Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

Following harsh criticism of positivism (and eclecticism) of the intellectual environment of Montevideo, Joaquín Torres García presented his ideas about metaphysics, ethics, and religiosity in art. This text makes several important points about the [...]

In this essay, Nelson DiMaggio reflects on the international changes in Latin America, especially in Brazil, that had taken place up until 1969. The art critic goes through several likely topics, from the severe censure of various artistic works by [...]

Luis Camnitzer harshly criticizes the contemporary “young art” that emerged in Uruguay, while also critiquing his own 1960s generation. This article is of interest because of its highly controversial nature, given that it was published at a time [...]

In this letter Guillot Muñoz, the distinguished writer and journalist, tells his friend Pedro Figari about the critiques that his paintings were receiving in Montevideo at that time, and about the unconditional support for Figari there was among a [...]

This article was published in El País, a newspaper run by sectors of the Partido Nacional, one of Uruguay’s two traditional political parties. It reports on the occupation of the Subte exhibition space in Montevideo by a group of visual artists [...]

As the director of the Círculo de Bellas Artes School in Montevideo, painter Carlos María Herrera wrote this letter to Martín Lasala, the president of that institution’s board, with a number of proposals, chief among them was the elimination of [...]

This article is part of a published booklet by the TTG (Taller Torres García [Torres Garcia Workshop]) in October of 1958. The TTG sought to respond to the criticism that had been accumulating for a very long time against the disciples of Art Master [...]

In this essay, the Argentinean critic Héctor Agosti presented the conceptual origins of “artistic critique” from a Marxist ideological viewpoint. He reflects on the complexity of the artistic creativity, which responds, but not automatically, to [...]

In this essay, the Uruguayan art critic Fernando García Esteban praised Paris as being the artistic center of the world. He questioned the fading creative impulse that was being experienced by the Uruguayan artists, whom after so daringly being [...]

This essay expresses the dissatisfaction felt by the group of AIAPE intellectuals (represented in this case by Leónidas Spatakis) over the approach taken by most of the participating artists at the VI Salón Nacional. In the author’s opinion, the [...]

The artist Gabriel Morera; the writers José Balza, Jesús Enrique Guédez and Salvador Garmendia; the playwrights Román Chalbaud and Isaac Chocrón; and the graphic designer Nedo all make different statements about the relationship between the [...]

This text by Guillermo Meneses is a presentation of CAL magazine, which he founded. Published in the magazine’s first issue, Meneses’s text explains the meaning of the letters in the publication’s name: C refers to crítica (criticism), A to [...]

Abdel Hernández, the Cuban critic and writer, discusses the VII Bienal Nacional de Dibujo de Caracas (Museo de Artes Visuales Alejandro Otero, 1994) which, in his opinion, was an event that promoted “fragmentation and disciplinarity” in art, and [...]

The critic and curator Ariel Jiménez begins this article deliberating on the role of jurors when they assess the work received in order to choose which artists should be awarded prizes. He goes on to set out his criticism of the Venezuelan system 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 her weekly newspaper column, “Criticandito,” published on June 17, 1979 (in La Verdad, Caracas), Sofía Imber discusses four cultural events, two of which were at the Galería Mendoza, in Caracas: Guaches de la aldea de la India Madhubani [ [...]

Eliseo Sierra analyzes the sources and characteristics of Gego’s graphic discourse (drawings, prints, watercolors, and weavings). Sierra finds that the artist’s work resists classification and is substantially different from the masterworks of [...]

In this essay, Luis Enrique Pérez Oramas studies Gego’s work, Reticulárea (1969) as Venezuela’s first real incursion into contemporary art. The critic contrasts the premises maintained by Venezuelan Syntheticism (which claims to be the last [...]

This article by Venezuelan writer, poet, and literature professor Rafael Castillo Zapata begins by quoting a passage from Walter Benjamin’s “On the Concept of History,” and then goes on to cite Marcel Proust in relation to his understanding of [...]

Roberto Guevara’s review of Gego’s Reticulárea (1969) was written a year after the work was created and originally installed. Guevara calls it the most complete installation in Venezuelan visual art up to that point (1970) because the open [...]

French critic and art historian Yve-Alain Bois bases his analysis of Gego’s work, particularly Reticulárea (1969), on poetic texts from ancient Greece, as well as the philosophy of Lucretiusand of Karl Marx. In his analysis, Bois, who taught in [...]

In this essay, English critic and curator Guy Brett examines precisely what elements are responsible for making Gego’s creations works of art rather than works of design or visual investigation, both ideas that are closely bound to her work. Brett [...]

In response to Julio Alfonso Hernández’s negative comments about Alejandro Lora Risco’s exhibition of abstract drawings (published in El Tiempo, Chiclayo, Peru, October 31, 1952), the artist wrote this essay in which he discusses the link [...]

In this critique of the results of the painting competition sponsored by the Festivales de Ancón, the architect Augusto Ortiz de Zevallos applauds the organizational aspect of the event but disagrees with suggestions of a Peruvian art “boom.” In [...]

In this interview, the writer Mario Vargas Llosa criticizes governmental cultural plans during the first phase (1968–75) of the self-styled Gobierno Revolucionario de las Fuerzas Armadas del Perú. Vargas Llosa says the results of those plans have [...]

In this article, the essayist and art critic Mercedes Gallagher de Parks discusses the pottery produced in the Amazon region of Peru, noting the wide variety of pieces and their surprising aesthetic. Very little is known about this pottery other than [...]

In this newspaper article, Oscar Cerruto discusses the work of the photographer Martín Chambi. Cerruto refers to Benedetto Croce’s idealistic philosophical concept about expressive beauty, which he uses to defend the artistic nature of photography [...]

In this article, Jorge Zalamea posits a theory about composition or poetics. His thesis concerns the expression and the assessment of art, and is rooted in the field of art criticism and theory. Zalamea refers to two traditional ways of thinking [...]

Written by Carolina Ponce de León under the title “El salón de la extravagancia,” this document was published in the “Nuestra Época” section of the Bogotá daily newspaper El Espectador, on May 8, 1994. It was written as a criticism of the [...]

In this text, literary critic Silvano Santiago delves into questions of identity politics and of globalization in modern Brazilian culture. He discusses four crucial moments: the end of the nineteenth century, the decade of the twenties, the decade [...]

Silvano Santiago begins this essay with the famous statement by Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes, “We are not Europeans nor North Americans, our original culture has been eliminated: nothing is foreign to us as everything here is foreign. Our own [...]

This is Marta Traba’s critical review of the exhibition of silkscreen prints by Susy Iglicki at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas. Traba discusses the Venezuelan artist’s use of space, color, planes, and volumes, while referring to her [...]

The synopsis and the annotations in English are coming soon.                                However, our bilingual readers can click on “Español” to access this information in Spanish [...]

This document is Edgar Negret’s response to the press release from the Ministry of Public Works in which he set forth points related to the controversy generated about Abstract art in Colombia based on the monument to Bolívar, a sculpture the [...]

Amaya’s criticism brings up the specific situation of Colombia by considering opinions on its cultural prospects, which range from highly optimistic to views that are more skeptical. Amaya focuses the problem on the general view of arts activities [...]

On the occasion of an exhibition at the Instituto de Bellas Artes de Medellín that included paintings by Colombian artists such as Paulina Uribe de Escobar and Carlos Correa, the journalist José Mejía y Mejía published an article in which he [...]

Art critic Marta Traba assesses the work on exhibition at the Salón de Arte Moderno [Salon of Modern Art] that took place at the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango of the Banco de la República de Colombia. Traba claims that this event was the best [...]

In this text, Colombian curator and art critic Carmen María Jaramillo discusses the contradictions and complexities surrounding the beginnings of modern art in Colombia. She places the emergence of modern art in the framework of the historical and [...]

The artist Marco Ospina begins by criticizing Colombian painters who value volume over content and as a result produce totally insignificant work. According to Ospina, there are substantial theoretical lapses in these paintings, which he dismisses as [...]

In October 1950, a painting exhibition was held in Medellín on the occasion of a “civic week”; a number of artists from the Antioquia region participated in the event. According to the author of this article, Jaime Piedrahita Cardona, a [...]

The essay “El arte clásico de Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar” by art critic Casimiro Eiger is one of the first critical texts to address Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar’s work as part of the geometric abstraction movement. Eiger considers Ramírez’ [...]

The Uruguayan art historian and executive publisher of the magazine Arte en Colombia-Art Nexus, Ivonne Pini wonders, “How should the visual arts address our past?” She points out that the “rupture of modernism” did not happen in Latin America [...]

In “América Latina: Arte e Identidad,” Germán Rubiano formulates a criticism of the exhibition The Spirit of Latin America held at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York in 1989. He questions a reading of Latin America that, in his view, [...]

In this article entitled “Mito y Realidad: Arte Latinoamericano en Estados Unidos” [Latin American Art: Myth and Reality], North American critic and professor at New York University Edward Sullivan provides an overview of how Latin American art [...]

This article reads like an indictment of the IX Salón Anual de Artistas Colombianos held in August 1952 at the Biblioteca Nacional in Bogota. Critic Luis Vidales Jaramillo voices a resounding personal judgment of some of the works exhibited and of [...]

In this article, Luis Vidales reflects on the art of caricature after viewing an exhibition of works by the young artist Omar Rayo, who distorts and contorts lianas to create his images. Vidales begins by asking where caricature stands within the [...]

In this article, the writer Luis Cardoza y Aragón reviews the Tratado de Estética [Aesthetics Treatise] by Luis Vidales Jaramillo, a few months after it was published. The Guatemalan author contextualizes Vidales Jaramillo’s work, describing its [...]

The critic Luis Vidales Jaramillo reviews the fresco La liberación de los esclavos [The Freeing of the Slaves] by Ignacio Gómez Jaramillo at the National Capitol of Colombia. Vidales Jaramillo considers it a successful work because it expresses “ [...]

In this article, illustrated by the Colombian artist Álvaro Barrios, the painter Luis Caballero adapts the Hans Christian Andersen children’s story El traje nuevo del emperador [The Emperor’s New Clothes] to present the reader with a critical [...]

This text is a report submitted to the Archbishop of Bogotá in 1942. It was prepared by three priests sent to visit the III Salón Nacional de Artistas held at the Biblioteca Nacional in Bogotá and to report on the painting Anunciación [ [...]