Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This article by Diego Rivera denounces the “reactionary” agents of Delahuertismo who were the true architects of the conspiracy to infiltrate Masonic lodges at the beginning of 1924 in order to murder the governor of Yucatan, Felipe Carrillo [...]

This document is a didactic-political text directed toward the working class organized around identification of its enemies. These include the fake socialist parties (equated with the Italian fascists). And also the intellectuals unable to understand [...]

In the Survey Section, the journalist Ortega decided to go to the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria to ask the painters there the following question: Who is the greatest painter in Mexico? The caricaturist Ernesto García Cabral ironically responds that [...]

In “¿Hay problema indígena en México?” Mexican writer and anthropologist Manuel Gamio examines the “indigenous problem,” or the question of how to integrate indigenous Mexicans into Mexican society. Gamio argues that the government of the [...]

Based on the criticisms that the emergence of Estridentismo gave rise to, Oscar Leblanc, a journalist of El Universal Ilustrado carries out a survey about the movement, interviewing several personalities. The responses are really extreme. The writer [...]

The article discusses the constant attacks that the newspaper Martín Fierro receives and all the conflicts and difficulties that result from these attacks. It also explains the attitude that will be assumed with regard to the situation created by [...]

This short article is a commentary on 1927: Exposición de Arte Nuevo, which opened on May 7 at the “Asociación de Pintores y Escultores.” In announcing and promoting the exhibition, the editors of Revista de avance stated [...]

The article points out the importance of the activity brought forth by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in “our milieu” as a “very valuable collaboration to the renovation movement,” started—long ago—by the group involved in the publication Mart [...]

In this article, the writer Ronald de Carvalho questions the undeniable presence of foreign styles in the decorative art to be seen in the city of Rio de Janeiro, and suggests using ornamental motifs inspired by Brazilian flora and fauna and native [...]

While researching feminine strokes in Anita Malfatti’s painting, Mário de Andrade discerns her impetuous nature, the masculine strength of her colors, and the tragic energy of her subjects, though he also glimpses hints of humor and sadness. He [...]

André Salmon introduces Lola Cueto’s work by referring to certain moments that he considers important. He suggests that Edouard Manet’s painting, La Muerte de Maximiliano [The Death of Maximilian], was Mexico’s debut in the visual arts. [...]

The text reports on the context surrounding the publication of Zancadillas [Missteps] by Alvaro Yunque (1926) within the editorial plan of La Campana de Palo [The Wooden Bell]. It also reports on forthcoming publications as well as the reasons and [...]

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 stylized painting portrays some of the members of the Estridentista movement in their meeting place: El Café de Nadie [No Man’s Café]. Manuel Maples Arce is in the upper center of the picture, flanked by both Germán List and Salvador [...]

Invitation to the Exposición de Pintores Modernos [Modern Painters Exhibition], which took place at Amigos del Arte [Friends of Art] (Buenos Aires, June, 1926), and included the following artists: Emilio Pettoruti, Norah Borges, Xul Solar, and [...]

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 [...]

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 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 [...]

The letter from Ricardo Gómez Robelo to Edward Weston is an emotional letter thanking Weston for the gift of some photographs, but, above all, he is grateful for Weston’s friendship. Robelo acknowledges that they [the group of friends around [...]

In this letter to the painter Tarsila do Amaral, the writer Mário de Andrade urges her, Sérgio Milliet, and Oswald de Andrade—the “country folk” who have become futurists during their stay in Paris—to return to the “virgin jungle,” to [...]

In this letter to fellow Brazilian Joaquim Inojosa (in Recife), the well-known poet Manuel [Carneiro de Sousa] Bandeira [Filho] (1886–1968) provides brief news about the modernist movement (then in full swing) in São Paulo. He emphasizes the “ [...]

David Alfaro Siqueiros sent a letter to the Minister of Public Education, José Manuel Puig Cassauranc, when he was dismissed from his ministry job as professor of drawing and manual works, for which he was paid three pesos a day. His dismissal was [...]

In this letter, written in 1926 to the multifaceted Oswald de Andrade, the Swiss poet Blaise Cendrars makes certain suggestions regarding the forthcoming Paris exhibition of work by Tarsila do Amaral, the leading woman artist in the Brazilian [...]

In this letter Guillot Muñoz, the distinguished writer and journalist, tells his friend Pedro Figari about the critiques that his paintings were receiving in Montevideo at that time, and about the unconditional support for Figari there was among a [...]

In 1927, the painter Eladio Vélez, from Antioquia, fulfilled his dream of going to study in Europe. The letters he wrote to his family when he was a student in Europe have been copied and kept. In the one selected here (written on April 9, 1927), to [...]

This is a letter from the critic Mário de Andrade to the writer Prudente de Moraes Neto. Adopting a brotherly tone, de Andrade criticizes the Surrealist nature of Moraes Neto’s article in the modernist magazine VERDE, published in Cataguazes (in [...]

The erudite music composer Heitor Villa-Lobos wrote a letter to a couple also staying in Paris, Oswald de Andrade and Tarsila do Amaral. He comments on the difficulties involved in presenting different types of art produced in Brazil as [what is] “ [...]

This [document] by Mário de Andrade is a reply, dated May 20, 1928, to the letter in which Augusto Meyer discussed the former’s controversial activity, conscience, and references to national subject matter. De Andrade outlines his intellectual [...]

Lino Enea Spilimbergo wrote a letter to Argentinean artist Xul Solar inviting him to participate in the independent annual exhibition initiative, with a mission to disseminate Argentinean modern art to the Buenos Aires audiences. Spilimbergo held [...]

Writer Clóvis Gusmão writes to Joaquim Inojosa about the Movimiento Antropofágico and takes the opportunity to clarify some parts of its agenda. Its principles include: the idea of establishing distance from European civilization by creating new [...]

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 [...]

Jorge Luis Borges answer to an opinion poll conducted by the Nosotros [We] journal of writers younger than thirty and trying to determine the existence and qualities of Argentina’s “new literary generation.” The poll consisted of seven [...]

This text refers to the second issue of Prisma: revista mural; underscoring the bold and at times inscrutable quality that characterized the first number of the magazine—which did not exclude the unusual way in which it was published. In this sense [...]

This document is a reply by Mário de Andrade to the poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade, dated November 22, 1924. In it, de Andrade voices his opposition to what he considers to be the false binomial that distinguishes national from universal criteria, [...]

The first treinta-treintista manifesto is aimed against academics, public officials, thieves of public offices, and in general, all kinds of layabouts and rascals who pretend to be intellectuals. Using iconoclastic language, the ¡30-30! Group [...]

In the second treinta-treintista manifesto, the group declares the reason for its dispute. It states that the struggle between independent painters and the academics intensified when the presidency changed hands, since certain conservative teachers [...]

With his manifesto, David Alfaro Siqueiros sought to position the avant-garde project anew, doing away with belated modernism and impressionism, in favor of Cubo-Futurist expressions and the incipient eruption of Dadaism. This eagerness for [...]

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 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 [...]

In this manifesto, the ¡30-30! collective of painters announced that its struggle against academism was once again alive and thriving. The reason for this was that the president’s office of the Escuela de Bellas Artes [School of Fine Arts] [...]

This document claims that one of the fundamental tenets of the so-called Movimento Antropófago is a return to a “natural state” (understood as a kind of “beauty with natural features” that is ugly, rough, barbaric, and [...]

This [text] is a “literary letter” sent by critic Joaquim Inojosa to the editors of Era Nova magazine in João Pessoa (in the state of Paraíba), which was later published as a book. It is considered a type of manifesto belonging to the Brazilian [...]

In discussing paintings by Anita Malfatti such as O homem amarelo, as well as work by Zina Aita and Vicente do Rego Monteiro, Graça Aranha asserts that visitors to the Semana de Arte Moderna of 1922 would consider the exhibition a “heap of ‘ [...]

This anonymous article reports on the lectures given by the Swiss architect and urban designer Le Corbusier during his visit to Rio de Janeiro in 1929. Sponsored by the Instituto Central de Arquitetos (in what was then the capital of Brazil), Le [...]

Doctor Osório César used psychoanalysis to study the artistic expression of inpatients at the institution de Juquerí (in the São Paulo area). The writer compares his patients’ works with certain other modern artwork (created by children, [...]

In his essay “A hora presente,” Ascânio Lopes Quatorzevoltas blames the belligerence in the world for the habit of viewing foreigners as enemies, and for the rampant nationalist anger in Europe and the United States. In his opinion those [...]

This is a lecture delivered by Renato Almeida in Salvador (capital of the state of Bahia) on October 26, 1926. He praised the reformist line of thought that arose in Brazil as “a riot” against everything that was “sterile imitation.” He saw [...]

Questioning the exhaustion of Western civilization (specifically the European version), and basing his arguments on the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud—who wrote about the social life of primitive peoples in his book Totem and Taboo— Plí [...]

Following the prologue to the farce “The Fall of the Rich and the Construction of a New Social Order,” is a scene in the first act entitled, “The Army of the Soldiers, Workers and Peasants.” In a triumphal panorama of the socialist revolution [...]

In 1926, Ricardo Rendón produced a series of caricatures for “El jardín de los poetas” [The Garden of the Poets], a section of the Suplemento literario ilustrado [Illustrated Literary Supplement] of the Bogotá newspaper El Espectador. The [...]