Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

The text “¡Pare de sufrir!: Decálogo de autoayuda para espectadores intimidados por las exposiciones de arte,” written by artist and critic Lucas Ospina was initially published on the website http://esferapublica.org on July 15, 2007. It was [...]

This document relates the response of critic Córdova Iturburu to the survey regarding abstract art or non-figurative art, in which he leans toward the expression “non-figurative art” because it permits the inclusion of not only the geometric [...]

This document is an open letter in which Julio E. Payró declares his difference of opinion with Guillermo de Torre regarding the application of the term “abstract.” This letter responds to the concepts discussed by Torre in the catalog for the [...]

This article is a review of the Premio Torcuato Di Tella 1966 [The Torcuato Di Tella Prize of 1966]; it describes the panorama and points out that on this occasion the Pop artists have rediscovered the attitude of creation; within it the personal is [...]

In this editorial article, the Czech–Peruvian poet and critic Mirko Lauer reviews Peruvian culture on the seventh anniversary of the military coup led by General Juan Velasco Alvarado, who installed the self-styled Gobierno Revolucionario de las [...]

Julio Rinaldini criticizes the leaflet with the manifesto of the Seven Artists (Antonio Berni, Lino Enea Spilimbergo, Horacio Butler, Ramón Goméz Cornet, Héctor Basaldúa, Aquiles Badi, and Emilio Pettoruti) who participated in the exhibition at [...]

This is Nelly Richard’s critical review of La pintura en Chile: desde la Colonia hasta 1981 (Painting in Chile: From the Colonial Period to 1981), the book cowritten by Milán Ivelic and Gaspar Galaz. Richard takes issue with a number of [...]

Under the title “‘¡Ay, si yo fuera pintor!’: Crítica, texto y traducción”, the artist and critic Lucas Ospina wrote a timely essay. It was published in the second issue of the journal Cuadernos Grises, issued by the Arts Department at the [...]

Néstor García Canclini, the anthropologist, professor, and cultural studies theoretician, interprets León Ferrari’s blue-printed and photocopied works, using the “aura” concept that was proposed by Walter Benjamin. He also underscores the [...]

This essay was published in the leaflet produced for the 1960 solo exhibition of Brazilian painter Willys de Castro at the Galeria Aremar in the city of Campinas. The artist himself defines the most distinctive quality of his visual art, which he [...]

Ignacio Pirovano presents Enio Iommi’s exhibition (Galería Bonino, September-October, 1969) with a thorough analysis of the different periods involved: his background, the Concrete Art period, the phase begun in 1950 since the dissolution of the [...]

This foreword by Aldo Pellegrini indicates the changes of direction produced in the period of five years separating the first Arte Nuevo [New Art] exhibition and this sixth show, which he characterizes as a passage from the intellectual to the vital [...]

Vicente Caride presents Ferruccio Polacco’s exhibition (Galería Rubbers, Buenos Aires, May 1965), emphasizing his preferences for working with the geometric embodiment of images taken from archaic civilizations. Likewise, he points out the austere [...]

Rafael Squirru presents the exhibition that conmemorates the first 15 years of Madí Art (Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires, 1961), highlighting the overt opposition that these dedicated artists must have faced in their research of experimental [...]

According to Ivo Mesquita, it is due to political-economic changes and social crises in Brazil—the results of a colonial project—that the country is influenced by the non-optimistic perspectives that have taken hold in the rest of the world with [...]

The visual artist Willys de Castro reviews the exhibition of drawings by his lifelong companion Hércules Barsotti at the Galeria de Arte das Folhas, in São Paulo. De Castro discusses Barsotti’s technique in great detail, including [...]

Jorge Romero-Brest presents Horacio García-Rossi’s exhibition (Galería Rubbers, Buenos Aires, May, 1967), highlighting the fact that he belongs to GRAV (the Paris-based Group of Research on Experimental Visual Arts), though emphasizing the fact [...]

Rafael Squirru wrote that the Argentinean artist, Kenneth Kemble was a restless artist, who worked ceaselessly in any of his aesthetic searches. Squirru considers that to talk about aa artwork is tantamount to discussing the man; therefore, he [...]

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 [...]

Luis Felipe Noé begins with the notion that the artistic milieu in which he operates is still in formation, just as the artists of the Grupo Buenos Aires come together through their relation with the societal background. In his judgment, art is just [...]

Samuel Paz wrote about the artist’s current situation, brought about by a crisis around the concept of style and a state of hypersensibility, in addition to a demand for inventiveness. The critic emphasized how Luis Gowland Moreno made use of [...]

Cayetano Córdova-Iturburu presents Carlos Cañás’s exhibition (Galería Rubbers, Buenos Aires, October, 1966), emphasizing that both the will for balance and the order set by his painting stresses this artist’s classic position, despite the [...]

This article reviews the first exhibition of the Grupo de Artistas Modernos [Modern Artists Group] of Argentina, presented at Galería Viau and featuring works by independent artists Sarah Grilo, Hans Aebi, Miguel Ocampo, and Fernández Muro, as well [...]

In this brief text, the subscribing artists (participants in the exhibition 7 pintores argentinos [Seven Argentinean Painters] in August 1935) maintain that they do not support any specific pictorial trend; they have however conflicting ideologies. [...]

Samuel Oliver presented the La Inestabilidad [Instability] exhibition at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires, in 1964. He indicated that the Paris-based Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel [Experimental Visual Arts Research Group] (GRAV [...]

In this essay, Alfredo Hlito reflects on the particular features of Concrete art. He discusses the viewer’s perception of the meaning of Concrete works of art, which involve neither a process of recognizing objects nor any form of association, but [...]

Rafael Squirru presents the exhibition by artists Eduardo Mac Entyre and Miguel Angel Vidal, identifying it as a sample of “generative art,” as it has been called by Ignacio Pirovano, in tandem with the writings of Georges Vantongerloo. In this [...]

Lawrence Oliver expresses his opinion here on Jorge Romero Brest’s methods at the Premio Torcuato Di Tella [Torcuato Di Tella Prize], specifically in terms of the support provided to the most talented artists that enabled them to present works they [...]

José Alberto García-Martínez presents Luis Centurion’s exhibition, highlighting the importance of his portraits. He also points out the synthesis of the form brought about through his drawing. Huge chromatic planes with which he expresses the [...]

In this introductory text for works by Enio Iommi, Pellegrini highlights how the artist’s sculpture broke with the traditional criteria of volume, weight and quiescence by juxtaposing spatial structure against volume. His analysis dates three [...]

The text by Pellegrini considers the broad diversity of expressions of this group of non-figurative artists and underscores that the advancement of this trend seems to have ousted all other artistic modalities to become the natural means of [...]

Luis Felipe Noé states that the work of Fernando Maza is connected to the rise of a vital artistic trens, and that it implies a maturing of expression in the visual arts of Argentina. In his opinion, Maza[both connects himself to and differentiates [...]

In this show of the Argentinean group Otra Figuración [Another Figuration] at Galería Bonino in Rio de Janeiro, the Brazilian writer and art critic Geraldo Ferraz points out the definition by Jorge Romero-Brest made at the exhibition of the New [...]

In this essay, Pietro Maria Bardi discusses the Fotoformas series by Geraldo de Barros, drawing the reader’s attention to the abstract nature of the photographs, and going as far as to associate them with works by Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, [...]

In his introduction to Enio Iommi’s exhibition (at the Galería Bonino, Buenos Aires, 1966), Aldo Pellegrini notes the artist’s awareness of space; that is, his approach to the object created in terms of its relationship to the surrounding void. [...]

The critic considers that the relevance of Surrealism lies in the fact that it is not an artistic but an ideological movement; it is in art where it finds itself justified. Pellegrini analyzes, among others, several aspects such as humor, desire, [...]

Cayetano Córdova-Iturburu presents Ferruccio Polacco’s exhibition, highlighting connections between his works and the visual structure of human reality. Likewise, the critic also points out  the process by which Polacco penetrated the human [...]

This article is an introduction to the exhibition, Grupo de Artistas Modernos de la Argentina. Pinturas, esculturas, dibujos [Modern Art Group of Argentina. Paintings, Sculptures, Drawings]. The Concrete artists included in the exhibition were [...]

Samuel Paz presents Juan Carlos Badaracco, mentioning that because this is his first show, this exhibition (Galería Rubbers, Buenos Aires, April–May, 1960) points out a phase in which the artist put aside his monologue  in order to offer himself [...]

Rafael Squirru introduces Narcisa Hirsch’s exhibition (Galería Lirolay, August–September, n/d), and he acknowledges the dramatic quality of an artist’s first solo show. Squirru stresses that Hirsch’s education and professional attitude are [...]

In this text, Aldo Pellegrini introduces the Luis R. Tomasello exhibition held at Galería Denise René in Paris (November 1962). He emphasizes that the works presented make use of spatial volumes that are subordinated to the plane in which they move [...]

In the introductory text for Aldo Paparella, the critic points out that Paparella’s works manage to synthesize the rational aspect with the vital. Pellegrini likewise emphasizes that the use of quite different materials, such as torn wood and metal [...]

This letter by León Ferrari responds to the concepts raised by Ernesto Ramallo in the article “Los artistas argentinos en el Premio Di Tella 1965” [The Argentinean Artists in the Premio Di Tella 1965] published in the newspaper La Prensa [The [...]

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 [...]

In this article, art historian Germán Rubiano provides a retrospective vision of the contributions that Argentine art critic Marta Traba—who died tragically in the outskirts of Madrid in 1983—made to the Colombian art scene. In his text, Rubiano [...]

The critic highlights the fact that—in Roberto Aizenberg’s work—a process of purification was set into motion by three essential elements: space, light, and architecture. Pellegrini points out that technical perfection and impeccable detailing [...]

Cayetano Córdova Iturburu introduces the exhibition of prints by Nelia Licenziato at Galería Lirolay (Buenos Aires, June, 1963) and expresses great enthusiasm for those who conquer interplanetary spaces. The critic also mentions the vitality of the [...]

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 [...]

Art critic Samuel Paz analyzes the work of Carlos Squirru from the concept of advertising, distant from the way in which it is used for carrying out propaganda. Different from the American artists—who handle advertising embedded in a popular trait [...]

In this text, art critic Radha Abramo takes stock of realism and metaphor in relation to wretchedness in the work of Brazilian visual artist Gontran Guanaes Netto. She underscores the link between Guanaes Netto’s production and a national type, a [...]