Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This document declares certain principles adhered to by the Asociación Arte Concreto — Invención [Concrete Art and Invention Association]; especially with respect to Concrete art’s contribution to the revolution, as well as its solidarity with [...]

In “Nueva Pintura de Cuba,” Cuban cultural scholar Graziella Pogolotti illustrates the importance of a specific generation of Cuban artists who began to paint during the country’s most tumultuous period. In the 1953 exhibition, Homage to Mart [...]

In his essay, Antonio Castro Leal suggests that the paintings produced by José Clemente Orozco in the years after 1913 encompass the most complete iconography in existence of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. In his opinion, the symbols that had [...]

In his essay written in the form of a letter, David Alfaro Siqueiros refers to four of José Clemente Orozco’s major areas of interest as he looks back on the life of the recently deceased painter, identifying him as an artist and a friend, and as [...]

The well-known Puerto Rican writer José Emilio González (1918–1990) talks about the role of the artist in revolutionary Cuba. Quoting a number of Cuban intellectuals, González suggests that discussions on the role of the artist are very popular [...]

The fourteen tenets upheld by Luis Cardoza y Aragón—those that were to be debated among the members of the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR) [League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists]—proposed an art movement free of [...]

This essay examines the “proletarian” ambiguities to be found in questions of aesthetics and, more precisely, the risk involved in the production of arbitrary dogmatic statements concerning the connection between art and politics. The author [...]

The poem Revolución [Revolution] by Manuel Maples Arce describes the negative aspects of war and his fascination with machines such as trains and airplanes. He tells how the wind of the iron-man dictator shudders and in the afternoons, there are [...]

This anonymous writer called his column “Revolution backwards.” In it, he says he does not understand the imitation of the primitive lack of skill, the use of ancient symbols, the decomposition of the line as if trying to imitate the hesitant [...]

Incarcerated in the Federal Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, Ricardo Floren Magón was one of the principal intellectual precursors to the Mexican Revolution. He writes a letter (dated November 30, 1920) to his "comrade," Elena White of New York [...]

The book from which this essay was taken is a compendium of and apology for Mexican art from the pre-Columbian era through the twentieth century. Like many of her compatriots, the author Marion Lucille Arendt visited Mexico in the mid-1920s, [...]

This anonymous and comprehensive article was assumed to be the “official” response by the First Gobierno Revolucionario de las Fuerzas Armadas Peruanas (1968–75) on the controversy generated by a possible historical error relating to the [...]

With this poster, aimed at the public in general and artists in particular, the academics respond to the attack by the treinta-treintista group. The poster states the reasons why the academics formed the Trayectoria group and their plan for public [...]

In this essay, Mexican poet, writer, and diplomat Octavio Paz analyzes Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo’s relationship with Mexican popular art and Pre-Columbian art. According to Tamayo, popular art should not be seen as art but as a functional [...]

In this brief excerpt from his autobiography, José Clemente Orozco describes his stay in Orizaba during the Mexican revolution. Of interest is Orozco’s mention of Dr. Atl, whom he refers to as a friend and as the founding father of the [...]

For the writer Gastón Poulain, the “revolutionary” nature of José Clemente Orozco’s work had different nuances. He considers that in his œuvre there is neither “automatic register nor sensitive perception.” Poulain sees Orozco’s work [...]

Martí Casanovas relativizes the use of the term “avant-garde.” As applied in the Mexican context, it could be understood as the kind of “hermetic exclusivism” that defines art for art’s sake, which would deprive it of its impassioned [...]

After outlining Mexican history from Independence in 1821 through Juárez Reformation and the Porfiriato [Porfirio Díaz regime], Diego Rivera asks why a day of national mourning should be observed on November 20th, the symbolic first day of the [...]

This article reprints a report published in Yucatán Gráfico magazine that describes recent activities of the local visual arts milieu. Following the creation of the Escuela de Bellas Artes [School of Fine Arts] in the state of Yucatán by the [...]