Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this letter to critic Fernando García Esteban, José Cúneo celebrates the recent publication of the critic’s Panorama de la plástica contemporánea uruguaya (Montevideo: Editorial Alfa, 1965). Cúneo then explains his ideas about color in the [...]

This document is the transcript of an interview between Chicana visual artist Carmen Lomas Garza and Anne-Louise Marquis, curator of Directions, a 1995 exhibition of her works. The interview covers a wide range of topics, including Lomas Garza’s [...]

This article examines how Rómulo Gallegos’ writing influenced Luis Guevara Moreno’s painting. The author quotes the painter’s description of producing paintings that illustrate “the setting in a Gallegos story.” Guevara Moreno explains how [...]

In 1900, Revista Moderna [Modern Magazine]— the bastion of modernismo in the Spanish-speaking world—published two important essays by José Juan Tablada on Japanese art, both of which positioned him as a prominent authority on that subject. The [...]

In this article, published in Bogotá’s El Tiempo newspaper on the occasion of Julio Alpuy’s first exhibition in Colombia, the Argentine critic Marta Traba reiterates her earlier strong critiques of the constructive system proposed by Joaquín [...]

This essay by Tomás Ybarra-Frausto is included in the 1981 catalogue of selected works from the Mexican Museum in San Francisco, California. Ybarra-Frausto presents a historiography documenting the trajectory of Mexican American artistic traditions [...]

In this article the Austrian critic Walter Engel reviews the exhibition of works by the painter Andrés de Santa María held at the Galerías de Arte in Bogotá. Engel begins his article by mentioning that the Colombian artist died in Brussels, [...]

Venezuelan art critic Bélgica Rodríguez suggests that Latin American art is largely homogeneous. She discusses the impact of different international styles and artistic movements on Latin American artists such as Cuban painter Amelia Peláez, who [...]

In this book, Marta Traba examines how the growing influence of art of the United States has shaped the art of Latin America during the 1950s and ‘60s, and how Latin American artists have both succumbed and resisted the effects of this influence. [...]

The American critic and historian Shifra M. Goldman considers the influence that the art of the New Deal (the program introduced by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States that existed from 1933 to 1938) and Mexican Social Realist art [...]

“Balas privadas, corazones públicos” [Private Bullets, Public Hearts] (1994) by the Colombian critic José Hernán Aguilar (b. 1952) is a chapter from the book Nueva imagen [New Image], which presented an overview of sociopolitical and artistic [...]

In this essay, Ricardo Romo discusses the vibrant tradition of Chicano muralism, proposing as his goals both an examination of the historical evolution of murals painted in borderland states across the United States (California, Arizona, New Mexico, [...]

In this interview, artist Doris Salcedo and critic Carlos Basualdo—who is from Rosario, Argentina—analyze Salcedo’s career from her student days in Colombia in the late 1970s to the present—the late 1990s—when she had gained considerable [...]

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 [...]

In this letter, José Martí considers a recent exhibition of watercolors he saw in New York and what it means regarding the state of art in the United States. He begins by recalling how disappointing he found an exhibition of painting he had seen in [...]

In this essay, Carmen Bardeguez-Brown weighs the influence of the Berlin Dadaists (1918–22) on photomontage artist Catalina Parra. Of Chilean descent, Parra went to college in Germany where she was exposed to Dada art in 1968. She was drawn to the [...]

In this essay, Carmen Bardeguez-Brown weighs the influence of the Berlin Dadaists (1918–22) on photomontage artist Catalina Parra. Of Chilean descent, Parra went to college in Germany where she was exposed to Dada art in 1968. She was drawn to the [...]

This article documents an interview between Esaú Quíroz, a participant in the Chicano art movement, and the Mexican artist José Luis Cuevas. Quíroz and Cuevas discuss the present direction of the Chicano art movement, which Quiroz defined as [...]

Mildred Monteverde’s social art historical essay provides a survey of the various artistic elements that comprised the Chicano art movement during its initial period in the 1960s and early 1970s. As an auxiliary of the Chicano political movement, [...]

Julia P. Herzberg opens her interview with Carlos Alfonzo by asking him about the period of transition following his immigration to the U.S. from Cuba in 1980. Alfonzo touches on the two- to three-year period in which he did not paint, referring to [...]

Ricardo Pau-Llosa’s chapter focuses on fine art production by Miami’s Cuban-American population. Before discussing the work thematically, he notes that in Miami there has been a “resistance to seeing Cuban and Latin American Art as an equal [...]

This is an essay by Alberto Híjar Serrano in which he addresses the notion of culture as a product of history and, particularly in the case of Chicano art, an important element in liberation struggles. Híjar Serrano remarks on the relationship [...]

In this text [dated November 14, 1964], the Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre states that European culture has to some extent been influenced by tropical culture. In his opinion, “England today is showing the impact of the tropical arts within [...]

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 [...]

In this text, Mário de Andrade critically reflects on the French influence on Brazil, which was hegemonic in the second half of the 19th century, but mitigated, de Andrade argues, by the maturation of Brazilian culture. The author opposes the [...]

In this tribute to French critic and historian Hippolyte Taine on the one hundredth anniversary of his birth, Felipe Lleras provides a brief overview of Taine’s method and discusses the response to his thought in Colombia in the twenties. According [...]

The author recalls his visit, three years earlier, to the Academy of Spain in Rome, where, in his judgment, “the inexplicable frivolity and artifice of modern art are halted.” He praises the work of director Eduardo Chicharro, as well as that of [...]

The historian Alfredo Armas Alfonzo wrote a biography on the life and work of the Russian artist Nicolás Ferdinandov, from the time when he lived in Venezuela until his death in Curaçao. He commented on the influence Ferdinandov bestowed on young [...]

Writer/critic Pedro Henríquez Ureña describes Diego Rivera as a scholar. He compares Rivera to the Venetians and the Spaniards, the Florentines and the French, then he discusses the Mexican artist’s interest in the structure of the objects that [...]

The French curator DanielAbadie’s interviews with Jesús Rafael Soto. Structured as a biography, it begins with the art world of Venezuela, in Ciudad Bolívar, where Soto was born, and tells us of his work at the Escuelas de Bellas Artes in Caracas [...]

The French art critic Maurice Raynal believes there is an innovative school of art in Brazil that is based on an intellectual aesthetic. The painter Vicente do Rego Monteiro is a member of that group. Raynal explains that Rego Monteiro, an artist [...]

In this interview, Claude-Louis Renard seeks insights into the Venezuelan visual artist Jesús Rafael Soto’s thinking and character. Chronologically structured along biographical lines, the conversation begins with Soto’s early days as an artist [...]

In Agustin Fernandez’s artist statement, he begins with his formal training at the San Alejandro Academy. He also discusses how he “was to be nourished by a thousand things when [he] went abroad” and was greatly influenced by both Enrique Senal [...]

The writer Gonzalo Arango Arias interviews Fernando Botero, and includes literary remarks about the painter and the Colombian city of Medellín. He weaves in references to Botero’s experience in Europe, stressing “the poverty he endured and his [...]

In this essay, Alicia Gaspar de Alba reviews nine post-1990 exhibitions of Chicano art, all of which have sought to “materialize” Chicano/a from within the mainstream art museum, or as she calls it, the “master’s house.” The exhibitions [...]

In Juan Gonzalez’s artist statement, he describes himself as very religious and traces the source of his work to the drama in Catholic imagery. He states that he works outside of the American mainstream and feels a greater connection to the “ [...]

Through an analysis of Consuelo Gonzalez Amezcua’s El mosaico de las aves, art historian Jacinto Quirarte shows how the artist can both draw and depart from conventions of Western and pre-Columbian art. Quirarte argues that—as a double-sided [...]

In this essay, which was the main text in the catalogue Arte social. Claudio Perna (Caracas: Galería de Arte Nacional, 2004), Zuleiva Vivas discusses various aspects of Perna’s life and work. She studies the artist’s work from the 1960s to the [...]

The text, “Joaquín Sorolla: la vida” [Joaquín Sorolla: A Life] is a biographical sketch that sets forth the merits of the painter from Valencia, Joaquín Sorolla. In this article, the Colombian painter and art critic, Roberto Pizano, tells [...]

Journalist Darío Samper criticizes what he calls the “philistinism” and “Manichaeism” of 19th-century Colombian intellectuals overly influenced by foreign models, particularly by French thought whose hold on the country he deems excessive. [...]

In 1984, just a few months after Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar donated his sculpture Custodia Homenaje [Custodia Homage] to the recently restored cathedral in his hometown of Pamplona, he wrote the text now known as “La Catedral y el Arzobispo” [ [...]

Diego Rivera discusses the exhibition at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes, and subtly conveys his disappointment with the event. He believes it is a mistake to imitate what is being done in Europe. Rivera thinks it is dangerous to encourage a “ [...]

This text is Colombian critic Rafael Azula Barrera’s response to Darío Samper’s article on the difference between generations. While Azula Barrera recognizes to a certain extent the legitimacy of Samper’s criticism of earlier generations, he [...]

In this text, which is the foreword to the catalogue for the exhibition 22 Contemporary Argentine Painters, Damián Bayón establishes the exclusive relationship with Europe of the visual art culture in Argentina, since there was “no relationship [...]

In this essay, José Sabogal praises the holdings of modern Mexican paintings from Moisés Saenz’s collection exhibited in Lima. He begins by emphasizing that many of the best artists of the Mexican revolution participated in the “intense [...]

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 [...]

In this essay, the former governor of Jalisco, José Guadalupe Zuno, discusses government support of painting, stressing its modern style. He uses the opportunity to talk about Diego Rivera, emphasizing his cultural work rather than his artistic [...]

In this article, the Venezuelan painter, Pascual Navarro, expands on some of the principles underlying the creation of the group, Los Disidentes [The Dissidents] (Paris, 1950). The article is a response to the group’s detractors, who were [...]

This article contrasts the traditional nature of artist Luis Caballero’s studies in Paris, as well as his lifestyle and work, on the one hand, and the contemporariness of his paintings and drawings, on the other. English critic and art historian [...]

This article by Elenore Welles profiles Chicano artist Gilbert “Magu” Lujan, and describes his art as whimsical and a reflection of his experiences. Lujan’s work, Welles writes, strikes a balance between bridging cultural gaps and preserving [...]