Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

Alicia Haber was the curator of the 1991 exhibition Charrúas y montes criollos, presenting the contemporary work of Uruguayan artist Rimer Cardillo, who had been residing in New York since 1984. According to the curatorial text, the exhibition [...]

The author, Natalia Majluf, states that these works, created using the techniques of the “minutemen” photographers that work in provincial city plazas, could initially be thought as ethnographic or touristic photography. Nevertheless, when [...]

In her text, Maria Lúcia Bueno follows the course of twentieth century visual arts, from modernity to globalization. She in turn probes the art world, relating art spaces and dissemination of art to their social context. Based on her analysis of the [...]

In her text, Maria Lúcia Bueno follows the course of twentieth century visual arts, from modernity to globalization. She in turn probes the art world, relating art spaces and dissemination of art to their social context. Based on her analysis of the [...]

Mario Sagradini discusses the connections Uricchio (the pseudonym used by Rodolfo Troncone) may have had with artists who were involved in the emergence of the Arte Concreto — Invención movement in 1944 (which was originally based in Buenos Aires [...]

In this report, issued in 1992 by NUVA (Núcleo Uruguayo de Videoarte), the Uruguayan video artist Fernando Álvarez Cozzi discusses the origins of latent cultural identities in Latin America and explores the specific nature of video art in Uruguay [...]

This document is the catalogue to the exhibition Videos en Banda (1993), the third edition of an event dedicated to video art from Uruguay and abroad organized by the Núcleo Uruguayo de Videoarte. Held at the Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales de [...]

Luis Camnitzer reflects on the subject of an artist’s “signature” as he discusses the biographical statements that are encouraged by the institutions that control monetary values in the art field and cater to the market of the individual “ [...]

In a volume entitled Arte, Estado y no he estado, published in 2012, Luis Camnitzer compiles a series of essays he wrote between 1968 and 2006. In them, he explains his focus on Conceptual Art and the socioeconomic roots of his political thinking. [...]

In this essay, the art critic Alicia Haber analyzed the 1995 exhibition Bye Bye Yaugurú by Nelbia Romero at the Centro Municipal de Exposiciones, Subte de Montevideo. The exhibition linked the conceptual aspects of the artistic ideas and concerns of [...]

In this essay, the artist and performer Clemente Padín explains the concept of “street art and urban art” following the alternative art exhibition, Tomarte, held in the city of Rosario, Argentina, in April 1990, with the pretense [...]

In this essay, various aspects of the II Encontro Latino-americano de Artes Plásticas [Second Latin American Meeting of the Visual Arts] held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, are summarized, emphasizing the performing artistic practices and the need to [...]

This essay is about an invitation that was extended to Clemente Padín by the Yellow Springs Institute (USA) to perform at the gathering of Latin American artists held in October of 1989, resulting from information on the event. The artist, in an [...]

This is a critical review of the I Bienal de Artes Plásticas that was held at the Subte Municipal de Montevideo, an exhibition space in the capital city of Uruguay, in 1992. The author explicitly acknowledges Clemente Padín for his presentation of [...]

Artist Nelbia Romero wrote this document on her exhibition project Bye, Bye, Yaugurú, curated by critic Alicia Haber. Written on a loose page, the text explains the aims of an exhibition that set out to reaffirm the need to engage the cultural [...]

Here Clemente Padín sketches a retrospective of his life as an artist—he was an experimental poet, graphic designer, performer, and networker—during the Uruguayan military-civilian dictatorship (that lasted from the June 27, 1973 coup d’état [...]

This article is about the group, led by Clemente Padín, which created the magazine Los Huevos del Plata, a departure from the literary style that was favored in Uruguayan cultural circles in the 1960s. The Uruguayan author’s goal was to present [...]

In this text, Alicia Haber analyzes how a large and complex installation by Nelbia Romero shows the toponymic-linguistic legacy of Guarani culture in a country as European as Uruguay. From the mid-eighties to the mid-nineties, there was a social [...]

In this leaflet Nelbia Romero expresses her goal of recognizing the identity and ethnicity of the indigenous race that once lived on the land that is now Uruguay. That race was, in fact, exterminated during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. [...]

Luis Camnitzer harshly criticizes the contemporary “young art” that emerged in Uruguay, while also critiquing his own 1960s generation. This article is of interest because of its highly controversial nature, given that it was published at a time [...]

This text is the manifesto of Latin American art issued by the Sindicato Uruguayo de Artistas Plásticos (SUAP) in 1991, after the Primer Congreso de Arte Hispanoamericano held in La Paz, Bolivia. It addresses issues facing the region as a whole, [...]

On the occasion of a retrospective exhibition of works by Uruguayan draftsman who were active in the 1960s (a movement that was known as the Dibujazo), Gabriel Peluffo’s essay seeks to place the movement in the relevant socio-political context, [...]

In this essay from 1992, Jean Clay outlines the salient concepts that are intrinsic to Lygia Clark’s work. In his opinion, the Brazilian artist’s trajectory is marked by the tendency toward fusion, an obsession with synthesis, and a [...]

In this essay, the British curator and art critic Guy Brett traces the linkage between the different phases that made up the artistic career of Brazilian artist Lygia Clark. From her Neo-Constructivist paintings and sculptures made in the late 1950s [...]

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

In this essay, Graciela Pantin analyzes this manifestation of the “spirit of the times,” as expressed in the visual arts, establishing a set of “parameters that identify the socio-historical background of our contemporary nature.” She goes on [...]

In her essay “Apolonio: un objeto encontrado”—about the painter Luis Luna’s series El libro de Apolonio—the critic and curator Carmen María Jaramillo takes a long look at the work of this Colombian artist. Jaramillo scrutinizes the visual [...]

The article “¡Que viva Manrique!” [Hooray for Manrique!], written by the editorial team at the Bogotá newspaper El Espectador and published on April 16, 1996, referred to Pedro Manrique Figueroa. Precursor del Collage en Colombia [Pedro [...]

In the text “Invitación al sacrificio” [An Invitation to Sacrifice], commentator Alejandro Torres discusses the poetic quality of the staging and production in the work of the Mapa Teatro collective directed by Colombian artist Rolf Abderhalden [...]

In this essay, curator María Luz Cárdenas provides a brief chronological overview of the work of Venezuelan artist Pedro Morales, placing Morales’s production in a timeframe that spans from 1988 to the mid-nineties. During that period, the [...]

The art critic Víctor Guédez discusses the work of Henry Bermúdez, referring to this Venezuelan visual artist’s recurring themes. Guédez describes the formal elements in his work and analyzes the symbolic values of some of the pieces presented [...]

In this essay, researcher Zhelma Portillo catalogues the themes in the work of popular Venezuelan artist Francisco Luna Ostos that are most emblematic, and she also describes some of his creative approaches [...]

In this article, the curator Bélgica Rodríguez reviews the career of the Venezuelan sculptor and draftsman Felipe Herrera, from his early training in the late 1960s to his most recent work, produced in 1996. After sketching a broad overview of the [...]

In this critique Susana Benko analyzes the work of Ivan Petrovsky. The author covers drawings by Petrovsky belonging to different periods of his artistic production, while describing the range of techniques and materials he used. Benko likewise [...]

The art critic Roberto Guevara wrote a text with the title “Salir fuera,” which introduced the exhibition brochure for Pasta dominical by Clemencia Labin at the Galería Sala Alternativa (Caracas, 1997). The writer begins with a description of [...]

In this text, critic Carlos Silva places emphasis on Hugo Baptista’s skill as a painter. Baptista’s work is characterized by a lyrical use of color and an expressive approach to painterly material. It is with good reason, Silva asserts, that [...]

The curator Julieta González discusses the work presented by two contemporary artists, Juan Nascimento and Daniela Lovera, in the La colección exhibition at the Sala Mendoza(Caracas, 1998). González indicates that there is a conceptual basis of [...]

In connection with the exhibition Antología del desarraigo (1992), the curator Katherine Chacón writes about the career of the Venezuelan mixed-media artist, Ángel Vivas Arias. The writer highlights the duality of mysticism and nature evident [...]

The critic José María Salvador interviews the Venezuelan sculptor José Jesús Moros. Salvador discusses the salient features of the sculptor’s recent work, mentioning the relationship between the horizontal, vertical, and diagonal arrangement of [...]

In this essay, Francisco Da Antonio elaborates on a chronological critique on the work of Gabriel Marcos, who began his artistic training both in Venezuela (at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas y Artes Aplicadas de Caracas), and abroad (Italy and [...]

The critic Carlos Silva wrote a study of the work of the Venezuelan sculptor Edgar Guinand, pointing out two fundamental periods in his life in art. The first is defined by the writer in the visual arts context that follows the Latin American Post- [...]

The artist Gabriel Morera; the writers José Balza, Jesús Enrique Guédez and Salvador Garmendia; the playwrights Román Chalbaud and Isaac Chocrón; and the graphic designer Nedo all make different statements about the relationship between the [...]

This unsigned text collects a handful of testimonies about design in Venezuela. It includes comments by the collector Hans Neumann, the graphic designer Nedo [Mion Ferrario], the writer Salvador Garmendia, the sociologist Alfredo Chacón, the visual [...]

This article includes comments by writers, poets, dramatists, and designers who were involved with CAL, the magazine published in Caracas, devoted to art criticism, art, and literature, which appeared from 1962 through 1967. These comments address [...]

Curator María Luz Cárdenas discusses the magazine CAL, which was published from 1962 to 1967. Due to the ideology and cultural characteristics of CAL, Cárdenas considers it “the last avant-garde” effort to emerge in Venezuela. Cárdenas values [...]

In this text, researcher Mariana Figarella reflects on the Las cafeteras series (1949) by Venezuelan painter and sculptor Alejandro Otero on exhibit at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas. On the grounds of certain characteristics of Otero’s work [...]

In this essay, Eduardo Planchart studies the specific qualities of the sculptural work of Gaudí Esté. The text can be divided into four parts. In the first, the writer analyzes the art language used by the artist, which is characterized by her use [...]

In this essay, Juan Calzadilla discusses Alejandro Otero’s contribution to the field of visual art instruction. Calzadilla acknowledges Otero’s leading role in the promotion of Abstract painting and sculpture, and education, by noting the support [...]

Damián Bayón reviews Alejandro Otero’s paintings and sculptures in search of what he calls their “dynamic space.” The Argentine critic and historian discusses Otero’s earliest work and the synthesis in his landscapes, then associates his [...]

One of the objectives of this article by the art historian Juan Carlos Palenzuela was to analyze the Venezuelan art world of the 1980s. The writer also established the guidelines applied to organizing the second Bienal de Artes Visuales Christian [...]