Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This is Ferreira Gullar’s eulogy for his friend, the sculptor Franz Weissmann, whom he calls “one of the [Brazilian] inventors of the imagined universe.” The author remembers having met Weissmann in 1952 at Mário Pedrosa& [...]

Rodrigo Quijano argues that Tiempo detenido—the installation by ceramicist Carlos Runcie Tanaka—does more than illustrate a traumatic event. Since its beginnings, Quijano asserts, the work has been linked to the artist’s search for identity. To [...]

In this text, Rodrigo Quijano argues that Lima 01—a series of photographs of inverted images of interiors of old abandoned buildings in downtown Lima—addresses questions of forgetting and urban decay. The series makes reference to the design of [...]

In this unpublished article, created as a PDF, the Uruguayan video-artist Fernando Álvarez Cozzi discusses the origins of video-art in Uruguay, the form’s current situation (in 2008), and certain theoretical aspects of the poetic dimension of an [...]

The catalogue La condición del video. 25 años de videoarte en el Uruguay provides a review of the major figures in the history of Uruguayan video art and describes the development of the movement in this region of Latin America from the time of its [...]

This brief catalogue essay is by Haroldo González, the curator of Las veredas de la Patria Chica, the exhibition that was organized as a tribute to Teresa Vila. The fact that González was an important figure among Uruguayan conceptual artists in [...]

The Uruguayan artist Carlos Capelán created a fictitious entity he called “Post Colonial Liberation Army” which he used to issue personal, though supposedly anonymous, manifestos in which he discussed various things related to art practices, the [...]

The article by Yamandú Canosa was published in the catalogue of his exhibition when he obtained the Premio Pedro Figari 2007, awarded by the Central Bank of Uruguay for the distinction of his artistic development. In this essay, the Uruguayan [...]

Carlos Capelán’s installations include texts expressed as proclamations presented under the acronym PCLA (r): Post Colonial Liberation Army (re materialización). The Uruguayan artist’s work alludes to and emulates manifestos produced by [...]

This is an interview by the art critic Rosa Queralt with Yamandú Canosa in regard to his 2003 exhibition held in Spain, named La línea h (iceberg), at the Art Center of Salamanca. It was published in the catalogue Premio Pedro Figari (2007–08 [...]

In this article Clemente Padín discusses the historical development of performance art in Europe and in North America. He also refers to specific examples to describe the nature of this action art as practiced in Latin America. He believes [...]

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 text by curator Zuleiva Vivas provides a visual overview of and a reflection on the works by Ricardo Alcaide, Nelsón Garrido, María Eugenia Arria, Alberto Asprino, Mauricio Lupini, Alfredo Ramírez, Luisa Richter, Fabiola Sequera, Jesús [...]

This interview with Venezuelan sculptor Víctor Valera by journalist Teresa Casique makes mention of the artist’s early exhibitions of painting, specifically the one held in Paris in 1953 and the one held at the Ateneo in Caracas in 1965 (there is [...]

From the seven chapters of the book Poleo. Categorías del espíritu,written by historian Carlos Silva about the paintings of Héctor Poleo, this text represents the third chapter, “Arte y estilo de Héctor Poleo,” wherein the essayist analyzes [...]

In this second piece about Abstract painting, the historian and politician Mario Briceño Iragorry revisits some of the ideas he expressed in his first article, “Abstraccionismo y carillones,” and takes a new, more sociological approach to [...]

Luis Pérez-Oramas wrote this curatorial text on the exhibition Usted, el espacio by the Venezuelan artist Alí González exhibiting at the Galería D’Museo (Caracas, 2001). Opting to envision the work poetically, he approaches the work of Gonzá [...]

The curator Cecilia Fajardo-Hill introduces the exhibition Usted, el espacio by the Venezuelan visual artist Alí González, held at the Galería D’Museo in Caracas in 2001. In connection with that event, the curator discusses the artist’s recent [...]

In his review of Casos de Cosas (Caracas: Galería Alternativa, 2004)—the exhibition of works by the artist Ani Villanueva—the art critic Víctor Guédez mentions certain precedents in the field of objectual art. He especially refers to those [...]

Ángel Vivas Arias writes about his exhibition on body action in Objetos encontrados e intervención gestual, presented at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas Sofía Imber (October 1980). Reinforcing his penchant for the object as an element [...]

The Venezuelan critic Roberto Guevara discusses Vertical vibrante—the work by the Venezuelan painter and sculptor Alejandro Otero—which he considers to be a seminal achievement in the Venezuelan visual arts. Guevara ponders the different stages [...]

Roberto Guevara writes this criticism about the series Tablones by Alejandro Otero. The writer refers to a dynamic that prevails in art: providing solutions that feature continuity along with a range of explorations. Guevara analyzes how the “ [...]

Curator María Elena Ramos writes about the Venezuelan artist and graphic designer Patricia van Dalen, in relation to Color Fragmentado [Fragmented Color], an exhibition at the Sala Trasnocho Arte Contacto (Caracas, 2008). The text establishes an [...]

Bélgica Rodríguez analyzes the work of sculptor Colette Delozanne, the Venezuelan artist born in France. In this text, she covers Delozanne’s artistic and personal trajectory, including her arrival in Venezuela in 1955. The author divides the [...]

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

Curator Kaira Marie Cabañas argues that work by Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt, 1912–1994), a Venezuelan artist of German origin, constitutes a “performative geometry” based on a primordial interest in the act of “making.” The configuration of [...]

In this text, Edgar Alfonso Sierra reviews the exhibition Renacimiento by the Venezuelan sculptor Joel Casique. Here, the journalist provides a general description of the exhibition, which includes installations of small sculptures and [manipulated] [...]

Researcher Félix Hernández wrote this essay entitled “Las capillas en nombre de ‘La Virgen de Coromoto’ y de ‘José Gregorio Hernández’” [Chapels in the name of the Virgin of Coromoto and José Gregorio Hernández’]. It is a multi- [...]

Journalist Ildemaro Torres analyzes the life and work of painter Abilio Padrón (b. 1931). In his article he describes the artistic process of his career as a draftsman and graphic illustrator. The author likewise includes in his text a chronology [...]

Researcher Ana de Azcárate analyzes the art of Sandra Vivas from her early production through 2004. De Azcárate points out constants in Vivas’s work, such as feminism and machismo, the use of her own body in performances and in videos, and the [...]

In this text, essayist José Balza places the early work of Marco Miliani in the context of the stimulating artistic and intellectual scene in Venezuela in the fifties and sixties. Balza cites writers and art critics who have followed Miliani’s [...]

Art critic Perán Erminy begins his essay by etymologically relating the first and last name of the Venezuelan painter Marco Miliani with aspects of his art, permitting him to construct an interpretative model based on metaphors and symbolism. [...]

Víctor Guédez analyzes the sculpture of Víctor Valera, in particular the artist’s retrospective exhibition held in Venezuela, in which he confronts himself. The author focuses on his most recent work, and then studies it in perspective and [...]

In this essay, the Venezuelan historian and art critic Juan Carlos Palenzuela reviews the latest work by the Venezuelan sculptor Pedro Barreto. The author points to the relationship between Barreto’s forms and their equivalents in nature and the [...]

In this text, researcher Adolfo Wilson analyzes Venezuelan painter Emilia Azcárate’s work on the basis of the notions of “trace” and “sign.” According to Wilson, Azcárate’s art can be understood as a “linguistic and communicative [...]

Critic María Luz Cárdenas explains the various categories used to classify the works produced in the seventies by the artists participating in the twenty-fifth Salón Nacional de Arte Aragua (Maracay, 2000). Her curatorial thesis for the event [...]

This essay by the curator Julieta González is a preface to a book published by the Museo Alejandro Otero (2000) that collected articles related to the debate about “identity” in Latin America in 1965. The debate arose as a response to an article [...]

In this critical essay, Ruth Auerbach considers the challenges represented by the 5th Bienal Nacional de Arte de Guayana (Ciudad Bolívar, 1997). Here, the writer defines the theoretical foundation of the museological and curatorial vision of the [...]

The critic and curator Freddy Carreño seeks to present the structural underpinnings of the V Bienal de Guayana (Ciudad Bolívar, 1997), whose central theme focused on the Venezuelan region of Guayana, a vast region endowed with significant [...]

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 text on the sixth Pirelli Salon by critic Luis Ángel Duque, he references the appearance of television as a mass market industry with the capacity to bring together large audiences on the basis of a global society. In his judgment, it is [...]

In this text, art critic María Luz Cárdenas explains the concerns underlying the fifth Salón Pirelli, which in her view, is a concise reflection on the conflicts and dilemmas that new technological media have brought to artistic creation. Cá [...]

In this essay, which was the main text in the catalogue Arte social. Claudio Perna (Caracas: Galería de Arte Nacional, 2004), Zuleiva Vivas discusses various aspects of Perna’s life and work. She studies the artist’s work from the 1960s to the [...]

In this essay, curator Julieta González discusses artist Claudio Perna, specifically the way he uses photography and his archive-based methodology. González argues that Perna’s photographs can be analyzed in terms of the concept of the “index [...]

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 curatorial text by William Niño Araque reviews the landscape genre in Venezuela starting with an early twentieth-century trend called “national landscape” and the approaches favored by the Círculo de Bellas Artes. The writer concludes his [...]

In this introductory essay for the II Salón de Arte ExxonMobil de Venezuela (2003), the critic Carlos Maldonado Bourgoin discusses the history of landscape art in Venezuela, recalling the aboriginal inhabitants whom, according to the author, saw the [...]

Curator Cecilia Fajardo-Hill reviews the tenth Premio Eugenio Mendoza exhibition, establishing relationships among the works that were exhibited. In this text she disclosed that the exhibition was not organized thematically, but the works were [...]

In his essay on Víctor Valera’s Papeles Perforados [Perforated Papers] series, curator Juan Carlos López Quintero describes his stay in Paris during the 1950s and his connections to other Venezuelan artists; especially Jesús Soto, with whom he [...]

In this section of the second chapter of her book La transestética postmoderna (Caracas, 2003), Margot Römer provides a chronological overview of the period that spans from the sixties to the late nineties, pointing out the artists, events, and [...]