Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This print by Leopoldo Méndez was used for the cover of the first issue of Frente a Frente [Face to Face], in which the inauguration of the Palacio de Bellas Artes was satirized as an act of cultural exclusion. At the bottom of the page, a policeman [...]

This timeline tracks the life of Puerto Rican artist Rafael Tufiño, who lived in New York and in Mexico City. Puerto Rican intellectuals Manuel Cárdenas Ruiz and Eugenio Fernández Méndez review the graphic work produced by Tufiño between the [...]

This text presents the exhibition Dibujantes y grabadores colombianos held at theMuseo de Arte at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in May 1975. Historian Álvaro Medina asserts that the exhibition brings together figurative artists representative [...]

The text, ¡Al Fin Pintura! (1976) [Painting, at Last!] was an introduction to the exhibition with the same name at the Galería Belarca in Bogotá, organized by Eduardo Serrano. This art critic emphasizes the acceptance of the drawing and the print [...]

In this article Marjorie Devon, the director of the Tamarind Institute in the United States, lists the Institute’s various exchange programs with Brazilian artists who work in the field of lithography. Cláudio Mubarac, Iran do Espírito Santo, and [...]

This text consists of excerpts from the catalogue for the exhibition Para nunca esquecer. Negras memórias/ Memórias de Negros, held at the Museu Histórico Nacional (in Rio de Janeiro in 2001). It includes scores of texts and poems by writers who [...]

This text by Carmen María Jaramillo discusses the exhibition, Colombia, años 70: Revista al arte colombiano (2002), curated by artist John Castles. Jaramillo presents the idea that some of the pioneering works of contemporary art in Colombia must [...]

In this text, Maritza Uribe de Urdinola, director of the Museo de Arte Moderno La Tertulia, in Cali, presents the II Bienal Americana de Artes Gráficas of Cali. She states that it was due to the Cali Festivales de Arte that the graphic arts took [...]

In this text written on the occasion of the exhibition L’Avant-Garde held at the Galería Colibrí (1965), Puerto Rican critic Ernesto Ruiz de la Mata discusses what he considers an interesting show of avant-garde prints by artists from different [...]

Lorenzo Homar believes that the jury of the Ateneo Puertorriqueño’s art competition—Ketty Rodríguez Benítez, Harold Lasky, and Osiris Delgado—acted irresponsibly in rejecting four of the eight prints presented. One of the rejected works was [...]

This is the fourth account sent by Puerto Rican artist Lorenzo Homar during his year-long sabbatical in Europe. In it, he tells Ricardo Alegría, director of the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña (ICP), about the tapestries he saw at the Musée [...]

Mexican artist Alberto Beltrán requests authorization from Lorenzo Homar to send his series of Puerto Rican prints to an exhibition in the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). He mentions that the president of the Taller de Gráfica Popular ( [...]

Lorenzo Homar believes that the jury of the Ateneo Puertorriqueño’s art competition—Ketty Rodríguez Benítez, Harold Lasky, and Osiris Delgado—acted irresponsibly in rejecting four of the eight prints presented. One of the rejected works was [...]

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 the third report that Puerto Rican artist Lorenzo Homar sent to Ricardo Alegría, executive director of the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña (ICP), while he was on sabbatical in Europe. Homar provides an overview of everything he has seen [...]

Carlos Conde III, who at the time in question was president of the board of directors of the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña [ICP, Puerto Rican Cultural Institute], answers several questions asked by the Puerto Rican artist Lorenzo Homar about [...]

Pedro Alcántara tells Puerto Rican artist Lorenzo Homar that he has obtained passage for Homar on September 18, 1972. He informs Homar that the short silkscreen course or workshop the Puerto Rican artist will be giving will run for ten days, and [...]

In this letter sent to the Puerto Rican Socialist Party’s newspaper Claridad, printmaker Lorenzo Homar replies to an article by Puerto Rican writer Edwin Reyes. Homar attacks the position taken by Reyes—and by “Santitos,” a character who [...]

In this brief, cynical note, artist Lorenzo Homar informs the editor of the radical newspaper Claridad that he plans to suggest that the “Methadone Prize” at the III Bienal de San Juan del Grabado Latinoamericano [3rd San Juan Biennial of Latin [...]

In this set of three letters, Colombian artist Pedro Alcántara writes to Puerto Rican printmaker Lorenzo Homar, shortly after Homar’s departure from Cali. He tells Homar that Juan Antonio Roda, the Spanish artist who has set up his studio in [...]

The artist Lorenzo Homar writes to Ricardo Alegría, director of the Office of Cultural Affairs at the time, about the selection jury for the III Bienal de San Juan del Grabado Latinoamericano (1974) [Third San Juan Biennial of Latin American Graphic [...]

In this letter to Uruguayan artist Leonilda González—secretary general of the Club de Grabado de Montevideo (CGM)—multifaceted Puerto Rican creator Antonio Martorell conveys his interest in organizing a group show of the CGM in San Juan. He [...]

Colombian artist Pedro Alcántara informs his Puerto Rican colleague Lorenzo Homar that the Colombian company Carvajal y Compañía had committed to donating funds for the construction of a printmaking studio. Alcántara asks Homar to help him put [...]

In this letter, Puerto Rican artist Paul Camacho conveys his personal opinion to printmaker Lorenzo Homar concerning an exhibition at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas [School of Visual Arts] at the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña [ICP, Puerto [...]

Colombian artist Pedro Alcántara tells Lorenzo Homar about his travels to the Soviet Union, Peru (Lima), and Cuba (Havana). He also informs Homar that everything will be set for the printmaking workshop that Homar will give at the Museo La Tertulia [...]

Lorenzo Homar states that Puerto Rican artists were never informed that the IV Bienal de San Juan del Grabado Latinoamericano [IV Latin American Print Biennial, San Juan] would be financed with funds from the American Revolution Bicentennial [...]

In this letter to Puerto Rican printmaker Lorenzo Homar, Colombian artist Pedro Alcántara discusses various problems that had arisen at the Museo La Tertulia in Cali after completion of the first graphic portfolio. Alcántara mentions that architect [...]

This letter was written by the Puerto Rican printmaker Lorenzo Homar in San Juan, Puerto Rico on January 12, 1977, to the Colombian artists Pedro Alcántara Herrán and Virginia Amaya Valdivieso. Homar begins his letter on a friendly note, [...]

Colombian artist Pedro Alcántara informs Puerto Rican artist Lorenzo Homar that the studio at the Museo [La Tertulia] no longer exists, and therefore its collective, the Taller Gráfico [Graphic Workshop], is operating on the basis of “ongoing [...]

This is a letter in which Colombian Pedro Alcántara informs Puerto Rican printmaker Lorenzo Homar that the group working at the graphic workshop in Colombia places great emphasis on the planning, analysis, and theoretical study of the problems [...]

Manuel Alvarado Morales, at the time the dean of the humanities faculty at the University of Puerto Rico, writes to Lorenzo Homar to thank him for the poster created in celebration of the centenary of the Spanish writer Zenobia Camprubí Aymar. [...]

In this text, poet Águeda Pizarro—wife of Colombian artist Omar Rayo—analyzes her husband’s geometric production. She examines the visual vocabulary and aesthetic problems that Rayo formulated in his earlier work (specifically the themes of [...]

In this list, Lorenzo Homar provides detailed information about the personnel and equipment he would require for his printing workshop. In some cases, he offers thorough descriptions of the specific work to be performed by each printer and the [...]

In this introduction to an exhibition of prints held to celebrate the first anniversary of the opening of the Galería Colibrí, Italian art dealer Luigi Marrozzini thanks the Puerto Rican public for the reception his gallery has received. He [...]

Olívio Tavares de Araújo introduces an exhibition of the work of Evandro Carlos Jardim, an artist he considers serious, upright, and aware of long-term standards in art. The writer notes that this was the first time the artist would be showing [...]

This printed, folded sheet of paper provides a chronological history of the CGM (Club de Grabado de Montevideo) that spans its first thirteen years of operation, from 1953 to 1966. It includes a report on the Club’s sources of inspiration in the [...]

Art critic Beatriz Viggiani enumerates twenty important points in the work of Colombian artist Pedro Alcántara including his disregard for formalism in relation to his graphic work. What Alcántara is interested in—according to Viggiani—is form [...]

This brief text is about the art of woodcut printing and its traditional use in the genre of “cordel literature” (or string literature) in northeastern Brazil. The author, Barboza Leite, notes its increasing recognition as an artistic language. [...]

The art critic José Geraldo Vieira reviews the history of Surrealism and mentions Hieronymus Bosch, Albrecht Dürer, and William Hogarth, among others. In the critic’s opinion, these artists created a “cosmogony of the absurd” centuries ahead [...]

In this brief article, the critic Jayme Maurício outlines the history of the Atelier de Gravura em Metal, the workshop at the MAM-RJ (Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro). This involved a process that began in 1955 with the ambitious project [...]

The art critic Frederico Morais maintains that the print is “one of the last refuges of the visual arts” from the emergence of the new avant-gardes throughout the 1960s, in particular, Pop art. In this text, the print turns out to be the [...]

In this article, Luciano Gusmão writes at length about Lótus Lobo’s prints and her ideas for a “caipira” [rancher] style of aesthetic nationalism based on an approach that is very closely related to Pop Art. Her work presents a variety of [...]

Ariano Suassuna explains that traditional printmakers in northeastern Brazil took their inspiration from medieval Iberian stories and ballads, capturing a fantasy world in literary works and prints that teemed with action, enchantment, and deep- [...]

Beginning at the end of the 1940s, writer Riolan Metzker Coutinho traces a history of wood engraving in the state of Bahia, which in his judgment, is a privileged endeavor in which engravers such as Oswaldo Goeldi, Poty Lazzarotto and Carl Hansen ( [...]

With this text, Tadeu Chiarelli presents a show of work by Cláudio Mubarac. He observes how metal engraving becomes a process of self-knowledge in the hands of an artist influenced—in Chiarelli’s view—by Evandro Carlos Jardim. Printmaking and [...]

In this text, Tadeu Chiarelli examines the meaning of printmaking in contemporary art. It adds nothing on a technical level, he argues, and—as the medium used for the reproduction of images in post-industrial society—it is brought into the sphere [...]

 Carlos Mérida comments that in Mexico xylography [wood engraving] has become the prevalent artistic trend of the time. He describes some characteristics of this technique, such as the use of pure contrast between light and dark. On the other hand [...]

The journalist Maritza Jiménez interviews the Venezuelan printmaker and illustrator Adrián Pujol on the occasion of the latter’s exhibition at the Sala Ipostel (Caracas, 1981). During the conversation, they discuss Pujol’s conceptual and formal [...]

The journalist Maritza Jiménez reviews the presentation of a book-sculpture that includes prints by Lihie Talmor and poems by the Venezuelan writer Edda Armas. Jiménez describes how the book was conceived and created by Talmor with support from [...]

In this article Mara Comerlati reviews the exhibition of prints by the visual artist Pedro Ángel González (1901–81). The journalist describes the exhibition at the TAGA (Taller de Artistas Gráficos Asociados) as a reunion with González and his [...]