Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this essay, Eugenio Espinoza analyzes Dibujos sin papel [Drawings Without Paper], a series of works by Gego, a Venezuelan artist of German origin. Espinoza focuses on the works from that series created in 1985 as he explores the way Gego goes [...]

Hélio Oiticica and Rogério Duarte describe the group experience called Apocalipopótese, a hybrid term that combines the words Apocalypse, hypothesis, and hippopotamus. The essay is written in a decidedly irreverent, poetic style that establishes a [...]

Jorge Romero Brest points out that in the Experiencias 1968 [1968 Practices], young artists tried to raise the problem of creation in terms that were almost extreme, presenting crucial situations that depart from traditional “artwork” only by a [...]

[Literary critic and intellectual] Nicolás Rosa presented this text for discussion at the Primer Encuentro Nacional del Arte de Vanguardia [First National Encounter of Avant-garde Art] (Rosario, Argentina, 1968). It appeals to the communications [...]

The members of the jury assigned to participate in the 1964 Instituto Torcuato Di Tella Prize, Jorge Romero Brest, Clement Greenberg, and Pierre Restany have decided to grant the International Prize to Kenneth Noland, and also recommended the [...]

This text was written by Venezuelan playwright and essayist Isaac Chocrón (1930–2011) for the catalogue accompanying the Gego exhibition, Gego esculturas. 1957–1967, held at the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango in Bogotá (1967). Chocrón places [...]

This text outlines Blaszko’s opinion concerning the artist’s mission; it explains the artist’s method, which includes the use of rhythm and the interplay of conflicting forces while ensuring that the resulting forms are always governed by the [...]

Samuel Paz wrote this letter to Jorge Romero Brest while the former was in Paris. It refers to the details of the negotiations with different galleries to secure the works for the Premio Torcuato Di Tella 1967 [1967 Torcuato Di Tella Prize]. Paz [...]

This is a letter Samuel Paz wrote in New York to Jorge Romero Brest, in which he provides the details regarding the negotiations with different galleries undertaken to obtain works that would participate in the Premio Torcuato Di Tella 1967. [The [...]

This is a letter written by the American entrepreneur and patron, David Rockefeller, to David Bronheim, president of the Center for Inter-American Relations, New York, on January 26, 1970. The letter thanked Bronheim for the good time he had on the [...]

This letter from Mario Pedrosa, the Brazilian critic, stresses the importance of the gesture made by artists who donated their works to the Museo de la Solidaridad in a spirit of soladarity with the people of Chile, who were at that time on the road [...]

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 [...]

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 ( [...]

This document is a letter written to Gego in German by the architect, Christian Thiel, from Frankfurt on October 15, 1982. After a short introduction, Thiel talks about his nostalgia for Reticulárea, installed in the Alte Oper [Old Opera Building], [...]

This draft of a text by painter Antonino Espinosa Saldaña was for a presentation at an exhibition of his work that did not take place. In it he justifies the absence of titles or any references for the works, “because one should not impose a [...]

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 [...]

This text for the Lawrence Alloway exhibition relates the language of art to the national identity; it analyzes the diversification of distribution channels and, as such, points out the international dissemination of artistic production. Alloway [a [...]

Rubén Santantonín is selected for the Premio de Honor [Prize of Honor] at Ver y Estimar 1962 (Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires [...]

Rubén Santantonín is selected for the Premio de Honor [Prize of Honor] at Ver y Estimar 1963 (Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires [...]

In this essay, Ron Kovatch explores how issues of relocation, assimilation, and identity are manifest in the group of sculptures by Raoul Deal presented in the installation Reinventing Jimmy Green. Inspired by his grandfather Eugenio Greco’s [...]

The Venezuelan curator and critic Lourdes Blanco analyzes Reticulárea, 1969, the installation created by the German-born Venezuelan artist, Gego. Blanco sees this work as the product of a process of “calculation and spontaneity” that is utterly [...]

In this manuscript, Gego explains what she would say if people asked her about the influences on her work, especially during the 1960s and 1970s. She states that so far she would rather leave the responses to “historians and scholars.” She [...]

In this speech to her companions at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop, Gego describes the basic tenets of her work and outlines the projects she plans to present. She explains how her use of line has evolved over the course of time, from her early [...]

In this critical review of Livro da Criação, the work by Lygia Pape, the writer and Ambassador José Guilherme Merquior notes that though the piece is playful it is certainly not childish. He adds that the work depends entirely on the viewer’s [...]

This is a review of the following emblematic works produced by Cildo Meireles: “Inserções em Circuitos Ideológicos,” “Espaços Virtuais: Cantos,” and “Blindhotland.” According to the art critic Wilson Coutinho, these works suggest a [...]

This is the text of the inaugural speech given by President Salvador Allende of Chile, in which he expresses his gratitude for the donations that amassed the collection of the Museo de la Solidaridad, and agrees to maintain it. He also mentions his [...]

In this presentation of an exhibition of work by Rosana Paulino held in 1997, art critic Aracy Amaral places emphasis on innovative features of Paulino’s work that mark a break with the Brazilian art scene of the time. She specifically mentions [...]

In this essay, Hélio Oiticica discusses the concept of the “open work,” an approach to art that ignores the boundaries and the actual physical existence of the object. In this case, the object does not exist as something endowed with its own [...]

Mário Pedrosa analyzes Lygia Clark’s artistic career beginning with the elimination of frames for her canvases (during the 1950s) through to the incorporation of the viewer’s action into her work (see her Bichos series) and the full integration [...]

This book, from the ABC—Arte Brasileira Contemporânea—collection published by FUNARTE, is about Antônio Dias. The book was written by the critic Paulo Sergio Duarte, who suggests that the artist’s work shattered standards and showed that [...]

Jorge Romero Brest’s presentation muses on artistic truth. The critic wonders if scientific and artistic truths have anything in common, suggesting that genuine artistic truth is devoid of preexisting realities. He also wonders if works of art are [...]

According to Luis Zevallos Hetzel, the painting that took the prize at the Festivales Ancón is not exactly a work of art because it is an (exact) reproduction of an advertisement for a brand of motorcycles. Though the painter claims he is under no [...]

This book on artist Anna Bella Geiger forms part of the ABC—Arte Brasileira Contemporânea—a collection published by the Fundação Nacional de Artes (Funarte), a government organization with headquarters in Rio de Janeiro. In this volume, critic [...]

In this essay, Mónica Amor analyzes the contribution that the work by Gego, Reticulárea, has made to contemporary art. She claims that Reticulárea is a radical attack on the way architecture defines space, as well as the conventions of sculpture, [...]

In this essay, Hélio Oiticica discusses the ruptures to be created by a new objectual perspective in Brazilian art that he uses to define his concept of “super-sensory” experience. He is referring to art installations of an (inner) libertarian [...]

This text by Julio Le Parc addresses the artist’s problems within the social context, posing a series of questions about the myths that continue to surround and affect a work of art. In general terms, it questions those who maintain the idea of [...]

This document is a typewritten letter from Gego to Delpre C.A., Unidad Comercial La Florida, Caracas, dated June 10, 1972; it is addressed specifically to the architecture firm Siso, Shaw and Associates. In the letter, Gego informs the architects [...]

Critic Mário Pedrosa terms Hélio Oiticica’s recent work “post-modern,” given that he no longer relies on criteria established by Cubism, but rather on other innovative stimuli. In his judgment, this “post-modern” work begins a new cycle [...]

In this text, Marta Traba argues that the understanding, enjoyment, and appreciation of art are hindered by the common idea that it is comparable to reality. She defends the notion that art must be understood as an autonomous reality, which due to [...]

Under the title “Basta de mistificaciones” [Enough with the mystifications] the Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (GRAV) [Visual Arts Research Group] signed a manifesto that would become the basis of the present-day relationship between [...]

This is an announcement that the catalogue published by the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende in May 1972 does not represent the full collection and, therefore, does not mention all the donating artists. The announcement also requests any and [...]

This book is part of the ABC (Arte Brasileira Contemporânea) collection, published by Funarte (Fundação Nacional das Artes). As the title suggests, Artur Barrio is about the artist; it includes a selection of his essays, illustrated with a variety [...]

This list contains information about the artists who donated works to the Museo de la Solidaridad in Santiago, Chile. It gives their name, country of origin, and a description of the works that, at the time of publication, were already in the museum [...]

This book on artist Cildo Meireles forms part of the ABC—Arte Brasileira Contemporânea—a collection published by the Fundação Nacional de Artes (Funarte), a governmental organization with headquarters in Rio de Janeiro. The volume contains the [...]

This article discusses a plan by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City to purchase works by José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, Rufino Tamayo, Jesús Guerrero Galván, and Juan Soriano. The chosen artists’ formal and artistic qualities are [...]

Having analyzed the art produced recently in Brazil, the critic Frederico Morais announces the demise of the concept of a “work of art,” which he believes will be replaced by something more akin to a “situation and/or proposal.” After [...]

The main topic of this interview is the graphic work of Brazilian artist Anna Maria Maiolino exhibited in 2002 at the Drawing Center and Art in General in New York. During the conversation, Maiolino clarifies that in the seventies her art became [...]

This text is a report submitted to the Archbishop of Bogotá in 1942. It was prepared by three priests sent to visit the III Salón Nacional de Artistas held at the Biblioteca Nacional in Bogotá and to report on the painting Anunciación [ [...]

In her weekly newspaper column, “Criticandito,” published on June 17, 1979 (in La Verdad, Caracas), Sofía Imber discusses four cultural events, two of which were at the Galería Mendoza, in Caracas: Guaches de la aldea de la India Madhubani [ [...]

In this text, Brazilian artist Lygia Clark affirms the presence of man as the backbone of art. She goes so far as to formulate the loss of the object’s relevance as meaning and as means of communication. She posits a relationship between art and [...]