Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In these two chapters of text from the book ¿Existe América Latina?, Luis Alberto Sánchez discusses the idea of “Latin America” as both a political bloc and a cultural value, ultimately arguing for a dynamic concept of Latin America that is [...]

In this chapter from América Latina en sus artes Jorge Alberto Manrique begins by describing the artistic movements of the 1920s and comparing this period to a giant hinge that moved backward to the nineteenth century and forward to the twentieth [...]

Brazilian literary critic and essayist Afrânio Coutinho wrote this article in the late- 1960s. His article states since inception that to him the term “Latin American,” is at odds with the historical, social, cultural, literary, and artistic [...]

In this text, Marta Traba argues that there is not really a unified [Latin] American aesthetic in the visual arts and calls for an honest investigation of the question of such an aesthetic approach, even at the risk of affirming that no common spirit [...]

This is the introduction to the catalogue for the Salón de Artistas Jóvenes Latinoamericanos [Young Latin American Artists Salon]—held at the Pan-American Union in Washington, DC in 1965. It was written by José Gómez Sicre, director of the [...]

In this article, scholar Carla Stellweg discusses the position of New York as the world art center during the 1960s and ‘70s, which attracted many artists from Latin America who came eager to experience its artistic effervescence firsthand. Through [...]

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 [...]

Aracy A. Amaral asserts that there is no such thing as a unified expression of Latin American art, but instead a desire for cultural integration that has not yet been resolved. She understands that the countries of the Americas share common problems [...]

[This text is] the first issue of Los Disidentes (Paris, 1950) magazine, in which [the group] explains succinctly the “essential mission” of the eponymous magazine and the “immediate aim” which they are pursuing with this [...]

Operating from Argentina, the Movimiento Espartaco [Spartacus Movement] argued that there was a need for national and revolutionary Latin American art. According to this argument, it would be necessary to eliminate from the social order the economic [...]

In this prologue to the catalogue of the 3rd Coltejer Art Biennial, held in Medellín in 1972, the president of the sponsoring company, Rodrigo Uribe Echavarría, explained what he considered to be the double significance of the Biennial, the most [...]

Playwright Augusto Boal declares that all the stories contained within his book are true, and were written based on testimony overheard during different trips that occurred after he left Brazil in 1971, during the height of the military dictatorship [...]

This is the introduction to the 1st Latin American Art Biennial delivered by James F. McCloud, the President of the Biennial, at the opening of the event on June 26, 1962, at the Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes “Emilio A. Caraffa” in Córdoba, [...]

Antonio Berni writes about Nuevo Realismo [New Realism], which he defines as an aesthetic identity that, in Latin America, vacillates between form and content [...]

In this letter, Uruguayan artist and academic Luis Camnitzer tells printmaker Lorenzo Homar that he and the other artists at his New York Graphic Workshop had managed to get the Center for Inter-American Relations to suspend a New York exhibition of [...]

In this letter, Nitza Tufiño, the Mexican born Puerto Rican artist, and daughter of the printmaker Rafael Tufiño, tells Lorenzo Homar that the capitalist system gives artists exhibitions, biennials, and museum shows in exchange for their silence. [...]

Luigi Marrozzini, director of the Galería Colibrí in San Juan, provides H.D. Glicksman with information about the Portafolio Latinoamericano, which consists of twenty-two original prints, mostly etchings and lithographs produced in signed, limited [...]

The art critic sent this letter to Ernesto Deira informing him about the Instituto de Arte Latinoamericano [Latin American Art Institute], which includes the Museo Latinoamericano [Latin American Museum], for which he requests the collaboration of [...]

This is a letter from Mr. Ramón Huidobro, the Chilean ambassador to Buenos Aires, , to Antonio Berni, the Argentine artist, to thank him for his donation of a work of art to the Museo de la Solidaridad. The letter was accompanied by a catalogue of [...]

In this letter to poet Ferreira Gullar, artist Antonio Henrique Amaral expresses the dilemma he faces about whether to continue to deal with the problems of life in New York or return to Brazil. He explains that he has grown accustomed to the [...]

Alberto Beltrán, a Mexican artist, writes to his friend, Puerto Rican printmaker Lorenzo Homar, to thank him for his earlier letter explaining the problems surrounding the IV Bienal de San Juan del Grabado Latinoamericano [4th San Juan Biennial of [...]

The Colombian artist Pedro Alcántara writes to Lorenzo Homar asking him to participate in the production of the portfolio “Grandes Maestros de la Plástica Latinoamericana” [Great Masters of Latin American Visual Art]. Ten artists are to be [...]

In this letter to Puerto Rican artist Lorenzo Homar, Argentine artist Mauricio Lasansky states that he resents the fact that the Bienal de San Juan del Grabado Latinoamericano y del Caribe [Latin American and Caribbean Print Biennial, San Juan] is [...]

This is Antonio Berni’s critical review of Latin American art during the last ten years, in which he identifies other problems that, in his opinion, “are still ignored by the critics.” The Argentinean visual artist refers to categories and [...]

This excerpt from the first chapter of José Vasconcelos’s 1925 book, La raza cósmica, outlines his vision for what he calls “the cosmic race”: a comprehensive, final stage of humanity that would envelope all races in order to build a new [...]

In his article, Armando Castellanos interprets Raoul Deal’s work featured in the exhibition Las Esperanzas del Loro Verde [The Hopes of the Green Parrot]. Castellanos argues that Deal’s work confronts the duality, ambiguity, and tension between [...]

In this introduction to the catalogue of the 1959 exhibition The United States Collects Pan-American Art held at the Art Institute of Chicago, curator Joseph Randall Shapiro addresses the issue of the inadequacy of the term “Latin American art” [...]

Hugo Acevedo writes about the artists brought together by the events of daily life, who, in his experience, are moving on to action. He demonstrates that there is no intention of delving deeply into artistic matters, rather the goal is to pay tribute [...]

This written testimonial expresses the reasons why a group of residents and nonresidents took over the Pabellón Argentino de la Ciudad Universitaria de París [Argentinean Building of the University Boarding Complex of Paris] in 1968. It denounces [...]

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 [...]

In this text, Manoel Bomfim criticizes the European attitude toward Latin America. According to the author, this attitude is due to sheer European ignorance about Latin American countries. He acknowledges that this posture had been changing, with [...]

The Brazilian critic Frederico Morais suggests that the discovery of artistic production emerging from peripheral locales in nations on both sides of the Atlantic is leading to a process of cultural decentralization. This outward movement from the [...]

In this essay, Annateresa Fabris addresses the issue of identity and its connections to the visual arts in Latin America. She refers to the concept of a “sense of place” in the development of the symbolic system that posits the idea of a “ [...]

In this feature on the Cuban-American artist Paul Sierra, Jeff Huebner writes the artist’s biography, his recent ascent in the mainstream art world, and the attendant conflicts that arose in relationship to his status as a Latino artist. Huebner [...]

In this essay, the art critic Frederico Morais takes a new approach to Latin American Constructive art, describing the influence it has had on European and North American art as well as its relationship to Latin American culture and society. The term [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

In this essay from 2004, the Mexico-based Argentinean art theoretician and anthropologist Néstor García Canclini traces the decline of Latin America through [recent times] and examines three styles of Latin Americanism beginning in the mid- [...]

In this article, Alfredo Chacón reviews and issues commentaries on the principal arguments of the art critics involved in the controversy that Marta Traba began through her article “El arte latinoamericano: un falso apocalipsis.” Chacón states [...]

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 [...]

This prologue to the published Viracocha notebooks was written in 1923 by the president of the Argentinean Comisión Nacional de Bellas Artes, Martín Noel. The Viracocha sketchbooks were a collection of drawings inspired by themes and motifs in the [...]

The Peruvian art historian Carlos Rodríguez Saavedra defines genuine creation as an expression of truth that admits no alternatives, then goes on to state that the finest Latin American artists blend two opposites—“indigenous” and “universal [...]

In this brief essay, Gabriela Mistral makes a cultural reconstruction of the images of America, a “terrestrial Valkyrie,” that includes the social conflicts at the time, the responsibility of its inhabitants to see about the future of their [...]

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, [...]

The curatorial message of this exhibition is that the cultural patronage and aesthetic rejection of Latin American art (as a whole) no longer apply. As a historical-cultural construct, Latin America is an amalgam. The cultural miscegenation that took [...]

Inspired by the creation of the Memorial da América Latina (designed by Oscar Niemayer), this article discusses the various attempts to promote cultural unity among Latin American countries. According to the author, the anthropologist Darcy [...]

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 [...]

In this article, J. R. Guillent Pérez confronts what he considers to be Marta Traba’s “attitude of disdain,” in her use of the term “apocalypse” in a negative sense; in doing so he makes use of philosophical sources, such as L’être et [...]

This is a summary of Gilberto Freyre’s thoughts on the subject of Latin America, with a focus on the cultural anthropological aspects of a hybrid civilization based on a blend of black, American Indian, and European traditions. The author discusses [...]

In this text, Antenor Orrego argues that nationalist culture should not be based on the traditional cultures of Peru, but rather on a totally new Pan-American sensibility. Orrego argues that a contemporary “Peruanismo literario” is a false idea [...]