Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

Alejandro Otero writes this article for Revista Cal to reflect on the work of fellow pioneer in abstract art (and his wife) Mercedes Pardo. It focuses on Pardo’s series of Signes, on view at the Sala Mendoza in Caracas. The Venezuelan modernist [...]

In this text, Alejandro Otero asserts that Venezuelan artist Antonio Edmundo Monsanto played an important role in the education of his generation. He remarks on Monsanto’s passionate interest in painting, thanks to which, in the forties, Monsanto [...]

In his introduction to Mercedes Pardo’s exhibition, the artist and critic Alejandro Otero discusses the range of possibilities he sees in her set of colorful mural panels. Otero suggests that Pardo’s exploration of color, based on breaking down a [...]

In this article, Alejandro Otero begins by describing some of the movements and artists that are representative of the global abstract avant-garde, principally Alexander Calder, in order to contextualize Venezuelan artist Jesús Rafael Soto. He [...]

This letter by Alejandro Otero is in response to the letter (March 31, 1950) sent by his friend, the art critic Alfredo Boulton, where he complained about the group of artists calling themselves Los Disidentes. Specifically, Boulton was opposed to [...]

This letter by Venezuelan artist Alejandro Otero to his friend, the art critic Alfredo Boulton, is quite revealing. Written in Paris in 1948, in the letter the artist makes reference to his day-to-day activities as a scholarship student, and as a [...]

In the first part of this essay Alejandro Otero, a member of Los Disidentes—the group formed by young Venezuelan artists living in Paris—discusses the young painter Mateo Manaure’s experiences since he left Caracas and came to the French [...]

This article was written by Alejando Otero, on behalf of the Los Disidentes group (Paris, 1950); in the first paragraphs, it challenges the show De Manet a nuestros dias, which had been presented in various countries in South America; the French [...]

In this essay, the painter and member of the Los Disidentes group (Paris, 1950) Alejandro Otero presents a long list of the major elements and people that contributed to the creation of Abstract art. The list includes: revolutions in art; the present [...]

Alejandro Otero, a member of Los Disidentes, takes a dim view of the reviews of paintings and other works of art written by poets and literary types. The Venezuelan painter says that these reviews are based on emotional criteria (such as friendship [...]

The Venezuelan painter Alejandro Otero (1921–90) evaluates the performance of his country’s Official Institutes and Academies, and the acknowledgements these entities confer. He sees these institutions and their structures as custodians and [...]

Open letter to Philosophy Graduate J. R. Guillent Pérez. In this letter the artist Alejandro Otero highlights his differences on the ideas of Marta Traba, which had already been questioned by the addressee. Otero, openly in opposition to Traba, felt [...]

In this essay the painter Alejandro Otero once again discusses—and, for the second time, critiques—Marta Traba’s main arguments in her thesis about the eventual “depersonalization” of Latin American art as a result of its submissive [...]