Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this essay, the Spanish artist Angel Luque, then living in Venezuela, performed a point-by-point review of the pictorial characteristics of his work and his general world attitude. He states that he is in search of a type of painting that is [...]

In this essay, the Spanish artist Angel Luque—who lived in Venezuela from 1955 to 1967— analyzes the factors that led him to painting. He describes what the concept of “risk” means to him, as applied to both art and life in general. Luque [...]

Rafael Alberti, the poet, mentions León Ferrari’s Vietnam War pieces, and savors the irony of a possible exhibition of those political works at the Torcuato Di Tella Institute. He tells Ferrari how an artist should react, at a political level, vis [...]

Rafael Alberti discusses the proofs of the drawings for Escrito en el aire [Written in the Air] as well as other matters concerning the publication of the book. He mentions Ferrari’s exhibition at the Lirolay Gallery (April 1 – 15, 1964), and his [...]

Rafael Alberti wrote about having mailed the calligraphy proofs for “our” Escrito en el aire [Our Writing in the Air]; the drawings had not been sent yet, because, in his opinion, an adjustment to achieve the exact tone was needed: an informal [...]

Rafael Alberti mentions the drawings he has received in a letter from León Ferrari. He reports on publishing issues concerning Escrito en el aire [Written in the Air], makes a few remarks, and includes an amusing drawing. In closing, he describes [...]

Rafael Alberti mentions the exhibition organized by Argentine artists in Paris, referring in particular to his meeting with the artist Antonio Seguí, from Argentina. He reminisces about the times he has spent with the Ferrari family. He describes [...]

Rafael Alberti proposes Escrito en el aire [Written in the Air] as the title of the book, and tells Ferrari about the publishing arrangements being made in Italy. He mentions the friends in Milan who will deliver the special edition [...]

Rafael Alberti, the Spaniard poet, discusses his literary works and their publication, particularly Sonetos romanos [Roman Sonnets] and Escrito en el aire [Written in the Air]. He muses about León Ferrari’s work, and talks about his situation in [...]

Rafael Alberti comments on León Ferrari’s work, on photographs he sent him regarding the Vietnam War. He transcribes his poem “Vietnam.” Ironic comments about León Ferrari’s political work’s possible exhibition at Instituto Torcuato Di [...]

Rafael Alberti discusses the controversy that erupted over León Ferrari’s exhibition at theTorcuato Di Tella Institute in response to critical reviews regarding the political nature of the works involved. The poet goes on to talk about Anticolo [...]

Rafael Alberti, the Spaniard poet, remarks on how long it has been since they last wrote to each other. He refers affectionately to the Ferrari’s house in Castelar, in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, and mentions his latest poems [...]

In this text the Spanish poet Rafael Alberti and his wife María Teresa León send greetings to the Argentine artist León Ferrari and his wife Alicia, and also comment on their location—Taormina, Sicily. The message concludes by sending their best [...]

José Bergamín, the writer in exile and critic, compares poetry with painting as in classical times, and uses the language of poetry to discuss the painting of Antonio Rodríguez Luna. Bergamín refers to Rodríguez Luna’s main theme, which [...]

In this review of the New York exhibition of works by Ángel Botello Barros—the Galician painter living in exile—Manuel Valldeperes discusses the values he perceives in the paintings, referring in particular to the artist’s use of color as “ [...]

In this text, the Venezuelan art critic Roberto Guevara analyzes the visual art of Spanish-born artist Ángel Luque. He relates the new chromatic experimentations made by the artist to works by such artists as Herbin, Manessier, Picasso, and the [...]

This brief text refers to a 1935 newspaper article by Manuel Abril about the Concurso Nacional de Escultura [National Sculpture Contest] whose theme was “Conmemoración a Lope de Vega” [In Remembrance of Lope de Vega]. Abril reports that the [...]

Hugo Parpagnoli comments on the works both by Argentinean artists and by Antoni Tàpies, presented by the Torcuato Di Tella Institute at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes [National Museum of Fine Arts]. In addition, the critic argues that, in regard [...]

Going through the exhibition of the work by Arturo Souto, Spanish painter exiled in Mexico, the author of this article sets down his reflections about the perennial characteristics of Spanish painting, including work that is produced in other [...]

The critic, painter and graphic designer Miguel Prieto visits the exhibition of Arturo Souto, with whom he shares the condition of being in exile. He discovers that Souto’s painting has taken elements from Spain’s dark days—visiting the towns, [...]

In this article Ceferino Palencia, the Spanish art critic and painter living in exile in Mexico, sketches a brief biography of Roberto Fernández Balbuena, portraying him as a well-known architect and painter with a clearly defined vision. He [...]

Enrique F. Gual reviews an exhibition at the Galería Prisse at which the artist José Bartolí mainly shows his oil paintings, in spite of being better known for his drawings. To Bartolí, the oil paintings represent a phase in which he is [...]

Rufino Tamayo wrote this letter to the demagogue painters, reminding them that two years earlier he had refused to take part in the Hispanic-American Biennial, and had declared himself to be openly anti-Franco. When he was invited to take part in the [...]

Juan [sic, Josep] Renau begins by pointing to the contradictions inherent in an art criticism that examines an artist’s work armed with scant understanding of the difficulties involved in creation. In the first place, an artist’s production does [...]

Best known for his portrait of Andalusian poet Antonio Machado—which hangs in the Ateneo Español de México—Cristóbal Ruiz mostly painted landscapes of Spain. He worked mainly in the region of Castilla, which he portrayed in luminous, vivid [...]

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 “ [...]

This article provides thoughts on the meaning of land and the mother country. For José Moreno Villa, a Spanish artist exiled in Mexico during the Spanish Civil War, the mother country is made up of “my friendships, my stuff—or small material [...]

By evoking Córdoba, Spain, Antonio Rodríguez Luna’s native city, Daniel Tapia approaches the work of this painter by playing with the terms: “from what is lived to what is painted.” The tragic aspect of living in exile is what his works most [...]

Among other texts for the catalog, the Sociedad de Arte Moderno [Modern Art Association] selected statements made by Pablo Picasso himself, some years before the Spanish Civil War and World War II. To publish Picasso’s comments in Mexico was to [...]

The Spanish writer Juan Gil-Albert tells his sister, by way of letters, the traumatic experience of his Mexican exile, which compels him to live full of worries, without roots, under foreign skies. He describes, nevertheless, his liberating joy upon [...]

On the occasion of the exhibition of works by the painter and architect Mariano Rodríguez Orgaz at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, Ramón Gaya discusses the gouaches of buildings in Teotihuacán. Gaya believes that these paintings have [...]

The art critic and painter Ramón Gaya analyzes the paintings by Antonio Rodríguez Luna and considers him a victim of a failed moment of “modern painting,” in the sense that the latter reneges on his past and believes that ancient art is art [...]

A year after arriving in Mexico in 1940, the Spanish writer and painter, Ramón Gaya, pondered the uncertainties of being a painter in a foreign land. After he read a book by the Mexican painter, Roberto Montenegro, Pintura mexicana (1800-1860), Gaya [...]

This valiant text discusses the inauguration of the Exposición Bienal Hispanoamericana (1951) [Hispano-American Biennial Exhibition] in Francisco Franco’s Madrid. It was organized by the Fascist government of the Caudillo por la Gracia de Dios to [...]

In the late 1940s, Margarita Nelken reflects on the difficulties facing artistic creation during a period marked by a “lack of poise and harmony.” The new art must not distance itself from society: “The individualist formula that has lasted [...]

The author recalls his visit, three years earlier, to the Academy of Spain in Rome, where, in his judgment, “the inexplicable frivolity and artifice of modern art are halted.” He praises the work of director Eduardo Chicharro, as well as that of [...]

In the third chapter of El exilio artístico español en el Caribe: Cuba, Santo Domingo y Puerto Rico 1936–1960 [Spanish Artists in Exile in the Caribbean: Cuba, Santo Domingo, and Puerto Rico, 1936–1960], the Puerto Rican art historian María [...]

Ángel Rosenblat studies the changes that have occurred in the Spanish language over the last two hundred years, supported by his historical and linguistic research into various cultures. The philologist analyzes the place of that language in the [...]

The journalist Emilio Santana interviews Ángel Luque (1927?2014). The latter, a Spanish artist who lives in Venezuela, describes Informalism as an avant-garde form of expression, stressing its relationship to the concept of “chaos.” He discusses [...]

This is an important poetic dissertation by León Felipe, who discusses the artist’s invention of his world as an intimate space in his own creative process. That is, the poet reflects upon the synchronicity that exists between the work of art and [...]

Manuel Andújar discusses José García Narezo’s work. It has been several years since the former has seen the latter’s paintings, and he remarks that he now finds them more complete, and discerns a new stage in the artist’s process and motives [...]

Josep Renau believes that, to fully understand a work of art, one must know something about the artist’s chronological evolution, the artist’s work, and the artist’s milieu. He states: “a work of art should be . . . the latest expression of [...]

Juan Larrea, the Spanish writer living in exile in Mexico, refers to an article by André Breton (“Situación del surrealismo entre las dos guerras” [The State of Surrealism between the Two Wars]), in which the leader of the movement outlines a [...]

In this section of his four-part essay, Juan Larrea discusses the creation, development, transcendence, and objectives of Surrealism, referring to a particular case to express the significance of the movement. He mentions Víctor Brauner, the [...]

Alfonso de Neuvillate reviews the life and work of Remedios Varo, in a tribute to the Spanish painter who had died a few days earlier. Neuvillate believed that Varo, an exponent of Surrealism, had long since staked out an important space in the [...]

The anonymous author of this essay discusses landscapes by Enrique Climent, the painter living in exile, referring to the artist’s restraint and sparseness, and exemplifies, as in his painting of a simple track with a clump of trees to one side. [...]

Juan Larrea wrote these words while looking at the panel shown by Joan Miró, the famous Spanish painter, in his country’s pavilion at the International Exhibition in Paris in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War. Though it is a product of the [...]

In this text, Sérgio Buarque de Holanda analyzes what he sees as a fundamental aspect of the origin of Brazilian society: the effort to import Iberian culture to America. In the text, Holanda reminds us that Iberia was an “uncertain” region [...]

After leaving Spain in December 1927 and making a brief stop in Havana, Gabriel García Maroto arrived in Mexico. Though he had not been expressly invited by the government, he was welcomed by Minister Bernardo J. Gastélum, Enrique González Rojo, [...]

In this article, Lorenzo Varela reviews the work of two of the artists who took part in a Hispanic-American exhibition: the Mexican painter Juan Soriano, and Mariano Rodríguez Orgaz, the Spaniard living in exile in Mexico. Focusing his critical eye [...]