Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This article is based on a conversation with Carlos Cruz-Diez after he was awarded the Officier des Arts et des Lettres, a prize sponsored by the French government, which was presented by the French Minister of Culture, Jack Lange. In it it appears [...]

This article by the journalist Coromoto Álvarez is about the National Prize for Visual Art that was awarded to Carlos Cruz-Diez in 1971. The article is divided into two parts. The first part includes a report about the ceremony at the Palacio [...]

This article argues that, despite multiple pronouncements to the effect that it is dead, Kinetic art is still very much alive and strengthening as a result of its achievements at an international level. The article points to the example set by the [...]

In this interview, Carlos Cruz-Diez discusses some of Kinetic art’s theoretical problems, in particular its opposition to conventional painting; he opts for a “transpositional” pictorial approach. The artist describes himself as [...]

In a lengthy conversation, the Venezuelan journalist Carlos Díaz Sosa discusses the main ideas that underpin the Kinetic artist Carlos Cruz-Diez’s thinking. Despite its length, the conversation barely touches on his repertoire, [...]

This is an anonymous review of the retrospective exhibition of Cruz-Diez’s work at the Signals gallery in London in 1965. The reviewer notes a constant quality in Venezuelan painting—“clarity, order, and a distinct gentleness&rdquo [...]

Francisco Díaz Roncero—who wrote this review of the second exhibition, Mouvement 2, organized by the Galerie Denise René in Paris that included the works of Kinetic artists—stresses the current influence and presence of [...]

In this text, Joaquín Aroztegui reflects on new tendencies in Uruguayan art, whether in the form of writings or exhibitions, such as happenings, concretism, Op Art, and kinetic art. Those new tendencies are described as new languages born of [...]

Curator Kaira Marie Cabañas argues that work by Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt, 1912–1994), a Venezuelan artist of German origin, constitutes a “performative geometry” based on a primordial interest in the act of “making.” The configuration of [...]

In his essay, the museum designer Miguel Arroyo examines the range of art created in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He reaches the conclusion that the arrival of photography, film, and television led painters to abandon traditional [...]

In this introductory text, critic Inocente Palacios reflects on the precedents of Venezuelan Kinetic art and the changes it proposes in the relationship between the artist and the material, on the one hand, and between the viewer and the work, on the [...]

This is an essay on Gego’s artwork published to accompany the exhibition, Desafiando Estructuras [Challenging Structures] (MACBA, Barcelona/Museu Serralves, Porto, Portugal, 2006) by Iris Peruga. It starts out with biographical information on the [...]

Luis Enrique Pérez Oramas believed that as a foreigner in Venezuela, Gego gave her work the function of an “analytical process” by constructing a “neutral space” in a time saturated by Kinetic art and geometric abstraction. Her work resists [...]

Journalist Miyó Vestrini interviews Narciso Debourg for his first solo exhibition in Venezuela. The conversation covers the methods of expression used by the Venezuelan painter and sculptor (based in Paris); these include serial usage of elements, [...]

In this essay, Hans Neumann discusses José María Cruxent’s kinetic work. He describes the experience of first seeing Cruxent’s “parakinetic” work and analyzes the way the artist turns light—whether natural or artificial—into an integral [...]

This article, written in the form of a poem, is about the series Excitáveis [Excitables] by the Brazilian artist Sérvulo Esmeraldo. The author, Erwin Leiser, pictures him walking through the back streets of Paris looking for images that will be [...]

Flávio Motta acknowledges that the diverse biennials that took place in São Paulo established a new phase which sought out art from abroad; although they also resulted in the puzzling [concept of the] “happy native.” They [...]

This essay by art critic and physicist Mário Schenberg is one of the first works written in Brazil on the impact of technology on artistic expression. His analysis looks back to the 18th-century industrial revolution, when the invention of the [...]

The art critic and historian Frederico Morais discusses the Brazilian artist Abraham Palatnik’s career, describing him as a pioneer—even at an international level—in the creative blending of art and technology that he used to create his kinetic [...]

This text describes the interest among artists and critics in the Exposição Internacional de Esculturas Efêmeras [international exhibition of ephemeral sculpture] organized by artist Sérvulo Esmeraldo at Cocó, a large ecological reserve located [...]

In Olinda (Pernambuco state), painter José Claudio uses an exceedingly colloquial tone to discuss the significance of artist Sérvulo Esmeraldo’s “return” to his native city (Crato, in the state of Ceará) after having resided in Europe for [...]

In this brief article, the artist Sérvulo Esmeraldo explains his works, which he calls “Excitáveis” [Excitables], describing them as “paintings that appear to be static” but that in fact are like natural phenomena in which everything is in [...]

The art critic Olívio Tavares Araújo claims to see certain parallels and similarities between Sérvulo Esmeraldo’s “object-poems” and the kinetic works known as “Excitáveis” [Excitables] that the Brazilian artist was producing in the [...]

The Brazilian artist based in France at the time, Sérvulo Esmeraldo, introduces his well-known series, “Excitáveis.” The text includes practical step-by-step instructions explaining the functioning of these works, the artist’s methodical [...]

The Brazilian artist Sérvulo Esmeraldo describes his interest in the phenomena of physics. He recalls some experiences in his childhood in northeast Brazil (Ceará), when he and his brothers turned ampoules into powerful lenses which they then used [...]

In this critical essay, the historian Alfredo Boulton analyzes several of the elements he sees in the work of Jesús Rafael Soto, the great Venezuelan Kinetic artist, focusing here on space and time. Boulton mentions a number of Soto’s works in [...]

The theoretician Frank Popper analyzes the Kinetic aspects of the artwork of Jesús Soto, whom he identifies by his repetition of both visual and plastic elements in one object to obtain vibration. Popper also notes that this reading of what is known [...]

In this essay, the historian and critic Alfredo Boulton discusses the work of Jesús Soto, whom he places at the heart of Venezuelan Kinetic art and, in historical terms, within the realm of the world’s contemporary art. Boulton bases his comments [...]

Marta Traba analyzes the entire body of artwork integrated with architecture in Caracas created by Gego, and contrasts them with those created by Jesús Soto and Carlos Cruz Díez, practitioners of Venezuelan Kinetic art. Traba observes [...]

Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza interviews Carlos Cruz-Diez in Paris. After providing a physical description of the Venezuelan Kinetic artist and a brief summary of his career, the Colombian author asks him for his opinions about art in general, and Latin [...]

In this essay, Jean Clay reviews Fisicromías, the series of works by Carlos Cruz-Diez, and analyzes them from various perspectives. Clay discusses the evolution of the artist’s techniques, examining them through a prism of aesthetic principles. He [...]

This interview with Carlos Cruz-Diez by historian José María Salvador focuses on the way the artist’s work intengrates architecture, either as a general subject matter or regarding his urban productions. The interview addresses questions like the [...]

In this text, whose two brief paragraphs are separated by a line and illustrated with three sketches, the Venezuelan Kinetic artist Carlos Cruz-Diez explains the traditional way in which a viewer experiences a direct “reading” of a color [...]

This article by the critic Víctor Guédez was written at the time of Carlos Cruz-Diez en la arquitectura, the exhibition at the Centro Cultural Consolidado (Caracas, 1991). In Guédez’s opinion, there are two facets to Cruz-Diez’s Kine-chromatic [...]

In this article, Alejandro Otero begins by describing some of the movements and artists that are representative of the global abstract avant-garde, principally Alexander Calder, in order to contextualize Venezuelan artist Jesús Rafael Soto. He [...]

The Argentine critic Silvia de Ambrosini claims that there have always been “opponents” in the art field. In her opinion, these “opponents” are what revitalizes the creative atmosphere. She says that in Latin American art & [...]

In this article, Alirio Rodríguez discusses the definition and scope of Latin American painting, and its universal exposure. He stresses the importance of Figuration and Abstraction, both of which influence current and future painting in the [...]

Francisco Brugnoli reviews the work of Matilde Pérez in terms of persistence and discontinuity. In his essay, he theorizes about art’s role as a means of communication and provides a historical perspective on the evolution of a kind of [...]