Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

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

According to the author of this text, the works by César Moro on exhibit are aggressively disconcerting; indeed, there is “nothing to say about ‘things’ so removed from mainstream painting.” The author points out that, at this time, the [...]

This article about the Museo del Hospital Psiquiátrico Víctor Larco Herrera [Museum of the Victor Larco Herrera Psychiatric Hospital] (in Peru’s capital city) was written by Ernesto More, under the pseudonym “Jerome,” as part of a series on [...]

Poet César Moro describes the confusion and expectations of the public at the Surrealist art show, while also questioning the judgments pronounced on the show by “those charmers from the base police known as critics of purpose and profit,” whose [...]

This text announces the upcoming opening of the show of Surrealism organized by César Moro at the Academia Alcedo in Lima. The writer, who confesses he has not seen the show, comments that it is the first Surrealist exhibition to take place in the [...]

In this text, eminent Latin American avant-garde poet César Vallejo asserts that “among the symptoms of the final decline of the capitalist intelligentsia is the vice of coterie.” He argues that the crises of economic imperialism are reflected [...]

According to José Carlos Mariátegui, Breton (in his second manifesto) “prosecuted” all the writers and artists who, having initially embraced surrealism, then renounced it. Though he mentions the attacks on Pierre Naville, he claims that the [...]

In this text, José Carlos Mariátegui argues that no avant-garde artistic or literary movement has been “as significant historically or important as content as Surrealism.” He asserts that, while Futurism attempted to go beyond formal [...]

In this text, Raúl María Pereira reflects on the history of painting in Peru, affirming that the Incan “genius in form and color” lived on despite the Spanish conquest, not as a parallel or marginal entity, but as a force that acted on “the [...]

This letter, dated December 4, is the second one that Joaquín Torres García wrote to his student Rosa Acle (who was on her way to Australia) in 1939. The maestro’s comments suggest that he was feeling lonely following the breaking up of the group [...]

This is Joaquín Torres García’s first letter to one of his best-loved students, the Brazilian-Uruguayan artist Rosa Acle, who was traveling in the Far East at the time, on her way to Australia. In his letter, JTG admits that [...]

This article by Héctor Ragni—one of Joaquín Torres García’s “devout” disciples—reveals the author’s profound understanding of the maestro’s doctrinaire corpus of constructive universalism [...]

In this brief essay Joaquín Torres-García outlines the goals he developed at the AAC (Asociación de Arte Constructivo) and explained in the association’s magazine. He describes the difficulties he had in trying to make [...]

This article, “El arte naturalista y el arte geométrico,” includes a discussion of Joaquín Torres-García’s main theoretical ideas. Here he restates his metaphysically-inspired philosophical approach and his [...]

This is an excerpt from the book L’Homme, cet inconnu [Man, the Unknown] by the French scientist Alexis Carrel, which appeared in issue Number 5 of Círculo y Cuadrado, the magazine published by the Asociación de Arte Constructivo [...]

The author of this document, Edgar Varèse, criticizes the exploitation of folklore by “highbrow music.” He agrees that the indigenous spirit of ancient cultures can certainly be a source of inspiration for artists, but considers its manipulation [...]

“The plane on which we should place ourselves” is one of the most synthetic statements Joaquín Torres García makes in his lectures on the theory and practice of “modern classicism.” In it he casts some doubt on the very idea of “modernity [...]

Carmelo de Arzadun stresses the importance of creating intellectual groups in Montevideo, explaining that their conversations about their various aesthetic preferences would enrich the debate in local art circles. On the whole, the article does not [...]

In this article, the Argentinean-Uruguayan artist Héctor Ragni expresses his admiration for Joaquín Torres-García’s ideas and work. Ragni lauds the maestro’s motivational skills and recalls the first time he saw his [...]

Joaquín Torres-García wrote this editorial for Círculo y Cuadrado, the journal published by the Asociación de Arte Constructivo de Montevideo that seeks to follow in the footsteps of Cercle et Carré, the magazine co [...]

Five days after David Alfaro Siqueiros arrived in Montevideo, this article was published in El Ideal, a newspaper that supported the party that was in power at the time. The article includes statements made by the Mexican artist, who mainly discusses [...]

This letter from Pedro Figari dated Paris, January 1930, was written while the Uruguayan painter was still grieving over the sudden death of his son Juan Carlos (1927), and was preparing for the publication of Historia Kiria. In this letter to his [...]

This pamphlet was published by the Asociación de Arte Constructivo, an artists’ group created by Joaquín Torres García as a way to institutionalize his theoretical and practical ideas and lay the groundwork for a “movement.” There is a list [...]

In this second manifesto, Joaquín Torres García attempts to define the limits of constructivism’s philosophical field in relation to how much society does or does not heed it. He establishes “superior” and “inferior” categories of the [...]

Through a fictional text based on a dialogue between the exhibiting artist and some of the visitors, Joaquín Torres García builds a discourse with clear pedagogical intent. In it, he reiterates the basic concepts of his theoretical doctrine on [...]

The Spanish author and art critic Manuel Abril was widely known as an admirer of the work of Uruguayan artist Rafael Barradas. This essay, originally written for the Catalan magazine Vell I Nou, outlines the artist’s predisposition for modernism. [...]

The essay by Vicente Basso Maglio was intended for the catalogue for the exhibition Rafael Barradas, organized by the Comisión Nacional del Centenario in Montevideo in 1930, a year after the death of the Uruguayan artist. [The artist was seen as] a [...]

The catalogue of the exhibition Exposición Barradas, organized by the Comisión Nacional del Centenario in Uruguay in 1930, included an essay on Artur Perucho that had already been published before by the Barcelona-based magazine Joia. The article [...]

While stating his unflinching loyalty to the communist cause, David Alfaro Siqueiros also provides some important autobiographical information in this letter to the Uruguayan Communist Party Central Committee. He talks about being under house arrest [...]

This leaflet presents the work done in Madrid in 1933 by Joaquín Torres García and the Grupo de Arte Constructivo during JTG’s visit to Spain prior to returning to Uruguay for good. Three similar documents are known to exist, each one containing [...]

This leaflet presents the work done in Madrid in 1933 by Joaquín Torres García and the Grupo de Arte Constructivo during JTG’s visit to Spain prior to returning to Uruguay for good. Three similar documents are known to exist, each one containing [...]

This leaflet presents the work done in Madrid in 1933 by Joaquín Torres García and the Grupo de Arte Constructivo during JTG’s visit to Spain prior to returning to Uruguay for good. Three similar documents are known to exist, each one containing [...]

In this letter, David Alfaro Siqueiros tells Blanca Luz Brum that the Troubadour—the ship on which he sailed from Buenos Aires in December 1933—had arrived in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. Siqueiros talks about the book he wrote on the trip [...]

This is a typewritten copy of the lecture given by David Alfaro Siqueiros at the John Reed Club in Hollywood on September 2, 1932. Siqueiros talks about the creation of what he called the Los Angeles “Mural Painters’ Block” [BPM: Bloque de [...]

Other than the intimate details of the communication between Siqueiros and Brum, this letter provides extremely interesting insights into Siqueiros’s public relations in Buenos Aires, as well as his opinions and intentions concerning the local [...]

In this article, writer Esther de Cáceres analyzes the pictorial work of José Cúneo on exhibition at Galería Zubirí in Montevideo. De Cáceres makes many connections between Cúneo’s art and local artists, as well as poets, and literary and [...]

In 1930, Wladimir Raykis (director of Galerie Zak in Paris) sent this letter inviting Uruguayan artists José Cúneo and Bernabé Michelena to exhibit at his exhibition venue which promoted Latin American art between the wars. The dialogue and [...]

This text provides an overview of the work of the Círculo de Bellas Artes school in Montevideo, which was founded in 1905—thirty-three years before this report was published. The text describes the consistent quality of teaching in different [...]

Vicente Basso Maglio sees “creative freedom” as a constant that lies outside historical time. In his view, it is intrinsically human—a pure concept not bound to questions of style in art, which are to his thinking, vulgar, ornamental, and [...]

In this text and newly arriving to his native country, Joaquín Torres García responds to the ostensive critique made by N.B. in the Issue No. 7, June−July 1934 publication of the magazine Movimiento.  Since number 7 of the magazine Movimiento ( [...]

In the framework of celebrations marking the first century of Uruguayan Independence (1930− 1931), the Comisión Nacional del Centenario favored an exhibition consisting of modern Argentinean artists from Buenos Aires [...]

This essay by José Cuneo is on the analysis of the work by Rafael Barradas who died in Montevideo in 1929. Of interest was the artistic reflection and the views by a renowned Uruguayan artist, as Cuneo was in 1930, on another artist that [...]

In this essay, the members of AIAPE (Asociación de Intelectuales, Artistas, Periodistas y Escritores [Association of Intellectuals, Artists, Journalists and Writers]) lays out the basic program structure of the association, emphasizing a class-based [...]

This essay is on the author of the speech delivered at the Ateneo de Montevideo, Antonio Miguel Grompone, on “the culture of liberation,” where he highlights the cultural and political importance of the “peoples” universities or adult [...]

In this essay the objectives of the Asociación de Intelectuales, Artistas, Periodistas y Escritores (AIAPE, Association of Intellectuals, Artists, Journalists and Writers) are presented, which, were in line with the French and in accordance with the [...]

The author outlines his convictions on “artistic creation,” associating them to searches that are transcendent and tragic in character (as manifested in the title of the article). He conceives that the act of creating derives from spiritual [...]

This essay proposes that a “Latin American identity” was an idea based on two facts: the influence of the decadent post-war European culture and secondly, the geopolitical circumstances of Latin American governments confronted with North American [...]

This article announces the founding of the Bolivian AIAPE (Agrupación de Intelectuales, Artistas, Periodistas y Escritores) a few years after the founding of homonymous associations in Argentina and Uruguay. The Bolivian group basically embraced the [...]

Juvenal Ortiz Saralegui discusses Vicente Basso Maglio’s ideas about what the literary critic describes as “heroic expression,” with oblique references to the painting of another Uruguayan, Rafael Barradas. Based on literary ideas in particular [...]

In this article the head of the AIAPE, Juvenal Ortiz Saralegui, condemns the incompetence of the jurors who were appointed by the Ministerio de Instrucción Pública y Previsión Social to grant “artistic salaries.” In 1935 the jury that had been [...]