Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This is the program for the dedication of three murals in the Puerto Rican neighborhood of Humboldt Park in Chicago. The murals were painted by artists and community residents during the summer of 1971 and speak about their history and the problems [...]

The exhibition catalog is a curatorial reconstruction of the 1910 exhibition held for the Centennial of Mexican Independence and organized by the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes de México. The study was based on an amassing of graphic materials [...]

The article written by the researcher Pilar García de Germenos presents the cultural biography of Alfredo Ramos Martínez from 1910 to 1920, to help our understanding of the changes he implemented at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes. During [...]

This essay, written by Francisco Díaz de León, director of the Escuela de Pintura al Aire Libre [Open-Air Schools of Painting] in Tlalpan, explains that the Schools favor an aesthetic education and individual expression over technical education. He [...]

This article, written by Rafael Vera de Córdoba, director of the Escuela al Aire Libre [Open-Air School] in Xochimilco, provides a detailed description of the School’s teaching method. He refers to the students as children with no prior experience [...]

This text by writer and chronicler, Salvador Novo, provides a brief history of the Escuelas de Pintura al Aire Libre [Open-Air Schools of Painting], beginning with their origins in 1913 and continuing through to the time of the writing of this text. [...]

This text underscores the originality, expression and strength of the works created at the Escuelas de Pintura al Aire Libre [Open-Air Schools of Painting], arguing that these qualities are the product of racial purity and that as mestizaje [racial [...]

This text presents the Escuelas de Pintura al Aire Libre [Open-Air Schools of Painting] and its creative production as evidence that Mexican children have a natural artistic disposition. It also associates this disposition with their indigenous blood [...]

This text by Fermín Revueltas, the director of the Escuela al Aire Libre de Guadalupe Hidalgo [Open-Air School of Guadalupe Hidalgo], is very concise. He states that the school he directs teaches art methods so that works can be created to be both [...]

In his introduction to Método de Dibujo [Drafting Method], José Juan Tablada identifies it as a weapon in the struggle to establish harmony and democracy amid the chaos and authoritarianism in the artistic milieu. He states that the process at work [...]

This text explains the theoretical basis for Best Maugard’s drafting method prior to the development of his manual explained in the following section. The theory is based on a platonic and universal perspective of art that expresses universal [...]

This text chronologically summarizes the conception, development and implementation of Best’s drafting method that culminated in a publication of it. The publication places it within the context of American ideas, celebrating its good judgment to [...]

This text speaks of the evolution of sensorial perception and its relation to artistic expression. It proposes that the method of Adolfo Best Maugard be used in arts education because it would permit greater development and personal satisfaction [...]

Golpe, the journal of the Federación de Escritores y Artistas Proletarios (FEAP) [Federation of Proletarian Writers and Artists] published an editorial in which members of the Federation expressed their opinions on the issue of socialist education. [...]

In his proclamation, Diego Rivera denounces that the stance of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) is classist. According to the muralist, UNAM closes ranks against any attack from the proletariat organizations that [...]

Diego Rivera states that he is completely within his rights to respond to statements made by students at the School of Architecture against him. In spite of the threats received from students, he has no intention of retracting or withdrawing a single [...]

Belonging to the group Los Disidentes (Paris, 1950), the Venezuelan artist Mateo Manaure critically recounts in detail the history of the Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Caracas. His story relates the moments of crisis at the institution brought about [...]

The sculptor Francisco Zúñiga analyzes the reasons for the failure of the art schools. He acknowledges that the art schools do not graduate artists; the students are rather there to learn a set of techniques that are essential to making art. La [...]

The sculptor Francisco Zúñiga is going through a time of transition in the arts, when the old artists are confronted with young sculptors who are in search of quick success for their works. Taking the opposite view, he admires the long time it took [...]

In this letter, the painter [and writer] Roubaix de l’Abrie Richey, known by the pseudonym, “Robo,” the husband of the Italian artist and photographer, Tina Modotti, writes to Edward Weston from Mexico City. The writer is visiting Mexico in [...]

This article reviews the second exhibition of paintings by children at the Escuelas al Aire Libre [Open Air Schools] run by the Secretaría de Educación Pública [SEP, Ministry of Public Education]. The exhibition was held at the Palacio de Minería [...]

A committee was formed to call for the construction of schools due to the lack of educational institutions and the dearth of jobs and opportunities for the teachers who had recently graduated, as well as the older, unemployed educators. The plan was [...]

This article addresses two problems in the field of education: the fact that the 360 elementary schools in Mexico City were overwhelmed by the number of children in need of education; and teachers submitted a petition to the City Hall of the capital [...]

To strengthen the idea of a modern art museum in Mexico, Carlos Román proposes that the modern and contemporary material accumulated in the warehouses of the Academia de San Carlos be added to the collection. He also suggests allocating public funds [...]

Antonio Berni analyzes the educational system and technical instruction and discusses the creation of an art academy in Rosario; he relates those general matters to the specific characteristics of Rosario [...]

This article centers on two events: Orozco’s participation in the student exhibition at the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos during the critical year of 1910 and his start as a caricaturist for opposition newspapers. The government [...]

This is a very suggestive article on the exhibition organized by the publication Savia Moderna [Modern Sap] in May 1906. The show is interesting because it included only those Mexican artists who had promised a change in the national outlook, as well [...]

This interesting article by the critic Okusai (the pseudonym of José Juan Tablada) reports on the two important art exhibitions held in Mexico in 1906: that of the magazine Savia Moderna [Modern Sap] and another of artists sponsored by the Mexican [...]

Ricardo Gómez Robelo enthusiastically celebrates the success of the exhibition mounted at the Academia de San Carlos in 1906, featuring Mexican artists who had been awarded fellowships. He praises the “revelation that we do not deceive ourselves, [...]

This is the first systematic study of this painter’s murals in the so-called “Escuelas funcionalistas” [functional schools]. One school was built in 1932 in the Colonia Pro-Hogar (Azcapotzalco Area) in Mexico City; two years later, Alva [...]

If the concept of socialist schools were to be fully implemented, appropriate facilities would be required. Special buildings were needed where security, spaciousness, ventilation, orientation, cleanliness and decoration would all create a [...]

The journalist mentions the bureaucratic maneuvering that allowed the SEP [Ministry of Public Education] to relinquish its position as keeper of the murals painted on the school walls and in 1963, pass the role on to the Centro Nacional de Conservaci [...]

This article discusses the plans proposed by the Central Department and the SEP [Ministry of Public Education] to address the matter of educating peasant children. There would be “simple buildings, spacious classrooms and playgrounds, plenty of [...]

According to this article, David Alfaro Siqueiros had just founded the Centro de Arte Realista [Center for Realist Art] that was intended to function as a “school” or “institute” in which research into techniques, pedagogical theory, geometry [...]

A visit to the salon of Antonio Fabrés’ students inspires the author to praise the master and his teaching methods, whose rigor in drafting and striking subjectivity had trampled the old methods of the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes (formerly [...]

The poster “Protesta: De los Artistas Revolucionarios de México” [Mexican Revolutionary Artists: A Protest] shows the obviousness of the dispute between the students at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes (ENBA) and the teachers [...]

The mural being painted by David Alfaro Siqueiros at the Escuela Universitaria de Bellas Artes in San Miguel Allende would be interrupted by disagreements with the school’s director, Alfredo Campanella. The director offers Siqueiros a change in his [...]

This article summarizes the protest initiated against the authorities by the students at the Escuela de Bellas Artes Prilidiano Pueyrredón [Prilidiano Pueyrredón National School of Fine Arts] in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It argues that the [...]

This article reviews the state of art education in the wake of the Argentine student protests in 1955 that demanded changes in the syllabus that were finally implemented in 1958. It also reports that the teacher commissions that were supposed to have [...]

Statement by a group of professors of their concern about the events that took place at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Prilidiano Pueyrredón [Prilidiano Pueyrredón National School of Fine Arts] [ENBAPP] and the Escuela Nacional de Bellas [...]

This article reports on the peaceful occupation by student groups of the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Prilidiano Pueyrredón and its counterpart, Manuel Belgrano, both in Buenos Aires, Argentina. At the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Manuel [...]

Emma McCall adapted Adolfo Best Maugard’s Método de Dibujo [Method of Drawing] to the U.S. cultural and educational milieu in order to take advantage of this art instruction system with U.S. children and young adults. As in the method proposed by [...]

In early 1929, García Moroto left Spain for New York, and later embarked for Cuba. Once in Cuba, he gave a lecture at the Spanish Embassy in Havana on November 6, 1929, on the occasion of the fifth exhibition of Cuba’s Escuelas de Acción Artí [...]

Though using a moderate tone–and even an admiring one when he refers to the continuity, sense of color and form, knowledge of the avant-garde, and diversity in the work—García Maroto was part of the debate, discussion, or situation regarding the [...]

“Mexicanos” is a poster invitation from the students of the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes to an exhibition of true-to-life painting. The poster stresses that the lives of the workers, expressed in such a wholesome, humble way, will breathe new [...]

This manifesto from the Treinta-treintistas [¡30-30! mouvement] discusses the incorporation of new elements and announces the group’s purging and expulsion of old members, either for being neo-academics or for attempting to eliminate the [...]

The third treinta-treintista manifesto is a flyer written in opposition to the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes, its instruction methods, and the works produced at the school. Subdivided into eight points, the group’s statement describes the basic [...]

This flyer denounces the situation of the Escuela de Bellas Artes Manuel Belgrano (Buenos Aires, Argentina), which was then closed by military orders with no possibility of re-opening. It likewise repudiates the takeover of this institution, and [...]

This article reports that students at both Schools of Fine Arts—Manuel Belgrano and Prilidiano Pueyrredón—had decided to join forces and resist any form of intervention. Their first joint action targeted the opening of the Salón Nacional; a [...]

This article reports that students are back in class at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Prilidiano Pueyrredón [National School of Fine Arts] in Buenos Aires after the interruptions caused by student protests that were supported by many teachers [...]