Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This newsletter includes an essay, written by the Colombian artist Jonier Marín, about Arte de Sistemas en Latinoamérica, the exhibition organized by the CAYC and presented at the Internationaal Cultureel Centrum (ICC) in Antwerp, [...]

In this article, Ernesto Ramallo writes about the Bienal Americana de Arte held in Cordoba, Argentina. He traces the history of the event, from its origins in 1958—as the Primer Salón de Artes Visuales Contemporáneas, organized by [...]

Curator Julia Herzberg’s exhibition essay for The Decade Show: Frameworks of Identity in the 1980s explores the construct of “identity” in the art of the 1980s. It discusses the twenty-five Hispanic, Latino, Chicano, Latin American [...]

This was the first time a national publication—the Lima newspaper El Comercio—had published the guidelines for the Festivales de Lima, an event of great importance in Latin America that took place in October and November 1966. The event consisted [...]

This document is an interview with Peruvian critic and theorist Juan Acha, who lived in Mexico. It sheds light on the uncertainties and concerns facing “art in Latin America” from the perspective of Uruguay and the countries of the Southern Cone [...]

In this text, Uruguayan artist Luis Camnitzer—resident of New York since 1964 who was a correspondent from there for the Montevideo-based weekly Marcha—discusses the rising importance of “Latin American” art in New York art galleries and in [...]

For the first time in Montevideo in 1971, three years after the artistically-political transformative event, called Tucumán Arde, took place in Rosario and Buenos Aires, Argentina, a comprehensive, all inclusive account was published. The one who [...]

In this essay, the artist and performer Clemente Padín explains the concept of “street art and urban art” following the alternative art exhibition, Tomarte, held in the city of Rosario, Argentina, in April 1990, with the pretense [...]

In this essay, various aspects of the II Encontro Latino-americano de Artes Plásticas [Second Latin American Meeting of the Visual Arts] held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, are summarized, emphasizing the performing artistic practices and the need to [...]

This essay is about an invitation that was extended to Clemente Padín by the Yellow Springs Institute (USA) to perform at the gathering of Latin American artists held in October of 1989, resulting from information on the event. The artist, in an [...]

This text is the manifesto of Latin American art issued by the Sindicato Uruguayo de Artistas Plásticos (SUAP) in 1991, after the Primer Congreso de Arte Hispanoamericano held in La Paz, Bolivia. It addresses issues facing the region as a whole, [...]

This essay proposes that a “Latin American identity” was an idea based on two facts: the influence of the decadent post-war European culture and secondly, the geopolitical circumstances of Latin American governments confronted with North American [...]

In the early twentieth century, Europe—which had, until that time, been Latin America’s cultural referent par excellence—was deeply immersed in a devastating socio-economic crisis brought about as a result of the First World War. Fascism and [...]

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 invites the Unión de Artistas Plásticos (UAP), a division of the Confederación de Trabajadores Intelectuales del Uruguay (C.T.I.U.), to the Exposición Internacional de Artes Plásticas Revolucionarias, an event organized by the [...]

Uruguayan essayist, historian, and critic Alberto Zum Felde sums up his position on the possible origin of a culture unique to the South American continent. He looks to two major influences: Spanish culture since the time of colonization and French [...]

The avant-garde journal Los Nuevos was created in Montevideo in 1919 in an attempt to renew the European roots of literary modernism. The first issue contains an article on the life and work of French sculptor Auguste Rodin. The text asserts that [...]

In this essay, Juan Calzadilla discusses Alejandro Otero’s contribution to the field of visual art instruction. Calzadilla acknowledges Otero’s leading role in the promotion of Abstract painting and sculpture, and education, by noting the support [...]

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

In this statement, Arturo Uslar Pietri posits that the history of Latin America has been a process of raising awareness of the region’s evolution, which serves as the basis for the development of a new world born of the modern age. In an encounter [...]

Perán Erminy discusses sculpture in relation to what he sees as its origins in Judeo-Christian mythology: the Bible states that man was molded out of earth, which Erminy understands as the first sculptural form. Erminy upholds the historical [...]

This curatorial text by William Niño Araque analyzes the exhibition Max Pedemonte: Muros, templos y ciudadelas (Caracas: Fundación Galería de Arte Nacional, 1994), presenting the work of the sculptor Max Pedemonte. The text is based on an earlier [...]

This essay by the curator Julieta González is a preface to a book published by the Museo Alejandro Otero (2000) that collected articles related to the debate about “identity” in Latin America in 1965. The debate arose as a response to an article [...]

In this critical essay, Ruth Auerbach considers the challenges represented by the 5th Bienal Nacional de Arte de Guayana (Ciudad Bolívar, 1997). Here, the writer defines the theoretical foundation of the museological and curatorial vision of the [...]

Federica Palomero launches into this essay with a brief history of the MBA (Museo de Bellas Artes) in Caracas, and the steady growth of the Museum’s Collection of Latin American Art. Palomero posits that one can see the history of Latin American [...]

In this essay, María Luz Cárdenas reviews the latest work produced by Milton Becerra, the Venezuelan sculptor and artist who works with new media, focusing specifically on his installation Naturaleza y espíritu. Cárdenas compares Becerra’s work [...]

In this 1993 text, Ruth Auerbach places the work of the artists participating in the 1st Salón Pirelli de Jóvenes Artistas within two contexts: a universal context and that of Latin America. At the same time, she justifies the existence of the [...]

This text by Federica Palomero was written for Arte de América, the exhibition she curated in 1988 on the occasion of the anniversary of the founding of the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas. The text describes the origins of the collection of Inter- [...]

In her introduction to the catalog for the exhibition, The Experimental Exercise of Freedom at the MOCA (The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1999–2000), the curator Alma Ruiz explains that the purpose of the exhibition is to show [...]

This essay was written by Mari Carmen Ramírez, director of the department of Latin American art at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, on Gego and presented (as a lecture) at the symposium, Questioning the Line: Gego in Context / Cuestionando la Lí [...]

In this essay, Luis Enrique Pérez Oramas analyzes a fragment of modern Latin American art history, presented through the form of “penetrable” works. The critic describes the development of the form with respect to its representation as [...]

In this essay, Luis Enrique Pérez Oramas discusses the typology of Latin American modern art that is designed “to be penetrated” by the viewer, based on an analysis of major works by three Latin American women artists: Brazilians Lygia Clark and [...]

John O’Connor reviews the exhibition Latin America: New Paintings and Sculpture. Juan Downey, Agustín Fernández, Gego, and Gabriel Morera (New York: Art Gallery of the Center for Inter-American Relations, 1969). O’Connor acknowledges the [...]

Hilton Kramer reviews the exhibition Latin America: New Paintings and Sculpture. Juan Downey, Agustín Fernández, Gego, and Gabriel Morera, presented at the Art Gallery of the Center for Inter-American Relations in 1969. Kramer mentions the fact [...]

Drawn from the content of three chapters in Manuel Quintana Castillo’s book Cuadernos de pintura, this selection, the text “América y el arte” can be found in Chapter III. In it, the writer sets forth the dispute between those who believe in [...]

The Brazilian art researcher Luciano Alves Duffrayer believed that thanks to the nationalism of the 1920s and the assimilation of the European avant-gardes led the way to overcoming the 19th century prejudices tacitly fostered by art academies. These [...]

Curator Mónica Amor analyzes the exhibition, Sin fronteras/ Arte latinoamericano actual, held at the Museo Alejandro Otero in Caracas in 1996. She discusses the significance of the show in the context of the debates that had taken place in the [...]

Curator Miguel Miguel wrote this essay for the group show Sin fronteras/Arte latinoamericano actual, organized by the Museo Alejandro Otero in Caracas in 1996. In it, he asserts that the aim of the show is to demonstrate the significant contribution [...]

In the second part of this essay, Elsa Flores concludes her critical analysis of the work of visual artist Miguel von Dangel featured in the São Paulo Biennial. Flores examines the underlying premise that the combination of elements in von Dangel’ [...]

The critic Carlos Silva discusses his ideas about the contemporary artist’s responsibilities, citing the Venezuelan painter Oswaldo Vigas as an example. Referring to Nietzsche’s idea that, in art, “form and content” are one and the same, [...]

Venezuelan critic Roberto Montero Castro here examines some of the opinions arising from the declarations made by Oswaldo Vigas. The author laments the “tono parroquial” [parochial tone] of the replies to the Venezuelan painter, because they do [...]

Juan Calzadilla starts this critical text with a general commentary on the concept of “painting” when it is limited to the artist’s self-expression based on discovering a personal language, with the resulting isolation from the environment. He [...]

This text is writer Sebastián Salazar Bondy’s response to the article by Brazilian art critic Marc Bercowitz published in El Comercio newspaper (Lima, December 11, 1955). In Salazar Bondy’s view, Bercowitz’s questioning of the Lima press and [...]

This essay by José Carlos Mariátegui formed part of the “Peruanicemos al Perú” section of Mundial magazine. In this first text in the series on Indianist literature, Mariátegui argues the extensive repercussion of Indianist literature on new [...]

This text is the prologue that José Uriel García, an intellectual from Cuzco, wrote to his book El nuevo indio. In it, he proposes the category of “the new Indian” (the English translation of the book’s title) to designate, in physiological [...]

The artist, agent, and art critic Leonel Estrada discusses a series of paintings by Armando Villegas that were exhibited at the Chamber of Commerce in Medellín. These works, in Estrada’s opinion, reveal a departure from the artist’s earlier [...]

This interview by journalist Héctor Muñoz for the newspaper El Espectador was one of the first with painter Norman Mejía, from Cartagena, to be published in the press after he was awarded first prize at the 1965 edition of the Salón Nacional de [...]

In an interview he gave in 1978, Luis Caballero discusses the role of the critic and the evolution of the visual arts in Latin America; gives his opinion on what art means; and reflects on his own work as well as on his influences. Caballero also [...]

This document is an essay by Jacinto Quirarte outlining key moments in the history of modern Mexican and Mexican-American art in the United States. It begins with a discussion of the Mexican School, detailing central figures, sociopolitical [...]

This document by Shifra Goldman is a review of the 1987 exhibition Hispanic Artists: 30 Contemporary Painters and Sculptors held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in 1987. Goldman applauds the [...]