Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In the context of his stay in Europe, the Argentinean sculptor Aurelio Macchi writes to Libero Badii about his visit to the Musée de l'homme in Paris, underscoring a key aspect of "primitivist" art. He mentions the Argentinean sculptors Luis [...]

Rafael Alberti informs León Ferrari about a parcel mailed containing copies of their joint book Escrito en el aire [Written in the Air]and his book of poetry Abierto a todas horas [Open At All Time].Alberti comments that, passing through Rome, he [...]

Samuel Paz wrote this letter to Jorge Romero Brest while the former was in Paris. It refers to the details of the negotiations with different galleries to secure the works for the Premio Torcuato Di Tella 1967 [1967 Torcuato Di Tella Prize]. Paz [...]

Leopoldo Maler writes about the London stage production of León Ferrari’s book Palabras ajenas [Other People’s Words]. Maler mentions the direction by Jim Haynes, and quotes Haynes on his opinions about the book and its perspective on the news [...]

Aldo Paparella writes to Libero Badii about a range of matters, including his concept of the comsumerist society, referencing Renaissance art. He makes a note of health matters [...]

Other than the intimate details of the communication between Siqueiros and Brum, this letter provides extremely interesting insights into Siqueiros’s public relations in Buenos Aires, as well as his opinions and intentions concerning the local [...]

Julio Cortázar wrote to León Ferrari about his partial reading, only thirty pages of Palabras ajenas [Other People’s Words] which he defined in generic terms as a “tremendo oratorio” [tremendous oratory], despite it sounding ironic. Cortázar [...]

Oscar Masotta wrote to Luis Felipe Noé a letter of apology for his mala fe [bad faith] and pedantería [piece of pretentiousness], and made a promise to respond, by carefully reflecting on the letter sent by Noé at the end of 1967 from New York, [...]

The letter from Ricardo Gómez Robelo to Edward Weston is an emotional letter thanking Weston for the gift of some photographs, but, above all, he is grateful for Weston’s friendship. Robelo acknowledges that they [the group of friends around [...]

This is a letter Samuel Paz wrote in New York to Jorge Romero Brest, in which he provides the details regarding the negotiations with different galleries undertaken to obtain works that would participate in the Premio Torcuato Di Tella 1967. [The [...]

This study signed by Juan Carlos Distéfano,Francisco Kröpfl, Fernando von Reichenbach and Humberto Rivas sets forth objectives and a structural schematic. It likewise makes projections on budgets as well as the infrastructure necessary for the [...]

In this text Aldo Paparella writes to Líbero Badii regarding the sculptor as an entity and also makes general comments about Italy and Argentina [...]

Aldo Paparella writes to Libero Badii about the negative situation provoked by the social climate in Argentina. Art is a refuge for him, and he is in full agreement with Badii about reaching an absolute expression with a pencil and cardboard. He [...]

In this letter, Fernando Gamboa tells José (his last name is illegible) that the exhibition has been received positively. According to Gamboa there are those who have discovered an authentic pictorial path in Mexican painting, a possible escape from [...]

David Alfaro Siqueiros sent a letter to the Minister of Public Education, José Manuel Puig Cassauranc, when he was dismissed from his ministry job as professor of drawing and manual works, for which he was paid three pesos a day. His dismissal was [...]

Lino Enea Spilimbergo wrote a letter to Argentinean artist Xul Solar inviting him to participate in the independent annual exhibition initiative, with a mission to disseminate Argentinean modern art to the Buenos Aires audiences. Spilimbergo held [...]

In this letter, the interim director of the Escuela Central de Artes Plásticas [Central School of the Visual Arts] informs the rector of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México [UNAM National Autonomous University of Mexico], and attorney-at- [...]

In this letter, David Alfaro Siqueiros tells Blanca Luz Brum that the Troubadour—the ship on which he sailed from Buenos Aires in December 1933—had arrived in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. Siqueiros talks about the book he wrote on the trip [...]

In this letter, the painter [and writer] Roubaix de l’Abrie Richey, known by the pseudonym, “Robo,” the husband of the Italian artist and photographer, Tina Modotti, writes to Edward Weston from Mexico City. The writer is visiting Mexico in [...]

Juan de la Cabada reports on progress in organizing a Congreso Continental de Científicos [Scientists’ Continental Congress] in Mexico City under the direction of Víctor Manuel Villaseñor in accordance with the resolutions of the American [...]

This is a letter addressed to Barnabé Barrios, in New York, signed by Juan de la Cabada and Luis Arenal, as the editor and a member of the Executive Committee, respectively, of Frente a Frente [Face to Face] magazine. The authors inform Bernabé [...]

This document proposes an exchange of publications between Frente a Frente and New Masses, but its main goal is to convince the North American publication to use its influence to help connect LEAR to the Association d’Écrivains et Artistes [...]

This essay discusses LEAR’s decision to establish a “Bureau Editor for Mexico” to publish the continent-oriented magazine, Sin Fronteras / All America—the roots of the future “Congreso Continental de Escritores y Artistas de Toda América [ [...]

This letter written by the Comité Ejecutivo of the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios [Executive Committee of the League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists] was addressed to the American Writers’ Congress (AWC) in New York; it [...]

After discussing how busy Germán List Arzubide—the Estridentista from old times—kept in New York’s workers’ media, Ben Ossa mentions the ideas suggested to LEAR by the “Congreso de Artistas Americanos (de Estados Unidos)” [American [...]

“The Red International”—as Ramón Pi, Jr. referred to himself—describes his vehicle for distributing revolutionary words and images from his base in New York. His goal is to place his publication in the hands of professionals whose names he [...]

In this brief letter, David Alfaro Siqueiros advises Jackson Pollock and his team that the studio in New York will be closed during the day while he prepares for his forthcoming exhibition in Manhattan. Siqueiros explains that he needs to be alone to [...]

In this letter, Rufino Tamayo hints at the friction experienced by an artist who put his personal goals above the demands of political activism. Tamayo promises to report on the failings of the delegation to the LEAR and apologizes for asking the [...]

David Alfaro Siqueiros writes a letter to Teresa León from a military command post in Spain during the Civil War, telling her of his combat experiences at the front and comparing procedures there with artistic work. He sees that in both there are [...]

This letter from the Asociación Estímulo de Bellas Artes (AEBA) in Argentina to the Federación de Estudiantes Plásticos del Uruguay (FEPU) invited the Uruguayan students to attend the opening of the exhibition Arte argentino del pasado y del [...]

Gertrudis Chale writes to Libero Badii about her stay in the Peruvian city of Arequipa. She mentions the Indianist Peruvian artists José Sabogal and Julia Codesido, commenting sensitively on the native and popular art, seminal concerns of her work [...]

Gertrudis Chale writes to Libero Badii about her stay in Quito, Ecuador, and the impact of Quito's landscapes, architecture, and painting on her. She mentions the Peruvian artist Julia Codesido [...]

This letter was written by Jorge Gaitán Durán a few days after he arrived in Paris in 1950. It is addressed to his Polish friend in Bogotá, the art critic Casimiro Eiger. The letter rambles through several subjects, including Gaitán’s [...]

This is a letter written by Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar twelve days after his arrival in France in September 1950. The painter writes to his friend, the art critic Casimiro Eiger, who lived in Bogotá, describing his impressions of his first brief [...]

The Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura (INBAL, 1947) invited Rufino Tamayo to participate in the Mexican Art Exhibition that would take place in Europe. The Oaxacan painter responded that he could not give them an answer until “he knew [...]

The Argentinean sculptor Antonio Sibellino writes to Libero Badii about his understanding of sculpture, regarding both formal and universal questions, in addition to sculpture’s problems within the realm of contemporary art [...]

This is a letter written by Lucy Tejada to Casimiro Eiger in November 1955. It was mailed from Madrid to the art critic, who had lived in Bogotá since 1943. It includes details and instructions concerning preparations for the exhibition of Tejada’ [...]

This is an essay written by José R. Echevarría about Surrealism and the creative life. He believes that all creative acts are a protest against a “given” reality. He adds that dreams, delirium, fantasy, and memory are all means of accessing [...]

A letter dated June 10, 1958, from Maria Luisa Mendoza to Fernando Gamboa (who was in Brussels at the time) took the form of a progress report. Mendoza, a consultant on the art integration project Centro Médico Nacional [National Medical Center], [...]

While he was in Brussels, Fernando Gamboa stayed in close communication with the architect Enrique Yáñez, who informed him of the progress of the artists working on the Centro Médico [Medical Center]. In addition to designing the Centro, Yáñez [...]

In this brief letter, ex-President Lázaro Cárdenas congratulates Fernando Gamboa for the “message” he sent regarding Mexico by means of the Brussels Pavilion at the International Fair of 1958 which Cárdenas had visited only a few days earlier [...]

Invitation for members of The Society of British Artists to attend the Kenneth Kemble lecture on his artwork. He is introduced as a nonfigurative artist [...]

Jorge Romero Brest writes to Alicia [Pérez] Penalba about an exhibition of her work that is scheduled for the Centro de Artes Visuales del Instituto Torcuato Di Tella [Center for Visual Arts of the Torcuato Di Tella Institute], which coincides with [...]

The Puerto Rican artist, Félix Rodríguez Báez, wrote a letter to all the members of the Galería Campeche [Campeche Gallery] in which he asked them to read and comment on the rules. He also sent them two invitations in which he established the [...]

Mario Pucciarelli, the winner of the 1960 Torcuato Di Tella Institute Prize, writes to Guido Di Tella, describing his artistic activities in Rome, according to the regulations of the prize. He keeps him posted about the exhibition, in progress al [...]

Ignacio Pirovano wrote a brief letter to Alberto Greco on the impact his exhibition Las Monjas [The Nuns] had had on him; he considered the works to be an eerie testimony of the current era. Furthermore, Pirovano considered that with this exhibition [...]

Pérez Celis wrote a letter to the author that the Alberto Greco exhibition was a direct hit that injured the sensibility of effeminate painters. Lastly, with the use of word play, he stresses that it was a "serious" exhibition contrary to the [...]

Jorge Romero Brest writes to Enio Iommi inviting him to participate in the Torcuato Di Tella Institute Prize (1962 edition), enclosing the rules. In addition, he informs him that he will be able to apply for the National Prize (and eventually for the [...]

After receiving a telegram about the exhibition in the Torcuato Di Tella Institute, Alicia Penalba communicates her agreement to the terms therein to Jorge Romero Brest, although she believes that precautions must be taken due to the political [...]

After being invited to participate in the Torcuato Di Tella National Prize (Buenos Aires), the artist Claudio Girola sends this letter from Chile to Jorge Romero Brest thanking him for his inclusion but declining the invitation for personal reasons [...]