956. The conversation expresses both artists’ critical view of abstract art as well as some of the works created in that style. [...]

In this text, Colombian art critic Eduardo Serrano—curator of the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá—presents the exhibition Arte y Política held at that institution in 1974. Serrano asserts that politics is more than a recurring theme in the work [...]

This document includes the expert appraisal report of the eleven murals that artist Pedro Nel Gómez painted from 1935 to 1937 at the new Medellín City Hall. The Medellín City Council had commissioned Colombian writers Efe Gómez and Antonio J. [...]

Scientist and humanist César Uribe Piedrahita delivered this speech at the opening of the 1938 exhibition of painter Carlos Correa held at the Sociedad Colombiana de Ingenieros [Colombian Society of Engineers] in Bogotá. Uribe Piedrahita described [...]

This text by Gabriel García Márquez published in the weekly cultural supplement to the Cali-based newspaper El Pueblo is the prologue to the portfolio Graficario de la Lucha popular en Colombia (1977). In his critical analysis of ways of disguising [...]

This text introduces the print portfolio, Cuba-Colombia, raíces comunes [Cuba/Colombia, Common Roots], the second work of the Corporación Prográfica [Prográfica Association] (Cali, Colombia)—after El graficario de la lucha popular en Colombia [ [...]

This is an interview, complete with editorial comments, that was published in the newspaper El Heraldo de Antioquia on the occasion of the exhibition of works by the Colombian painter Débora Arango in Bogotá in 1940. Arango mentions the reactions [...]

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 [...]

“El americanismo de los años 40 y la nueva vanguardia colombiana” [The Americanism of the 1940s and the New Colombian Avant-Garde], an essay by the historian Álvaro Medina, published in 1978, discusses the artistic languages inspired by the [...]

In this article, critic Germán Rubiano Caballero introduces a group of Colombian artists born in the first half of the twentieth century. To place these artists in the international context of Western art history, Rubiano Caballero associates them [...]

In this interview with Débora Arango Pérez by an anonymous journalist for the liberal Medellín-based newspaper El Diario, the artist discusses certain aspects of her life. She also explains her ideas about the nude genre and the relationship [...]

Curator and historian Álvaro Medina wrote an essay that addresses the socio-political and aesthetic history of Colombia during the second half of the 20th century. One section of the essay, “El arte y la violencia bipartidista,” deals with the [...]

A journalist who signs “Dr. Equis” (Dr. X) interviews Colombian painter Pedro Nel Gómez on the occasion of his solo exhibition in Bogotá. Nel Gómez voices his complete lack of interest in nationalism of any sort, and asserts that the idea of [...]

In this article, Colombian artist and critic Beatriz González Aranda reclaims the mural work of Pedro Nel Gómez, thus adding it to the current reinterpretation of the muralist movement in Latin America. The article was written in six parts, giving [...]

In October 1950, a painting exhibition was held in Medellín on the occasion of a “civic week”; a number of artists from the Antioquia region participated in the event. According to the author of this article, Jaime Piedrahita Cardona, a [...]

The anonymous author of this article discusses the pessimism prevalent in a milieu dedicated to “gathering gold” and “displaying its purchasing power.” While the author accepts that economic wellbeing is necessary “for the practice of [...]

[This document includes] a four-page brochure whose first page reads: “Universidad Nacional de Colombia/ Museo Nacional/ Exposición de pintura/ contemporánea/ octubre 1948.” The other three pages contain the names of the artists participating [...]

In this interview, originally published in 1956, painter Ignacio Gómez Jaramillo speaks of his childhood and formative years. Regarding his childhood, he reports that with the support of his mother, he started “doodling” at a young age. Indeed, [...]

In the introduction to his book, the Colombian artist and critic Carlos Correa mentions several themes that are subtly woven into the texts and reveal a reverent, constant, and excessive admiration for the muralist Pedro Nel Gómez. “When [...]

In the introduction to his book “Nueve artistas colombianos” [Nine Colombian Artists], poet and art critic Jorge Zalamea explains the objectives of the publication, and discusses the Colombian art scene of the early forties. Zalamea starts out [...]

The Colombian art critic Rafael Duque Uribe discusses his impressions of the exhibition of works by the mural painter Pedro Nel Gómez at the central salon of the National Capitol in Bogotá. The artist’s style reminds this critic of the art [...]

In this article, the art critic Walter Engel, an Austrian based in Colombia, wrote an overview of how various contemporary artists represent the human figure. To Engel, regarding this genre, in concept “no period or country may claim [it] for [...]

The text by the art historian and critic, Álvaro Medina, published in the Semanario Cultural [Weekly Arts Section] of the newspaper, El Pueblo in the city of Cali, is the introduction to Graficario de la lucha popular en Colombia [Graphic Portfolio [...]

The author of this document claims that Colombian painting has no past. According to the Argentine critic Marta Traba, the visual arts produced in Colombia from the late nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century are of no interest [...]

In this short essay, critic Walter Engel attempts to demonstrate that, due to the maturity, breadth, and social content of its painting, Latin America will become a new center for art on a par with Paris. Engel—an Austrian critic who lived in [...]

The essayist Carlos Jiménez Gómez interviews Aníbal Gil and provides a detailed profile of the artist on the occasion of his latest mural at the Caja Agraria in the city of Medellín. Jiménez inquires about the “young maestro’s” artistic [...]

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 [...]

In the book Problemas sociales en las artes plásticas [Social Problems in the Visual Arts], the critic Walter Engel reviews different periods in the universal history of art, discussing how some cultures and artists depict social issues?such as [...]

The decision of the jury at the painting salon presented at the Club Unión in Medellín in November 1939 incited indignation and protest amongst traditional painters from the Antioquia region. The main voices of the traditionalists were Eladio Vé [...]

When he turned fifty, the painter Pedro Nel Gómez was interviewed by an unnamed journalist from the magazine Semana, which published an article on his life and work. He spent his childhood in Anorí (Antioquia), and later began his training as an [...]

This foldable brochure summarizes in list form the activities that took place at the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá (MAM) in 1964, when it was directed by the art critic Marta Traba. The text contains seven headings, each of which is followed by a [...]

The exhibition of watercolor nudes by Débora Arango created quite a stir in artistic and social circles in Medellín in late 1939. The ultraconservative opinions of the journalist José Mejía y Mejía, writing in the newspaper El Colombiano, did [...]

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 [...]

In this extensive article, Spanish sculptor Jorge de Oteiza examines the connections between art from the Americas and art from Europe, urging American artists not to fall into a fanatical independence and eschew the essential influence of European [...]

Colombian painter Ignacio Gómez Jaramillo was awarded first prize at the First Salón Anual de Artistas Colombianos held in 1940. In this incendiary text, painter Eladio Vélez—who had previously been embroiled in a heated debate with Pedro Nel G [...]

By 1986, when this interview was published, artist Débora Arango was in her eighties and afflicted with health problems that prevented her from painting. Despite the fact that she did not grant many interviews due to her failing memory, in this [...]

This article by Colombian poet and journalist Rogelio Echavarría sparked a controversy on Colombian painting of the time and its role in a broader Latin American art.  The author begins by contextualizing the problem.  According to Echavarría, a [...]