Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

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 [...]

The art historian and critic Aracy Amaral wrote this analysis of the painting produced in the 1980s, with a focus on the art scene in São Paulo. In addition to naming the predecessors of the artists who made up that generation, the critic gives a [...]

Aracy Amaral discusses certain characteristic features of Spanish culture that she identifies in buildings that were constructed in the state of São Paulo in the seventeenth century. She notes some telltale cultural details in the bull ring, in [...]

Aracy Amaral, the Brazilian art critic, discusses the formal qualities of León Ferrari’s work, referring to his inventive use of a machine as a means of reproduction. She can see how Ferrari’s production was affected by the urban environment of [...]

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 [...]

This document presents the show A Nova Dimensão do Objeto curated by Aracy Amaral for the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo in 1986. Without attempting to collapse the difference between sculptural works and [...]

Aracy Amaral discusses the different approaches taken by curators of exhibitions of Latin American art in Europe and North America. She analyzes the various reviews published in the British press on the occasion of the Art in Latin America exhibition [...]

The author of this article, Aracy Amaral, discusses the comment she made concerning exhibitions of “Latin American art” in the United States, explaining that this is an absurd description because there is no artistic school involved, much less a [...]

In her role as the director of the MAC-USP (Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo), Aracy Amaral praises the results of the first edition of Arte na Rua [Art in the Street], the project suggested by the artists Ana Maria Tavares [...]

Aracy Amaral states categorically that there is no Brazilian style of avant-garde art because there never were any artistic groups that were large enough or able to provide an innovative groundwork. In Amaral’s opinion, the lack of a local painting [...]

On the basis of the festive, bold, and boundless nature of the relationship between the social and the artistic in Latin America, critic Aracy Amaral argues that there is an integral connection between the creative and the political in the region. In [...]

Aracy Amaral comments in this essay on the term “Latin American” as an aesthetic category, which would suggest being identified as something different and also the need to search for universal values. This would be one of the paths: the denial of [...]

Brazilian historian and critic Aracy Amaral assesses the decision to bring to an end the Bienal Latinoamericana de São Paulo (BLSP)—a one-time event held in 1978 parallel to the traditional São Paulo Biennial. The decision was made after the [...]

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. [...]

Aracy Amaral believes that the focus on daily life and reality undertaken by US Pop art woke up young Brazilian artists to the myths and symbols of the consumer society. In her opinion, the Brazilian hall at the IX Bienal de São Paulo shows that [...]

This text by the art critic Aracy Amaral (b. 1930) describes an exhibition of work by Latin American artists living in Paris, which she curated at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo (MAC-USP) in 1985. The objective of this [...]

In this introductory essay, which appeared in the catalogue for the paradigmatic exhibition Projeto Construtivo Brasileiro na Arte, Aracy Amaral describes the “revelation” she experienced as she researched the period in question: “ [...]

In the view of Brazilian historian Aracy Amaral, the widespread prejudice against art with a “conteudístico” (content-based) approach hinders twentieth-century production from tackling sociopolitical issues. From the thirties through the [...]

According to the curator Aracy Amaral, the works produced by the new generation of artists are very different from what was done during the previous decade, in the 1980s, a period that was defined by humor and a euphoric attempt to reinvigorate [...]

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 text, Aracy Amaral considers the strong negative responses provoked by a work entitled Etsedrón in the 1975 (XIII) São Paulo Biennial. She argues that this work provoked such responses because of its visceral power and because it is [...]

This is the text of the lecture given by Aracy Amaral at the symposium presented on the occasion of the Art of the Fantastic: Latin America, 1920?1987 exhibition, in which she discusses the meaning of the term “fantastic,” particularly in the [...]

In this essay from 1983, art historian Aracy Amaral responds to ongoing debates on the pertinence of regionalism as a framing paradox for Brazilian art. She calls attention to the excesses of internationalism in certain of Brazil’s larger cities [...]

This anthology analyzes and juxtaposes the contradictions and similarities found among architectural styles in the Americas in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There is an attempt to reconstruct a “nonexistent” past by means of [...]

Aracy Amaral, the Brazilian art critic, discusses the formal qualities of León Ferrari’s work, stressing its poetic, lyrical, and musical features. She describes it as a return to the work that Ferrari was doing in the early sixties, and talks [...]

In the article “Marta Traba: Décadas vulnerables” [Marta Traba: Vulnerable Decades], Aracy Amaral provides a sketch of the intellectual persona of art critic Marta Traba on the occasion of her tragic death in a plane crash in 1983. Amaral [...]

The author of this essay, Aracy A. Amaral, mentions the importance of certain thinkers on the subject of Latin American art: Marta Traba, Ferreira Gullar, Luis Felipe Noé, Juan Acha, and Octavio Paz. In her opinion, “new” art feels obliged to [...]

This essay, by the Brazilian curator and art historian Aracy Amaral, appeared in the catalogue for the exhibition Modernidade: arte brasileira do século XX (Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, 1988). Amaral discusses the origins of the [...]

Aracy Amaral presents the art of the Mexican muralists as the first manifestation of contemporary artists in the Americas which drew on the artists’ own local realities. She notes particularly the interest in muralist art by Brazilian artists such [...]

Aracy Amaral explains that since the early twentieth century, fine artists from Latin America in search of their cultural roots have taken an interest in the themes and formal usage of popular expression. The examples she cites include Tarsila do [...]

The author addresses the dangers, but also the need, to cultivate a Latin-Americanism, that is, she considers that Latin America without the information and the influence of the hegemonic countries in the art world (the United States and the [...]

Aracy Amaral scrutinizes Tarsila do Amaral’s body of work in search of traces of Surrealism; she also explains that the artist’s thematic and formal universe was conditioned by spending her childhood at her family’s coffee plantation in the [...]

This article discusses the scant interest shown in Latin American art by North American museums, particularly MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) in New York. The art critic Aracy A. Amaral highlights the scarcity of exhibitions and mentions the declining [...]

Aracy Amaral addresses the unquestionable mismatch between forms of artistic expression and their reception and promotion. She is aware that the lack of proper education for artists leads to the redundancy of “experimental” art already created in [...]

This essay discusses the discipline of Latin American art history. In the author’s opinion, there are two types of art history: one of them was created by independent researchers and universities throughout the Americas. The other was developed by [...]

The Brazilian professor and art critic Aracy Amaral introduces Arte Híbrida, the exhibition organized by the MACU in Sao Paulo where she was the director. She highlights the creativity of the participating artists and their search for a Brazilian [...]

The magazine Arte Hoje published a dossier of brief texts by Brazilian critics Aline Figueiredo, Aracy Amaral, Radha Abramo, Frederico Morais, Olívio Tavares Araújo, and Roberto Pontual; and by artists José Resende, Loio Persio, [...]

In this text written by Aracy Amaral on the occasion of the opening of the Espaço Fotóptica/MAC-USP—a space dedicated to photography at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo that Amaral directed—the author defends the [...]

In this text, critic and curator Aracy Amaral presents the group show “Pintura como meio,” held at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo in 1983. According to Amaral, who was the director of the museum [...]

This text by art critic Aracy Amaral presents the 1985 exhibition Del Grupo 7 held at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea de São Paulo, which she directed at the time. In it, Amaral examines the outstanding pictorial characteristics of a new [...]