Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this text on the 58º Salón Michelena (Valencia, state of Carabobo) written in the year 2000, art critic Juan Astorga discusses the relationship between art and technique to reflect on the definition and meaning of “art.” Astorga defines art [...]

In this essay, which is arranged in five sections, María Elena Ramos discusses Cornelis Zitman’s sculptures and drawings. In the first section Ramos explains how the artist has chosen to portray the female form with exaggerated features that do [...]

The author’s nationalist approach takes into account the imbalances created by slavery in a developing nation with no homogenous social structure of its own. In his essay, the painter Porto-Alegre challenges colonial impositions on fashion, [...]

The book Conferencias sobre perspectiva y otros asuntos de dibujo, dictadas en el Colegio de San Bartolomé was published in 1881 by the artist and arts promoter Alberto Urdaneta. The publication begins with a quotation from Leonardo Da Vinci on [...]

The book Guía de la primera exposición anual organizada bajo la dirección del rector de dicha escuela, General Alberto Urdaneta (1886) features a collection of the works assembled for the 1886 exhibition. These works were gathered by Urdaneta, [...]

The law of September 22, 1867 that was passed by the Congress of the United States of Colombia created the Universidad Nacional de los Estados Unidos de Colombia, a national, public, and free university in keeping with the Humboldtian concept of [...]

This document brings together a group of minutes and reports pertinent to the awarding of prizes at the Primera Exposición Anual of the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes of Colombia, held on that institution’s premises (San Bartolomé building) [...]

This decree issued by Francisco Javier Zaldúa (1811–1882), president of the United States of Colombia, enacts Law 67 of 1882, which authorizes the creation of the publically funded Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes in Bogotá. This government [...]

This text is the final report on the Primera Exposición Anual de la Escuela de Bellas Artes held from December 4, 1886 to February 20, 1887. The document assesses the works and collections in the exhibition; it describes the different sections of [...]

Draftsman, painter, journalist, and founder of the “Escuela de Bellas Artes” mentioned in the title of this article, General Alberto Urdaneta wrote this text on the occasion of the official opening of the premises of the school on July 20, 1886, [...]

Presidential decree No. 626 issued on October 26, 1886established that an exhibition of artworks would be held as one of the events marking the beginning of modern art education in Colombia with the founding of the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes of [...]

This document records the passage of Law 67, on September 11, 1882, which created an Instituto de Bellas Artes [Fine Arts Institute] in Bogotá. It refers to the Colombian government initiative that was separate from the university system of the [...]

The Brazilian writer and art critic Luis Gonzaga Duque Estrada presents a strong critique of the notion of an escola brazileira, [Brazilian school] promoted by the Academia Imperial de Belas Artes.  Since its origins, he argues, the escola [...]

In this article published in La Libertad on June 12, 1878, celebrated Mexican painter and writer Felipe S. Gutiérrez urges the newly established administration of Porfirio Díaz to found a national museum for Mexico. He appeals to them, insisting [...]

In this article, Mexican politician, writer, and journalist Ignacio Manuel Altamirano evaluates the causes of what he deems a lack of originality among the Mexican artists of his time. Although Altamirano greatly admires the work of Mexican artists, [...]

The 1859 article by Peruvian painter Francisco Laso on the history of Peruvian architecture, sculpture, and painting is primarily a critique of the lack of support for artists in Peru. Laso contends that the inferiority of Peruvian artistic [...]

This review was written for the Mexican minister of public works by Mexican diplomat Pedro Escandón, president of the Mexican commission for the 1855 Universal Exposition of Products of Agriculture, Industry, and Fine Arts in Paris. In this essay, [...]

Published in 1849, this text records the journey of Argentine intellectual and politician, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, as he traveled through Rome on a multicountry survey sponsored by the Chilean government. While this entry is dedicated to the [...]

In Aracy Amaral’s view, the debate around the Etsedron group could give rise to reflection on a Latin American aesthetic insofar as it entails an expressionistic and primitivistic interpretation of reality from an environmental perspective. Amaral [...]

This long and didactic article by art critic Charles de Gouffra introduces the theoretical principles underlying Impressionism. The text is divided into six sections: (i) an introduction, which formulates a periodization of that French painting [...]

This unusually incisive and analytic speech given by Pedro Nel Ospina at the concert held in Medellín in 1898 to support painter Francisco Antonio Cano demonstrates the social situation of the artist from the Antioquia region at the turn of the [...]

The brochure for the “Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes” [National Exhibition of Fine Arts], written by Carlos Miguel Pizarro on October 15, 1899 criticizes the procedures that were followed for awarding prizes at that year’s National [...]

By way of an introduction, Lázaro María Girón dedicates the first part of this text to discussing the risk that the private collection of Colombian painter, draftsman, and journalist Alberto Urdaneta [will] be dispersed. He recalls the neutral [...]

This biographical overview—the first one ever published in Antioquia on an artist from the region—begins by describing Colombian artist Francisco Antonio Cano’s humble background and difficult childhood. From a young age, Cano took an interest [...]

The Colombian poet Max Grillo claims that there is an aesthetic sense that is common to all the arts. In his opinion, to enjoy the visual arts, literature, or music, one must have the ability to feel and understand the emotions that are inherent to [...]

After discussing the artistic development of Colombian painter Epifanio Garay, and mentioning his time at the Académie Julian in Paris and his interest in and knowledge of the works in the Louvre, the author turns to Garay’s portraits. Manrique [...]

On July 1, 1892, when Colombian painter Francisco Antonio Cano was twenty-seven years old, he addressed a letter to the director of the newspaper El Espectador informing him of the first exhibition of painting to be held in Medellín. In his letter, [...]

This document, drafted in the late nineteenth century by Alberto Urdaneta, is a copy of the regulations for the Escuela de Bellas Artes of the Republic of Colombia. The official publication of the regulations fulfilled an academic plan to provide [...]

This is an article by the famous novelist Machado de Assis, in which he discusses nationalist opinions that value “the local colors” that were praised by literary critics and writers of the so-called Brazilian Romanticism during the second half [...]

Lope de Aguirre, a Spanish conquistador from the Basque region, is best remembered for his extreme brutality and treachery in colonial Spanish America and for being one of the first to identify himself as an American. He wrote this letter to King [...]

In this 1823 speech, President James Monroe announces a new agreement that forbids European nations from invading countries in the Western Hemisphere. He begins by recounting that the agreement has been negotiated through the Russian government, and [...]

In these three texts, Torres-Caicedo considers how Latin American states should organize themselves into some kind of larger, governing body. In the first, he argues in favor of a Confederation of Latin American states as opposed to a Federation. He [...]

This suite of documents includes Charles (Carlos) Calvo’s (1824–1906) letter to Napoleon III, the response from M. Thouvenel, Minister of the French Foreign Office, and the introduction to Calvo’s book, Recueil complet des traités, conventions [...]

In this letter, Christopher Columbus describes for the Court of Spain the islands and peoples encountered during his initial journey across the Atlantic Ocean to what is currently known as the Caribbean. Columbus reports taking possession of the [...]

In this selection from Michel Chevalier’s text Le Mexique Ancien et Moderne (1863), the author argues that France’s occupation of Spain, Mexico, and other Latin countries is in the best interest of all Catholic nations. Describing France as both [...]

In this essay, José Martí declares the independence and character of a united front of American republics in the face of United States expansionism. He does this by declaring Latin America’s difference from the cultures and intellectual [...]

In this book, Francis Bacon describes a scene in which a ship of Spanish sailors, finding themselves adrift and near death off the coast of Peru, lands on the shore of an unknown island where they are cared for by the government of Bensalem. In the [...]

In this text, José Martí discusses an exhibition of paintings at the Academia de San Carlos and how this exhibition has brought to light important issues about the most relevant artistic expressions of today. The author begins by warning how the [...]

This story details one of the basic reasons for the scandal of the Forty-One: the excesses of the upper class, who lived for dances and social display. With Pedro Rincón Gallardo, governor of the Federal District, presiding, the dictator and the [...]

Avoiding sensationalism and bad faith, this article addresses the case of a woman with masculine tendencies who takes the matter to confession with a priest (a modern and broad-minded priest). The priest is neither scandalized by the woman’s “ [...]