Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This text consists of Pedro Figari’s response to the following questions posed by the journal Martín Fierro:1- Do you believe that there is such a thing as an Argentine sensibility and/or mentality? 2- If so, what are their characteristics? Figari [...]

This text is a criticism written by Natalia Gutiérrez of the work, Corte en el ojo [Cut in the Eye](2000), by Miguel Ángel Rojas. She develops it based on ideas of “place” and “no place,” as well as the paradox between them established by [...]

Cildo Meireles asserts that he doesn’t defend any profession or nationality, and that he instead speaks about a region named Cruzeiro do Sul  [the Southern Cross], which was divided by an imaginary line known as the Tordesillas line. He comments [...]

In this article the Venezuelan researcher Alfredo Chacón discusses the Venezuelan concept of popular art. He asks: When do we talk about popular art? He goes on to explore different social factors that define what Venezuelans consider “popular [...]

This text introduces the print portfolio, Cuba-Colombia, raíces comunes [Cuba/Colombia, Common Roots], the second work of the Corporación Prográfica [Prográfica Association] (Cali, Colombia)—after El graficario de la lucha popular en Colombia [ [...]

Nelly Richard ponders the state of contemporary art in Latin American cultures, both in terms of its circulation and regarding its frame of references. She wonders whether international themes and subjects are repeated at a local level or whether new [...]

In this text, Bibiana Suárez addresses the misconceptions of a Latino identity that is portrayed as one-dimensional and homogenous in both mainstream and Latino discourses in the United States. She discusses the new tendency to conflate Latino with [...]

This text is an analysis of the process through which black/white mixing ceased to be limited by the boundaries of nineteenth-century racial categories. This emerged in news commentary and studies of Brazilian culture. Based on those categories, this [...]

In this essay, Aracy Amaral discusses the career of the historian and art critic Damián Carlos Bayón, stressing the important role that he and Marta Traba played throughout the Americas by fostering a deeper understanding of Latin American art. [...]

In a continuation of an article published in Artes Visuales in 1978, Carla Stellweg provides an overview of issues relevant to Chicano art and the diverse approaches artists use to negotiate such conditions. She further outlines how early Chicano [...]

In 1929, the publishers of Índice, the Puerto Rican magazine, were curious about their contemporary countrymen, and wondered who they were and what they were like. To aid in the discussion, they posed three specific questions: 1) Do you think there [...]

In 1929, the publishers of Índice, the Puerto Rican magazine, were curious about their contemporary countrymen, and wondered who they were and what they were like. To aid in the discussion, they posed three specific questions: 1) Do you think there [...]

In 1929, the publishers of Índice, the Puerto Rican magazine, were curious about their contemporary countrymen wondering who they were and what they were like. To aid in the discussion, they posed three specific questions: 1) Do you think there is a [...]

In 1929, the publishers of Índice, the Puerto Rican magazine, were curious about their contemporary countrymen, and wondered who they were and what they were like. To aid in the discussion, they posed three specific questions: 1) Do you think there [...]

In this essay, curator and scholar Henry C. Estrada argues that despite the fact that Latinos are a heterogeneous cultural group, they share a history of colonialism, geographic displacement, internal exile, and racial discrimination. The experience [...]

In this text, Juan Acha poses the question, “Does present-day Latin American art exist as a distinct expression?”, that is, as a way of examining the broader and more fundamental question of what constitutes an original aesthetic expression. He [...]

Building upon scholar and cultural critic Tomás Ybarra-Frausto’s theorization of rasquachismo as a set of aesthetic practices that adopt an oppositional stance to dominant culture and articulate a Chicano identity, Amalia Mesa-Bains—a cultural [...]

The author discusses her installation entitled Domino/Dominó wherein she used the principles of the domino game as an organizing structure for visual images exploring her own experience of acculturation as a Puerto Rican living in the United States [...]

Marta Traba argues in her paper that in the last five years, Latin American art “has suffered from a visible process of depersonalization” and “mimesis.” She points out the principal causes of the phenomenon, among them: artists who move [...]

Argentine critic Jorge Romero Brest remarks that he was not invited to participate in the symposium “El artista latinoamericano y su identidad” [The Latin American Artist and His Identity] held at the University of Texas en Austin in October 1975 [...]

The question that constitutes the title of this article is posed as a challenge not only to intellectuals, but to society as a whole. In its attempt to answer that question, Revista Flash decided to interview individuals in the art world, despite the [...]

Alicia Haber was the curator of the 1991 exhibition Charrúas y montes criollos, presenting the contemporary work of Uruguayan artist Rimer Cardillo, who had been residing in New York since 1984. According to the curatorial text, the exhibition [...]

The Argentine critic Marta Traba, who was based in Puerto Rico at the time of this article, evaluates the works presented on the occasion of the Primera Bienal de San Juan del Grabado Latinoamericano [1st San Juan Biennial of Latin American Graphic [...]

In “The Pachuco and Other Extremes,” the Mexican poet, writer, and diplomat Octavio Paz grapples with the issues related to the search for the national identity in post-revolutionary Mexico and, more broadly, the existential relationship [...]

This article was written by the Argentinean critic Peregrino Junior about the expansion of modern art in Brazil. The writer emphasizes the avant-garde (peripheral to Brazil’s main art world) developed in the small town of Cataguases (state of Minas [...]

In this article, Narciso Debourg outlines the difficulties he faces as a young artist of Latin American descent the moment he tries to review, assimilate, or subscribe to any of the present trends he yearns to follow specifically within the European [...]

A drawing by Julio Le Parc depicting Latin American identity produced during the Encuentro de Artes Visuales e Identidad en América Latina and sent for publication in the Propuestas para el humor [Proposals for Humor] journal. Le Parc presented the [...]

The Revista Arte Internacional, published by the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá, dedicated its 15−16 edition to the theme “Latin America: Identity and Art.” In a special entry of the section “Registro,” Javier Gil, the Colombian art [...]

In Aracy Amaral’s view, the debate around the Etsedron group could give rise to reflection on a Latin American aesthetic insofar as it entails an expressionistic and primitivistic interpretation of reality from an environmental perspective. Amaral [...]

In this essay, artist Fernando Salicrup recalls his first years at Taller Boricua [Puerto Rican Workshop]. Salicrup notes that he was introduced to the collective by the artist Jorge Soto, and during the 1970s, he was also influenced by poets such as [...]

This text, which compiles interviews and conversations that took place between art critic and researcher María Iovino and photographer Fernell Franco between 2001 and 2004, is the introduction to the catalogue, Otro Documento. The catalogue was part [...]

Revista Nacional was a quarterly journal published by the Academia Nacional de Letras del Uruguay [National Academy of Letters]. This article refers to one of the most important figures in the intellectual history of the River Plate [region], Pedro [...]

In this essay from 2004, historian Rick A. López argues that the Hull-House in Chicago played an important role in promoting a Mexican nationalist aesthetics among the Mexican migrant community that settled in the city in the 1920s. Behind the [...]

In this text, Mercedes Vicente interviews the artist Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, who talks at length about the progression of his oeuvre between 1989 and 2001. Manglano-Ovalle elaborates on his investigation and questioning of the meanings of cultural [...]

In this essay, Alicia Gaspar de Alba reviews nine post-1990 exhibitions of Chicano art, all of which have sought to “materialize” Chicano/a from within the mainstream art museum, or as she calls it, the “master’s house.” The exhibitions [...]

Gerardo Mosquera considers the usefulness of the idea of Latin American art, ultimately taking a firm position against it as it has been understood up to now. He begins by describing Latin American culture’s “neurosis of identity” as the [...]

In this essay, curator and scholar Henry C. Estrada argues that despite the fact that Latinos are a heterogeneous cultural group, they share a history of colonialism, geographic displacement, internal exile, and racial discrimination. The experience [...]

The synopsis in English are coming soon [...]

In this document, Guisela Latorre examines the emergence of a Chicana muralist program that developed in response to the unequal treatment of women within national Chicano political and artistic movements, which often regarded their participation as [...]

Juan Acha, the Peruvian critic and historian who has lived in Mexico long time ago, claims that it is a mistake to see art criticism as an appendix to artistic expression. According to Acha, art criticism “should examine artistic reality and [...]

The synopsis in English are coming soon [...]

Rodrigo Quijano argues that Tiempo detenido—the installation by ceramicist Carlos Runcie Tanaka—does more than illustrate a traumatic event. Since its beginnings, Quijano asserts, the work has been linked to the artist’s search for identity. To [...]

Curator and artist Juan Sánchez compares colonialism to an epidemic that causes physical and mental harm. He maintains that the will of the Puerto Rican people to survive colonial oppression is manifested in their culture. Quoting from the writings [...]

Addressing the subject strictly from the perspective of his particular field of expertise, the Spanish historian Carlos Areán discusses the issue of identity. According to him, Spain, Portugal, and Latin America as a whole are facing an identity [...]

The creator of the work “Ida Píngala II,” Alfred Wenemoser, wrote a text organized into two parts describing the work, which was shown at the Bienal de São Paulo in 1981. In the first part, the artist summarizes in six steps the content of his [...]

Annateresa Fabris questions the status of the image in contemporary art in the context of the exhibition Gravura Paulista. Fabris begins the text by referring to film, which she considers the vision of those who cannot forge a relationship with the [...]

This essay posits the 1980s as a period of intense self-reflection among Latin American artists living in the United States. Susana Torruella Leval considers the complex relationships of these artists to the tumultuous North American art milieu, [...]

Ricardo Pau-Llosa’s essay discusses six generations of modern and contemporary Cuban artists, most in exile, and their art as it deals with alienation and uprooting. According to Pau-Llosa, the first generation (1920s) includes the founding fathers [...]

In this lecture at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Puerto Rican-born artist Bibiana Suarez presents an overview of her work and considers the role of race and ethnicity in her art. She begins the lecture by explaining her ethnic background and [...]

Puerto Rican historian Eugenio Fernández Méndez submits a “descriptive and literary review of how artists from different periods have viewed the history of Puerto Rico.” He remarks that it is important to be universal, but claims that one must [...]