Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

José Clemente Orozco believed that opposition to political painting was nothing new in Mexico; it had been around since the start of the mural movement. Some painters tried to stamp out all forms of figurative or representative expression. When [...]

In this interview, Fernando de Szyszlo states that the only painting tradition that exists is the European tradition, under the standards that emanated from Paris in the late 19th century, to which all other schools have been assimilated. Even “ [...]

Juan Grela speaks about painting in the city of Rosario at his lecture, beginning with the Mutualidad [Society]. He refers to his respect for the university and his long-standing relationship with Amigos del Arte [Friends of Art]. The author tells [...]

In a text on the drawings and prints of José Luis Cuevas written in 1985, the art historian Catalina Banko compares his work to that of the Mexican muralists in order to show the major differences between them. To accomplish this, the Venezuelan [...]

Carlos Mérida sets forth eleven tenets on the development of painting in relation to the integration of the arts; these function both as a manifesto and as an introduction to the catalog. For the artist, functional painting is equivalent to [...]

Author Dorothy Chaplik provides an overview of the life and art of Alejandro Romero, a recognized Chicago-based Mexican painter and muralist. She traces his artistic career from his childhood in Tabasco and youth and Mexico City, when he first [...]

María Izquierdo describes the customs of the inhabitants of the small mining village of Chillán, Chile, which was damaged by a strong earthquake in January 1939. Mexico declared its support for Chile, presenting Chillán with the construction of [...]

Painter Pascual Navarro refutes the views of anthropologist and artist Gilberto Antolínez regarding the proposed reforms in the Academia de Artes Plásticas y Aplicadas in Venezuela in 1945. He objects to Antolínez’s prejudice against foreign [...]

Amaro Martínez presents an aesthetic and political critique of David Alfaro Siqueiros’s work and political agenda. The author defends art as an expression of man; he considers proletariat art absurd. At the same time that he defends the concept of [...]

The Nazi-affiliated nationalist newspaper Crisol [Melting pot] writes about the exhibition of Mexican artist David Alfaro Siqueiros that took place at Amigos del Arte [Friends of Art], a liberal institution that promotes the modernization of the [...]

This article reviews the José Clemente Orozco exhibition that included the paintings belonging to his La casa del llanto [The House of Weeping] series (1911) and others as well. The exhibition took place at the Biblos bookstore, located in the [...]

Fradique’s article, signed in Guadalajara, which is the capital of the state of Jalisco, sets out to review the work of some of the artists from that state. He begins with the “elders”: Dr. Atl, Alfredo Ramos Martínez (sic) and Rafael Ponce de [...]

In June 1960, the exhibition, 3000 años de arte colombiano [3000 Years of Colombian Art], was held in Miami and Washington. The journal Lámpara [Lamp] (Bogotá, published 1952–85) printed a supplement with writings by the curators who performed [...]

In this lengthy article, Fausto Ramírez discusses the importance of paying attention to the creative work of men of art and science as one contemplates the future of the world, as was done at the New School for Social Research (1930). This topic was [...]

In this document, José Clemente Orozco provides a vast panorama of what he believes was thought in Mexico in 1920 regarding art: 1. Any person could feel he was a painter; 2. Pre-Cortés art was the only tradition and everyone spoke of [...]

In this text, the painter José Clemente Orozco states that the “Manifiesto del Sindicato” [the Painters and Sculptors Manifesto] is “extraordinarily important; its influence has been felt for two decades and younger painters [...]

Carlos Chávez tells the press that he had received an order not to exhibit the painting Pesadilla de guerra y sueño de paz [Nightmare of War and Dream of Peace]. As such he had only two choices: remove the painting or close the museum; he opted for [...]

In 1944, David Alfaro Siqueiros wrote an open letter to José Clemente Orozco in which he admitted that he could identify the different stages of his work. Siqueiros begins by saying that an artist’s work is not an individual creation but the [...]

In this book, psychologist Jorge Nunes includes a series of interviews with Venezuelan painter César Rengifo. He delves into numerous aspects, some unpublished, of the life and work of the artist. Of the twenty-eight chapters that compose this book [...]

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 [...]

This article reproduces some of Diego Rivera’s observations regarding his work, based on a number of sketches done in Paris and Tehuantepec “in which the penetrating sensibility of the artist may be discerned.” These sketches would later be [...]

Jean Charlot thanks, ironically, the fact that José Clemente Orozco has not studied in Europe, since the United States offered him the mechanical elements of his œuvre, and Mexico the dramatic elements. Orozco, in Charlot’s opinion, lives within [...]

Antonio Rodríguez begins his text by justifying, to a degree, José Luís Cuevas’ harsh denunciation of the Mexican muralism movement to Marta Traba. The writer states that Cuevas, as a young painter and critic of his time, should be allowed such [...]

Antonio Rodríguez reports that José Luís Cuevas’ statements to Marta Traba concerning the Mexican muralist movement provoked resentful feelings in many painters that consider them to be unpatriotic. He states that Traba repeatedly attacked [...]

Antonio Rodríguez published an open letter sent to him by Marta Traba—the Argentine critic—in response to his article “El muralismo de México: uno de los momentos culminantes del arte de este siglo” [Muralism in Mexico: One of the Climactic [...]

In this essay from 1937, Justino Fernández conducts a study on the evolution of Mexican art during the 1920s and 1930s. The text is organized in three large sections: mural painting, general painting and sculpture. Fernández characterizes mural [...]

The Comisión Nacional de Pintura Mural [National Commission for Mural Painting], which consisted of Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, was founded in late August 1947. The Commission’s goal was to stimulate and [...]

In this biographical sketch, Loló de la Torriente defines the aspiration of David Alfaro Siqueiros as wanting to be recognized as a leader of socialist fighters rather than as a painter. The text is divided into four parts: Siqueiros, the man; the [...]

In his long essay, Siqueiros defends Diego Rivera’s work in response to Margarita Nelken’s article on the latter’s retrospective exhibition at Bellas Artes published in the latest issue of Cuadernos Americanos. He accuses Nelken of being “ [...]

The Argentine poet and journalist, Raúl González Tuñón, mounts a defense of the work of the Mexican artist, David Alfaro Siqueiros, supporting his position of taking artwork to the street. The writer comments on Siqueiros’s lectures at the [...]

Juan Pérez [John Doe], pseudonym of an unknown author, writes about the political content in David Alfaro Siqueiros’s work, emphasizing that muralism is a tool of the proletarian revolution. The anonymous author expresses the local Communist [...]

The author tells humorous anecdotes about the life of David Alfaro Siqueiros, beginning with an early one when his followers went to meet him at the train station upon his arrival in Europe. They were mighty surprised when—thinking they were to [...]

This is a review of the lecture given by David Alfaro Siqueiros—“La pintura mexicana moderna y el arte para la victoria”—at the ENBA (Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes) in Lima. It was billed as an explanation of the “true nature of the [...]

In a continuation of an article published in Artes Visuales in 1978, Carla Stellweg provides an overview of issues relevant to Chicano art and the diverse approaches artists use to negotiate such conditions. She further outlines how early Chicano [...]

David Alfaro Siqueiros attacks the implacable enemy of the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR) [League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists], the Trotskyite Diego Rivera, “leader and supporter of the Fourth International in Mexico [...]

In this catalogue essay, Victor Alejandro Sorell considers the 36-year career (spanning 1964–2000) of the Chicano artist Carlos Cortez, praising him as the “quintessential artist-reporter,” and emphasizing his virtuosity as a master printmaker [...]

In the view of Brazilian historian Aracy Amaral, the widespread prejudice against art with a “conteudístico” (content-based) approach hinders twentieth-century production from tackling sociopolitical issues. From the thirties through the [...]

“El americanismo de los años 40 y la nueva vanguardia colombiana” [The Americanism of the 1940s and the New Colombian Avant-Garde], an essay by the historian Álvaro Medina, published in 1978, discusses the artistic languages inspired by the [...]

Joaquín Torres García gave this lecture on David Alfaro Siqueiros and his mural painting at a time when several Argentinean artists who had worked closely with the Mexican painter in 1933—in particular Antonio Berni and Demetrio Urruchúa—were [...]

In his letter, Antonio Rodríguez describes the mural painted by Diego Rivera at the National Palace in Mexico City. Rodríguez refers to the satirical portrayal of Cortés and goes on to criticize the mural, saying that by caricaturing the [...]

In this 1933 article published in the Argentinian literary magazine, Crítica: Revista Multicolor de los Sábados,edited by Jorge Luis Borges and Ulyses Petit de Murat, Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros narrates a story of his time as a [...]

Xavier Moyssén writes about mural painting’s nineteenth-century precedents, in private houses and in pulquerías [agave sap saloons,] and works painted by nineteenth-century students at the Academia; the artists, he includes, are José Obregón, [...]

Zuno begins his article by pointing out the different “contributions” that tapatíos [Guadalajarans] have made to José Clemente Orozco’s work. In contrast to other tapatíos, Zuno decided to emphasize the different planes of his mural and [...]

This is the first of a four-part article on the technical nature of the Mexican painting movement. Violent aesthetic transformations had occurred in the last few years while art criticism against painters oscillated between grand praise and fury. [...]

This is the second of four articles on the nature of the current Mexican painting movement. The article concerns the celebrated individuality that incites our painters, given the supposition that originality is a painter’s greatest asset. The [...]

This is the third of four articles on the nature of the current painting movement in Mexico. It classifies those painters and writers as retrogressive, who continue to paint under outdated and foreign influences without contributing to the local [...]

This short article discusses the mural work of Fernando Leal, who has just completed the fresco El triunfo de la locomotora [The Triumph of the Locomotive] at the railroad station in San Luis Potosí. The writer painter María Izquierdo is amazed [...]

The editorial  note considers David Alfaro Siqueiros detrimental to Argentinean identity through his painting and Communist political activism. Bandera Argentina [Argentinean Flag] considers itself an anti-Communist force that believes Communism is [...]

Mario Canale relates events that occurred at the National School for Decorative Arts; they concern the interaction between professors of drawing and a group of students, under the supposed influence of David Alfaro Siqueiros, who protested over the [...]

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 [...]