Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this brief essay Gaspar Galaz discusses a series of landmark events that took place in the 1980s and 1990s. In his opinion this period was characterized by an economic boom in Chile (fueled by neoliberal policies) and by conceptual approaches to [...]

In this article Pablo Oyarzún provides a critical review of the art produced over the course of three decades. He notes the lack of a tradition that could bear witness to and interpret art production in Chile. From the early twentieth century& [...]

In this historical review, prompted by the exhibition of contemporary Chilean art in Berlin, the artist and teacher Francisco Brugnoli reflects on the “impertinence” of (ethnic-geographical and artistic) otherness as seen from the [...]

Nelly Richard discusses the background that inspired the works that Francisco Brugnoli and Virginia Errázuriz presented at the Paisaje / Brugnoli / Errázuriz exhibition. Richard analyzes the works and notes that, despite the artists& [...]

In “Destrucción, reconstrucción y desconstrucciones” (Destruction, Reconstruction, and Deconstructions), Nelly Richard critically reviews the cultural situation in Chile during the military dictatorship (1973–90). It was, in her [...]

This essay by Mario Soro was one of the chapters in the catalogue for the exhibition Chile 100 años (Chile 100 Years) covering the second period, 1950–73, titled “Entre modernidad y utopía” (Between Modernity and [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado discusses the Escena de Avanzada twenty years after Nelly Richard coined the term. Though it originally had militant undertones, the term evolved into a historical category. It applied to a set of texts and artworks that Richard [...]

In his essay “Escultura chilena 1950–1973,” the critic Gaspar Galaz outlines the main criteria that influenced Chilean sculpture from 1950 to 1973. He also highlights watershed events and trends in art and identifies connections [...]

The theorist Justo Pastor Mellado outlines his curatorial approach for the exhibition 1973–2000: Transferencia y densidad. He begins by defining concepts such as “curator,” discussing the term’s evolution in Chile and its [...]

This text by Nelly Richard is based on a collection of quotes, which trace an argumentative arc that express her ideas about the exhibition she is reviewing. She also discusses certain situations in the art field at the time that show how the first [...]

This text is part of El gran solipsismo, Juan Luis Martínez. Obra visual (Santiago: Editorial Puntángeles, 2002), the collection of essays written by the researcher José de Nordenflycht. The author considers the work in question [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado reviews Paisaje (Landscape), the exhibition of works by Francisco Brugnoli and Virginia Errázuriz, within the context of the contemporary approach in Chilean painting. According to the curator and art critic, the [...]

In his essay “Realismo y crisis de la representación pictórica” (Realism and Crisis in Pictorial Representation), Guillermo Machuca addresses several critical points regarding the visual arts in Chile during the 1960s. They include, [...]

   In her essay “Sobre arte y política(s): contraoficialidad, poder y lenguajes,” written for the exhibition catalogue Cirugía plástica (Plastic Surgery), Nelly Richard reflects on the socio-political and [...]

Unable to refer specifically to the works that would be shown at the exhibition about which he was attempting to write, Pablo Oyarzún, the Chilean essayist and an authority on philosophy, discusses the idea involved in the term “context& [...]

This is the essayist Pablo Oyarzún’s review of Francisco Brugnoli’s installation Cadáver exquisito (Exquisite Corpse), a reference to the game played by early Surrealists in the 1920s, Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau [...]