Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

Argentine critic Marta Traba considers Puerto Rican artist Julio Rosado del Valle a key figure in Puerto Rican art because he was among those who paved the way for innovative approaches and experimentation in painting. She asserts that in the work of [...]

On the occasion of the exhibition La casa de todos nosotros: Antonio Martorell y sus amigos [A House for Us All: Antonio Martorell and Friends] held at El Museo del Barrio in 1992, Puerto Rican curator Susana Torruella Leval analyzes Antonio [...]

In this conversation between Nuyorican artist Papo Colo, and feminist performance artist Martha Wilson, Colo describes his performances from 1976 to 1986 in chronological order. The conversation with her provides succinct descriptions of the [...]

This essay, written by curator Susana Torruella Leval, provides a biographical overview of the careers of mural artist, Nitza Tufiño, and her father, Rafael Tufiño—a renowned Puerto Rican painter and printmaker. Leval describes the relationship [...]

In this set of four brief poems, Ralph de Romero, a Puerto Rican artist born in New York, expresses his thoughts about painting and art. Some of the themes he addresses in his poems are related to defining art and its elements, and he also reveals [...]

This document contains Bibiana Suaréz's responses to four of the eighteen questions posed to artists by the organizers of The Puerto Rican Equation, an exhibition marking the occasion of the 1898 invasion of Puerto Rico by the United States. Suarez [...]

In this artist statement, Bibiana Suarez discusses how her work reflects her search for self-identification and the problems of living between two cultures—that of Puerto Rico and the United States—as a self-imposed exile. Suarez also describes [...]

In this artist statement for the exhibition In Search of an Island (1991), Bibiana Suarez discusses how her work reflects her search for self-identification and the problems of living between two cultures—that of Puerto Rico and the United States [...]

Lorenzo Homar begins these brief notes on Puerto Rican art and artists by discussing painter Francisco Oller. He goes on to state that art should be at the service of society and that artists should not be concerned with imitating avant-gardes who [...]

Rafael Montañez Ortiz describes the assemblages of Marcos Dimas as an extension of the artist’s childhood experience of digging up bits of Taíno artifacts in the fields of Puerto Rico. Ortiz proposes that Dimas’s works are the result of his [...]

This exhibition catalog, Chicago Latino, was part of an intercultural dialogue initiated by two “socially-minded arts groups,” the 369 Gallery of Edinburgh, Scotland, and the Near Northwest Arts Council of Chicago, Illinois. The exhibition [...]

This text consists of comments by Puerto Rican artist Elizam Escobar, regarding the various concepts and functions of art. In the quotations alongside or below the illustrations of his paintings, Escobar talks about what it means to be Puerto Rican. [...]

This timeline tracks the life of Puerto Rican artist Rafael Tufiño, who lived in New York and in Mexico City. Puerto Rican intellectuals Manuel Cárdenas Ruiz and Eugenio Fernández Méndez review the graphic work produced by Tufiño between the [...]

This is a quote from Ralph de Romero, a Puerto Rican artist born in New York, which is accompanied by a pen and ink drawing: “Depression limitates [sic] the creative activity, deteriorates the involvement and mutilates the concept.” Written in [...]

Artist Rafael Colon Morales criticizes the selections for the exhibition of recent acquisitions of El Museo del Barrio for lacking consistent coherent criteria. He observes that there are few high-quality works on display, and therefore he does not [...]

In this short poem, Ralph de Romero, a Puerto Rican artist born in New York, explains why he has always been an artist, never paying any attention to other people’s opinion [of him]. In the poem, de Romero explains that his dedication is documented [...]

In this short essay, Marcos Dimas discusses his participation in a 1969 group show of Puerto Rican artists at the Brooklyn Museum, where he displayed two paintings, and his first assemblage. He notes that he met the future cofounders of the Puerto [...]

In this essay published in the 1992 exhibition catalog of Remerica! Amerika, Puerto Rican artist Enoc Perez discusses the effects of United States colonialism in the development of art in Puerto Rico. He observes that Puerto Rican artists have [...]

[This document provides] confidential information written by José Meléndez, a police sergeant with the Puerto Rican Intelligence Office, naming those who had attended a meeting chaired by Juan Mari Bras, the president of the Movimiento Pro [...]

In this lecture, the artist Bibiana Suarez recounts how a student's question prompted her to consider her own reasons for producing art; including the motivation of greed, which, although ostensibly negative, she considers as a motivator. Suarez [...]

In this lecture given in April 1989 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago-based, Puerto Rican artist Bibiana Suarez states that the value of art is dependent on its power to reveal the artist’s innermost world, and to preserve that [...]

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. [...]

In this typewritten open letter, the artist collective Taller Boricua [Puerto Rican Workshop], criticizes El Museo del Barrio for excluding the work of several New York-based Puerto Rican artists from an unnamed exhibition of Puerto Rican art jointly [...]

Mexican artist Alberto Beltrán informs Puerto Rican artist Lorenzo Homar that a number of people have shown interest in exhibiting works by Puerto Rican artists outside of Mexico. He also mentions an exhibition of Soviet art that has had a major [...]

In this letter to Puerto Rican artist Lorenzo Homar, Mexican artist Alberto Beltrán comments on the new issue of the publication, El coyote emplumado[The Plumed Coyote], which will cover topics relating to the campaign being waged by right-wing [...]

The Puerto Rican artist and critic José A. Torres Martinó writes to Lorenzo Homar to tell him that he will try to raise the necessary fundsto meet him in Europe. Torres Martinó then continues bringing Homar up to date on what their colleagues [...]

The president of the Puerto Rican company United Promoters and Advertisers, Juan Luis Márquez, sends Lorenzo Homar the article he wrote for El Mundo newspaper, “Entre Mayas y Cundeamores” [Between Mayas and Bitter Melons], in which Márquez [...]

The Puerto Rican artist and critic José A. Torres Martinó writes to Lorenzo Homar to describe the technique that was used to remove the tiles of the mural installed in the pool area of El Escambrón (the project was undertaken in 1966), and how [...]

In this letter, Mexican artist Albero Beltrán (1923–2002) informs Puerto Rican artist Lorenzo Homar that the course in poster design that Polish designer Wiktor Gorka was offering at the Academia de San Carlos (Mexico City) would continue until [...]

Puerto Rican artist Lorenzo Homar apologizes for being so late with his preparations for the poster exhibition in Cali, Colombia. He comments that his work was not well received by the critics and he has doubts about himself when he finds out that [...]

In this letter to Colombian artist Pedro Alcántara, Puerto Rican printmaker Lorenzo Homar explains the materials that are necessary to print silkscreens in Colombia. He explains what the dryer should be like, which thinner should be purchased, and [...]

Puerto Rican artist Lorenzo Homar thanks Mariano Rodriguez (1912–1990), vice director of the Casa de las Américas, for inviting him to serve as the coordinator for an adjunct group of that organization in Puerto Rico. However, Homar turns down the [...]

Colombian artist Pedro Alcántara thanks Lorenzo Homar for the photographs, letters, and silkscreen he sent him. Alcántara asks him to buy some printing materials he will need to create a portfolio of four works for the Communist Party. The party [...]

Puerto Rican artist Lorenzo Homar tells Ricardo Alegría, director of the Instituto Puertorriqueña [Institute of Puerto Rican Culture], what happened to Homar’s portfolio, Tres estrofas de amor para soprano [Three Stanzas of Love for Soprano], [...]

In response to an article that appeared in the art section of The San Juan Star newspaper, Lorenzo Homar explains that there will not be a “counter Biennial” at the Tercera Bienal de San Juan del Grabado Latinoamericano [Third San Juan Biennial [...]

The group—calling itself the Colectiva de Artistas Puertorriqueños—articulates the concern that the policies of El Museo del Barrio marginalize the production of Puerto Rican artists in New York in favor of promoting well-established artists [...]

Quela Rovira, an Uruguayan artist, informs Lorenzo Homar about the shipping of the posters that had been exhibited. She sends her regrets about the events that occurred in Uruguay just after the exhibition, since they worsened the sale prospects for [...]

The Argentine conceptual artist and theoretician Edgardo Antonio Vigo writes to thank Lorenzo Homar for his donation of his own prints and others by some of his Puerto Rican colleagues to the Museo de la Xilografía [Woodcut Museum] in La Plata ( [...]

In this letter to Luis Manuel Rodríguez Morales, executive director of the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña (ICP), Colombian artists María de la Paz Jaramillo, Pedro Alcántara, Phanor León, Gustavo Zalamea, and Augusto Rendón condition their [...]

Lorenzo Homar states that Puerto Rican artists were never informed that the IV Bienal de San Juan del Grabado Latinoamericano [IV Latin American Print Biennial, San Juan] would be financed with funds from the American Revolution Bicentennial [...]

The Puerto Rican artist Paul Camacho writes to Lorenzo Homar about his disagreement with a critique of his work that appeared in Frente. Camacho tells Homar that he expressed his disapproval but was outvoted and the Editorial Board of Frente decided [...]

In these short lines, written in 1981, Ralph de Romero, a Puerto Rican artist born in New York, speaks of the polarities through which his work fluctuates as it unfolds [...]

In these short verses, Ralph de Romero, a Puerto Rican artist born in New York, starts out talking about what paintings seek to achieve. He goes on to state what he believes should be included in paintings [...]

In this text, artist Bibiana Suarez’s makes a personal statement about her experience as a self-imposed Puerto Rican exile in Chicago, her negotiations of living “on the edge of two cultures,” and her artistic exploration of feelings of loss, [...]

Renowned art critic Lucy Lippard compares Papo Colo’s artistry to an island like his native Puerto Rico that is also striving for independence. Trying to relate Colo’s painting style to what had become the shadow term of “expressionism,” she [...]

In this panel presentation at the 1992 Women's Caucus for Arts, artist Bibiana Suarez spoke about how her images reflect her reality as a Puerto Rican living in the United States who feels caught between two cultures and who insistently searches for [...]

In this introduction to an exhibition of prints held to celebrate the first anniversary of the opening of the Galería Colibrí, Italian art dealer Luigi Marrozzini thanks the Puerto Rican public for the reception his gallery has received. He [...]

In this brief statement, Nuyorican artist Jorge Soto provides an historical overview of El Museo del Barrio. The author contends that the institution emphasized the educational value of Puerto Rican culture, but did not attend to the needs of Puerto [...]

In her brief introduction to the exhibition catalogue, Children of Darkness: Rafael Colón Morales, curator Gladys Peña asserts that Colón Morales broke away from the traditional painting of Puerto Rico by experimenting with both surrealist and [...]

The essay provides a biographical overview of the career of mural artist Nitza Tufiño, the daughter of Puerto Rican printmaker Rafael Tufiño. In it, curator Susana Torruella Leval describes Nitza Tufiño’s process of creating a ceramic tile mural [...]