Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

The IV Exposición Internacional organized by the Círculo de Bellas Artes de Montevideo, featuring painting, sculpture, and decorative arts, reflects the institution’s efforts to generate greater visibility in the community. The event’s other [...]

In this brief essay, Pedro Figari discusses his thoughts on the notions of “tradition,” “foreignization,” and “cultural appropriation.” His initial thesis is that a country like Uruguay, with almost no tradition of urban culture, is [...]

This is the catalogue for the V Exposición de Arte (painting, drawing, and sculpture) held at the Círculo de Fomento de Bellas Artes de Montevideo in 1912. It was the second time that foreign artists, in this case from Argentina and Brazil, were [...]

In this letter, Joaquín Torres-García declares his intention to promote contemporary Uruguayan art to European audiences. The objective is to create a program designed to provide scholarships or grants from the Uruguayan government for [...]

This letter from Joaquín Torres García to his Uruguayan compatriot, the renowned writer José Enrique Rodó, suggests that both men agreed on the need to encourage the emerging art in their country by exposing young Uruguayan artists to what was [...]

In this letter to the writer José Enrique Rodó, Joaquín Torres García discusses the affinity they share for the Greco-Latin tradition, and expresses his wish to be in touch with contemporary Uruguayan art because, though living in Spain at the [...]

Pedro Figari wrote this letter to José Cúneo, who had recently shown his paintings at a joint exhibition with Bernabé Michelena in Montevideo (1918). The letter, published in the newspaper La Mañana, was Figari’s public recognition of the young [...]

As the director of the Círculo de Bellas Artes School in Montevideo, painter Carlos María Herrera wrote this letter to Martín Lasala, the president of that institution’s board, with a number of proposals, chief among them was the elimination of [...]

The same year Joaquín Torres García meets Rafael Barradas in Barcelona, he sends to Montevideo an article praising the young Uruguayan who had just started living in Spain. He valued his work from the perspective of new visual artistic conceptions [...]

In March 1919, after the First World War, Dr. Pedro Figari wrote an open letter to the president of the República Oriental del Uruguay, Dr. Baltasar Brum (who held that office twice, from 1919 to 1923, and from 1931 to 1933, when he committed [...]

The author recalls his visit, three years earlier, to the Academy of Spain in Rome, where, in his judgment, “the inexplicable frivolity and artifice of modern art are halted.” He praises the work of director Eduardo Chicharro, as well as that of [...]

According to the author of this article, José Sabogal’s work is unquestionably “the most serious attempt ever undertaken in Peru to create an essentially national—that is, Peruvian—art.” Noting also that Cuzco is a highly appropriate [...]

This article, written in 1919, was published several months after José Sabogal’s first exhibition due to, as the author explains, “the congestion of opinions, appraisals, and enthusiasm” that circulated at the time. Elvira García y García [...]

The synopsis and the annotations in English are coming soon. However, our bilingual readers can click on “Español” to access this information in Spanish [...]

This article discusses the first exhibition in Lima (at Casa Brandes, in 1919) of the work of José Sabogal, who, after many years of study in Europe and Argentina, speaks out against the prevailing academicism in Peru and the art “of likeness” [...]

This article by Luis E. Valcárcel was originally published in El Comercio, the Cuzco newspaper (January 31, 1919) where José Sabogal painted his canvases. According to Valcárcel, the paintings exhibited that year at Casa Brandes (Lima) “are not [...]

In this [document about] Sabogal’s first exhibition in Lima, the author wrongly declares that he is a “painter from Cuzco” because that is where he painted the works in the exhibition. The reviewer also has some reservations about the canvases [...]

This review notes that despite his youth and his provincial origins, José Sabogal’s talent is beyond dispute. It is precisely because of Sabogal’s evident skill that Carlos Solari decides to point out a few “buts” in the work of this artist [...]

The author reviews José Sabogal’s paintings at his first exhibition in Lima, with the caveat that the works were viewed in unfavorable circumstances. An illness prevented him from seeing them at the gallery, and Sabogal himself brought them to his [...]

According to this article, this exhibition presented people in Lima with a rare opportunity “to see absolutely modern painting,” which prizes “emotive qualities, sincerity, and the power of values” more highly than the typical “familiar [...]

Sabogal was from the province of Cajamarca but studied in Europe and Argentina; here he is described as a talented painter who was considered “rare” in Lima art circles, so that his emergence in the capital city “will bring light to many.” [...]

This text is a biographical overview of the life of Colombian painter Ramón Torres Méndez. The anonymous author begins by discussing Torres Méndez’s early experiences: the private drawing classes he took in Bogotá, the printing press where he [...]

This landmark manifesto by architect and intellectual Ricardo Severo da Fonseca e Costa (1869–1940) was delivered in São Paolo, Brazil, at the 1914 conference, A Arte Tradicional no Brasil: a Casa e o Templo [Traditional Art in Brazil—The House [...]

In "Comentarios sobre el nacimiento de la arquitectura hispano-americana," Argentinean architect, art historian, and writer Martín Noel asserts that colonial architecture represents the foundation of the Latin American architectural styles that [...]

In “La arquitectura colonial en México,” Mexican architect and writer Jesus T. Acevedo casts colonial arts and architecture as the foundation of modern Mexican artistic identity. Acevedo describes the formation of a unique style of colonial [...]

In this article, Peruvian artist, photographer, and art critic Teófilo Castillo describes the architecture of Lima as deficient, proposing a structure he calls “el Palacio Posnanski” [sic], a home built by the Austrian engineer, amateur [...]

The prologue to Forjando patria: pro nacionalismo, published in 1916 by leading Mexican anthropologist and archaeologist Manuel Gamio, compares the forging of metal out of an amalgam of bronze and steel to the ideal societal intermixing of Mexicans [...]

In this essay, Mexican anthropologist Manuel Gamio argues that a department of fine arts is urgently needed in Mexico in order to stimulate creativity. He laments that anarchy and aesthetic intolerance in Mexico have caused divisions that are [...]

In his speech at the dedication of the monument to the Battle of Carabobo, in El Paraíso, Caracas, the historian and essayist José Gil Fortoul, who at the time was the Minister of Public Education, referred to the decree approved by the Congreso [...]

Written in Paris on April 29, 1918, this letter from sculptor Marco Tobón Mejía to his friend Carlos E. Restrepo reveals the nature of the relationship between the Colombian artist and one of the most important representatives of Colombia’s [...]

This is an anonymous art-criticism article (by R. M.) about the Salón de 1910 [1910 Salon], published on the first page of the conservative newspaper, La Unidad. The writer begins with the hypothesis that the senses are the essential instrument for [...]

This document is an art criticism that examines the sculpture shown at the Salón de Arte de 1910 [1910 Art Salon] in Colombia. The writer begins by discussing the architects of the pavilion where the exhibition was held, even mentioning the [...]

This is a letter written by Francisco Barrera, a columnist at La Unidad in Bogotá, to Laureano Gómez, in response to his opinion on the best paintings at the Salón de Arte de 1910 [1910 Art Salon]. As his first choice, Barrera chooses and [...]

The article “En el Salón de Pintura” [At the Painting Salon] (1919)—published (anonymously) in the magazine El Gráfico—advocates a conversation to review the exhibition organized by the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes [National School of [...]

The text “Reflexiones sobre arte: el intelectualismo y la evolución estética en Colombia” [Reflections on Art: Intellectualism and the Aesthetic Evolution in Colombia] proclaims that the fine arts in Colombia have failed. According to painter [...]

In this text, art critic Maximiliano (Max) Grillo discusses the importance and the history of the Escuela de Bellas Artes [Fine Arts School], an institution severely diminished due to indifference and neglect on the part of the government. Since both [...]

In this article, journalist Fidel Cano, founder of the newspaper El Espectador (in circulation in Medellín since 1887) writes enthusiastically about Horizontes [Horizons], an oil painting that Francisco Antonio Cano had made in Bogotá; the work was [...]

In this little known interview, Colombian painter Francisco Antonio Cano provides an emotional account of his early days in Yarumal, “a village nestled in the mountains of Antioquia [Colombia].” He mentions his early accomplishments in Medellín [...]

This document reproduces the speech given by priest and historian José Manuel Marroquín Osorio at the opening of the exhibition of fine arts on the occasion of the celebration of the centennial of Colombian independence—Celebración del Primer [...]

This is Abílio Miller’s review of the exhibition of works by the Lithuanian-born (nationalized Brazilian) painter Lasar Segall in 1913, after his first visit to Brazil and two months after his one-man show at a salon on São Bento street in São [...]

Paris-based writer, Francisco García-Calderón acknowledges in the introduction to his book, Les Démocraties Latines de l’Amérique (1912), that Peru, his native country, is part of a larger, more uniform world. According to him, there is a [...]

This is Antonio Edmundo Monsanto’s review of the exhibition of works by the Romanian painter Samys Mützner at the Club Venezuela in Caracas in August 1918. Monsanto describes Mützner’s paintings as the work of a “legitimate artist” who, [...]

This article by Leoncio Martínez—identified here by one of his pseudonyms: “Santiago León”—is a critical review of a joint exhibition of works by two young painters, Antonio Alcántara and Ernesto Stelling, both of whom are involved in the [...]

This selection of documents begins with Raymond Poincaré’s—the future president of France (1913-20)—preface to Francisco García-Calderón’s book, Les démocraties latines d’Amérique. Poincaré praises Calderón’s book and traces the [...]

In this article, written in a journalistic style rather than the academic tone of his lecture (Visiones de Caracas y otros temas, Caracas, 1969), Jesús Semprum describes the establishment of the Círculo de Bellas Artes, in Caracas, founded by “ [...]

The Venezuelan writer José Rafael Pocaterra reviews his visit to the Romanian painter Samys Mützner’s exhibition at the Club Venezuela, in Caracas, in August 1918. Pocaterra describes the environment at the exhibition and provides a physical [...]

After attending the preview for the exhibition of painter Emilio Boggio, the Mexican poet and art critic José Juan Tablada, who lived in Caracas for some time, discusses the artist’s work, and also makes assumptions about public taste and the [...]

This was a speech given by the Venezuelan humorist, caricaturist and journalist, Leoncio Martínez (Leo) (1888–1941) on September 4, 1912. The occasion for Leoncio Martínez’s speech was the opening of El Círculo de [...]

Signed in September 1914, the short article by Dr. Atl—then director of the Academia de San Carlos—states his opinion about the direction the Academy should take as the Mexican revolution raged around it. “The dilemma I am facing is this: [...]

Fradique’s article, signed in Guadalajara, which is the capital of the state of Jalisco, sets out to review the work of some of the artists from that state. He begins with the “elders”: Dr. Atl, Alfredo Ramos Martínez (sic) and Rafael Ponce de [...]